Happy Easter

And it's already been Easter again - can you believe it? The year is racing past, and next week it will already be my birthday! 

I do hope you had a wonderful Easter. It was the first time that we celebrated it at our place. Same as with Christmas, we figured it is just so much easier with the two kids to do it at our place, so let me share what we did. 

On Good Saturday, we have this somewhat strange family tradition on my family's side. As long as I can remember, we always went to look at the Jesus graves. In Austria - a Catholic country - at Easter time, churches display colourful graves with a dead Jesus inside them and you can go and look at them (I know, writing it down here, I only realise how weird that actually is). This year, we decided to do it as well, even though it is quite cumbersome with two little children because you have to get them in and out of the car so much. Lily is still obsessed with anything Jesus because of the Jesus baby from Christmas. She was, however, rightfully confused from the jump of "let's look at a manger at the little Jesus baby" to "Let's look at the dead Jesus lying in a grave." The most important part of these outings, which is always the most important in my family with anything, is the cake that is consumed after looking at two to three graves. 

Our Easter Brunch table

On Easter Sunday, we all met at our place for brunch. It is still new to me to host this mega-family events, and I have to say I have newfound respect for my mum and her ability to get everything done and ready on the table in time. As I am not such a fan of the traditional Easter brunch food (horse radish, baked ham and "Pinzn" (a sweet kind of bread), I decided to make a sweet brunch with waffles, mascarpone cream and cake, as well as salmon, spreads and cold cuts. It was delicious and a lot (we always have to much food in our family - but better too much than too little, right?). As the weather, as per usual, was abysmal, we decided to do the Easter hunt inside the apartment. I hid some sweets and presents for Lily and my mum and sister insisted on hiding their presents as well, but I knew Lily would be completely overwhelmed with so many things - and that was exactly what happened. She found one chocolate bunny and her new book on ballet and then just wanted to sit down, eat her bunny and read her book. She wasn't even remotely interested in continuing the hunt. 

The amount of presents and sweets the kids get is something that bothers me. I grew up with what many would say as " a little over the top" in that department. My mother comes from a family where showering people with money, sweets and presents is a form of showing your love (and maybe a little bit of status), and it's definitely an issue for me raising my kids. Lily, being two, is overwhelmed when there are too many presents to open and too many people cooing "Look Lily, there is another present for you!", "Come on, Lily, I think I found another present over there." It's overwhelming and puts her on the spot. We also have VERY much in terms of toys, and I really want to get a handle on that, but I will dedicate an entire blog post to that in the near future. 

I was also really proud about the baked goods I prepared for Easter. I made a traditional Bundt cake with toppings, which I haven't even tried yet because we had so much food to eat that I ended up freezing it. I also tried out these cute chicken cupcakes and I will leave the recipes for the baked goods in the Recipe Section. 

All in all, we had a very pleasant Easter Sunday and wrapped it up with a family trip to the zoo on Easter Monday, the only nice day in weeks (it's actually snowing while I'm writing this post!). I hope you had a lovely Easter time, too. 

#mamablogger #easter #blogging #blog