A Note on Multi-Sensory Easter Baskets

Firstly, yes, I have pictures, but they aren't uploaded yet and I'm just going to seize the moment to write this while I can and edit the photos in later.  Sorry.

Secondly, the background - while shopping for Gabriel's Easter basket goodies, I had a brilliant idea.  (This should probably have been my first warning).  See, I didn't really want to get a basket - the handle sticks up and makes it an odd shape to fit onto a shelf or anything, which makes it difficult to reuse for storage purposes after the candy is all eaten, and I really didn't want to waste money on something that was just going to get trashed.  So instead, I got a small Sterilite tote and 20 pounds of rice.  Figured I'd hide the plastic eggs full of candy in the rice for a nice contained easy "egg hunt" and then afterwards the tub of rice is itself a great sensory toy.  Yeah.... here's my thoughts 4 days later.

1.  I can see why this is a great sensory toy for little kids - I actually kinda enjoyed digging my hands through the rice.
2.  I had no idea rice was so dusty.
3.  Rice is the perfect size and shape to wedge itself  under your fingernails (much less of a problem for my toddler).
4.  I should have listened to my husband when he suggested taping the eggs shut.
5.  I should have remembered to put "basket" and child in empty tub for easy clean up.
6.  A Sterilite tub, even with a lid on it, is not nearly enough to contain 20 lbs of rice.  Rice travels.  Especially when you didn't tape the easter eggs shut.
7.  Hiding candy in the rice was a bad idea.  My toddler's only interest in the bucket of rice is for the candy.  Which is now full of rice because I didn't tape the easter eggs shut.
8.  I want to know what happened to the rest of the Reese's peanut butter bunnies.  We started with 5, I ate 2, and I certainly didn't give any of those prizes to the toddler.  So either my husband and the kidlet ate the other 3 when I wasn't looking (entirely likely) or else they are so well buried in the rice that even I can't find them.  Either way, I'm pouting.

There May Be Hope Yet

Hope of Spring, that is.  In fact, I'm going to say we may eve have turned the corner and be well and truly done with winter.  (I do hope I'm not jinxing anything by saying that.)  But the weather has been quite nice, in the mid 50's for most of the week, and even up to 80 today!  Plus, despite the promised thunderstorms, there hasn't been a drop of rain all day.  It's actually been quite nice - a little on the muggy side but with a nice breeze to keep the air moving and make it a very nice day to be outside.  Which is exactly where we've been!  Tuesday or Wednesday (can't remember which day,) we went to the botanical gardens and actually saw *gasp* flowers!  I only had my cell phone with me, no camera (bad mama!) so nothing outstanding for photos, but I just had to try anyway.  I've been quite green with envy over all the lovely flower photos I see on everyone else's blogs these days and quite antsy waiting for some color to start popping up in my little corner of the world.  Hopefully putting them all together in a collage kind of makes up for the cell phone camera?  Maybe?  Well I'm going to say it does.  And I made the background green, because let's face it, the grass sure isn't yet.  :(

In other adventures, this week, we went to the zoo on Thursday with some friends and to the park today with Daddy.  And we got new shoes.  Because someone was in a sharing kind of mood at the zoo.

 Yup.  He dropped it right into the prairie dog exhibit.  Ok, to be fair, he didn't do it on purpose.  I think it actually just fell off  his foot.  The exhibit is set up so that you stand on a ramp above the prairie dogs and look down into the exhibit.  The "fence" is just a rope net.  Certainly enough to keep a person out, but not, apparantly, toddler sized sneakers.  Doh.  Yes, we did go find someone to let them know about it so they could get it out, but I decided I'd had enough of theom falling off his feet everywhere we go and this made an excellent excuse to  buy new shoes.

And just because he's so stinkin adorable, I'll leave you with a random shot of the red panda.  :)