My oldest is five years old as of recently and my youngest, two. For the last four years, my mother is who made Easter happen for my kids. She lived in Florida, but even when we didn’t travel to her for the holiday, she made Easter happen for them. In light of recent events, this task has fallen to me.

As I was franticly rushing to the one retail store that I can safely say I despise, I was trying to come up with some sort of game plan. Our apartment complex had an egg hunt which loaded my children up with enough candy to last for months, so I didn’t want candy, just a chocolate bunny for each. I wanted to be practical and strategic in my shopping for them. My mother was the best at finding unconventional, yet practical, alternatives to the traditional basket receptacle. I thought maybe a backpack for Boogie since he starts school this year, but I wasn’t sure what for Ton Ton. I checked backpacks. All they had for little boys were Paw Patrol. Boogie has moved well past that phase. Back to square one. I gathered a few other things. An outfit for Boogie and a pair of pajamas for Ton, hooded character bath towels, and a chocolate bunny for each. Then I got the heck out of there because I loathe that place.

I then began to panic. I had never done this before. Was I even headed in the right direction? I called on a professional for help. ;]

My father was very encouraging. He assured me that I was doing the right things. He shared what he had done for both my younger brother and my grandmother’s baskets this year and was full of all kinds of helpful hints and tricks, after all, he has been doing these things since my sister Britt was a teeny tiny.

The last stop on my list was Kroger. I needed to get some carrots and greens for the Dragon, as well as some other household staples. I am headed towards the milk when over the loud speaker “Limited time only : all Easter candy on aisle 21 50% off : Limited time only folks! : Thank you for shopping at Kroger.” I couldn’t help but check it out. I grabbed some specialty bunnies for us adults as well as some jelly beans.

I left Kroger and called my father back. I explained that I had spent almost $100 on practical Easter basket stuffings. He told me that it sounded like I had done great and that he wanted pictures. I completely forgot to send the pictures. OOPS! I can fix that tomorrow. Ultimately, the boys had a wonderful Easter and I feel like my mother would be so proud of the job I did. I just hope that I can keep it up over the years to come.

We go to Party City to see what they have. Strawberry birthday cow in tow.

We wander through the Party City and find no Octonauts decorations anywhere. I then tell Ton that I want him to go down the aisle with all of the kids party themes and decorations. There was Elmo, Mickey, Super Hero, Emoji, even Slither.io decorations. The only thing to catch his attention is a tiny plastic recorder with Goofy on it which he put in his mouth therefore we had to buy. (if I had emojis available in this text editor, this would be where the face palm would come in.)

We decide we shall look online and go to the check out line where both children run amuck, naturally, grabbing impulse items and candy as if they were the ones making the buying decisions and Mom and Dad were ready for this nonsense. Two people ahead of us in line and that is when he saw it. . . The Super Bowl decorations. Ton dropped what he had in his hand and went straight for the super bowl section. There were football balloons and whistles, referee and goal post balloons, ribbons and football field accessories. He had made up his mind. We were to have a Game Day style birthday party for our two year old, the day before the super bowl.

I baked a cake, Gramma stye, and formed dark chocolate into the shape of a football and applied white chocolate laces for the topper. I enlisted Aunt Yellie to assist in the making of trash snack mix. We had several expected attendees who live the vegan life, so I adapted a few recipes to accommodate. I hand cut football shapes out of vegan gingerbread cookie dough and made vegan royal icing to adorn the balls with laces. We had charro beans and fresh vegetable trays, pretzels, chex mix, and hummus. It was quite a spread.

I purchased decorations from amazon. We had tablecloths, cups, napkins, plates, snack tubs, an a banner that all matched. My hubbs picked up balloons day of. We got the footballs and the referee that originally got Ton’s attention at Party City. Party favors consisted of miniature foam fingers, stress relief footballs, smiley whistles, and game day themed coozies.

To top the whole thing off, we had a Jacksonville Jaguars game playing on the television for the duration of the party. =]

I had not idea that we could fit twenty-seven humans in my little apartment, but we did. No one felt cramped either. It was nice. There were seven children playing in the kids room and I watched for a bit as they were systematically taking every toy out of its respective home and placing it on the floor. It didn’t matter so much though. What mattered to me was that Ton had the best second birthday party he could imagine.

I’m pretty sure that was accomplished.