Hoppy Easter! (get it?? ha!!)

             

Happy Easter, everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful Easter Sunday and, in the midst of chocolate and candy, didn't forget what Easter is really about!  It was a beautifully mild day here in Dublin and we went out to mass and Munchers (which is kinda my new nickname for her - it went from Munchkin to Munchers, somehow, but I kinda like it and anyways I can't stop saying it even if I tried!).  Where was I?  Oh, Munchers looked totally adorable in her dress from her Uncle Gerald (well, he's my Uncle Gerald but he adores her and buys her the prettiest dresses!).  I'm still in a conundrum about posting pics of her but here's one of my little chick-a-dee and my big chick-a-dee on Easter morning that I'll put up for a while so you can see who distracted everyone in mass this morning:

Anyways, since most of my patient and loyal readers are American I thought I'd tell you a little about an Irish Easter.  It involves lots of chocolate.  Which makes it amazing!  SO - typically (and I'm still not back to normal so this wasn't a typical Easter Sunday), we wake up and have a hard boiled egg that is sitting in an eggcup with the face of the person who will eat the egg ever-so-artistically drawn on it by the resident Picasso (ie: not me, although he drawings do tend to be a bit Picasso-esque, come to think of it.).  Hmmm...that might just be a tradition in my family only, not quite sure...but hey, it's a tradition so I'm sharing it either way.  We didn't the that this year so no photo, sorry.  Must make a mental note to do that next year.   We also give each other our Easter eggs, but I'll get to that bit later.

After a light breakfast of boiled eggs and toast - gotta save room for chocolate - we get dressed in our Easter best and go to mass.  After mass we usually come home to the amazing aroma of roast leg of lamb - an Irish (and, I believe, British) Easter lunch tradition.  However, being that we're a bit off-kilter this year the lamb was made at dinner not at lunch.  It was, however, totally delicious.  We thought if we're gonna go wrong, go strong (with a weekend of chocolate over-indulgence and all) and we had roasted potatoes, parsnips, carrots and garlic with it.  MMMmmmmmmm!  It was amazing, I must say.  Plus the obligatory mint sauce and red wine gravy.  My husband sure can cook - he's definitely hired.

Anyways, dinner was delish.  And so was dessert!  Feast your eyes on this:

It's hard to tell from the above photo, but that middle egg is bigger than my darling hubby's head.  No really, it is.  We might have some photos to follow...

An egg that big was a necessity, despite what you might be thinking.  I decided that since the hubster exerted so much self control and didn't have ONE sweet or dessert during Lent, he deserved the biggest Easter Egg I could find.  What's an Easter Egg, do I hear you say?  You've heard of chocolate bunnies but not of chocolate eggs (outside of cadbury cream eggs and Cadbury mini-eggs)?  Well, chocolate Easter eggs are an amazing invention where the geniuses at the chocolate companies make a hollow but delicious creation that is shaped like an egg but is, thankfully, much larger than a real egg.  Almost every chocolate bar and chocolate brand available brings out their own Easter egg - as you can see in the photo above, we had a Cadbury Creme Egg Easter Egg and a Cadbury Mini Egg Easter Egg, each of which come with a large hollow chocolate egg AND a packet or two of the actual chocolate bar itself.  And a mug, if you happen to buy the Mini-Egg box that is in that photo above.  We also had a Crunchie Easter Egg, 2nd Creme Egg Easter Egg, and a Butlers Chocolate Truffle Easter Egg, none of which survived Saturday and Sunday morning to be photographed....oops!

Anyways, they are delicious and if we every moved back Stateside I would sorely miss them.  Strangely, Easter just isn't Easter without them.  So, while we don't have peeps or chocolate bunnies or Easter egg hunts (which I will adopt when C is old enough) or whatever else...we have something that, in my humble opinion, beats the band!  I'd send y'all some but I don't seem them surviving Easter Monday.  Could you blame us?

Happy Easter!!