The Potter Egg Hunt 2020

Easter Egg hunts have always been a big deal in the Potter Family.  When I was a kid we had Easter Egg hunts, but they were small & nothing super memorable.  However, Trek's family is ALL ABOUT EASTER EGG HUNTS.  Their egg hunts are epic.  Trek's mom still to this day puts together the best egg hunts you've ever seen for the kids . . . & an even better one for the ADULTS.  We are talking about a THOUSAND + eggs filled with candy, toys, & actual money.

We are missing Oma this year.  Sometimes it's SO hard being this far away from family.  But we decided to do the best we could to make a Potter Egg Hunt memorable while still in quarantine.  I am the Spouse Group leader for Trek's squadron here.  I plan family & spouse activities & parties with some awesome friends for our entire squadron all year long.  We were supposed to do a huge egg hunt this year, but quarantine ended that.  I had bought hundreds of eggs filled with toys & treats for the squadron egg hunt & didn't know what to do with them all, so as a family we decided to hide a dozen eggs for each kid in our neighborhood.  We know most of our neighbors so we counted out how many kids lived at each house, & then hid eggs all around their front yards.  We were sure to wear gloves & the eggs were pre-filled (pre-corona virus) so I had never actually touched what was inside them.  Then we called each of them to let them know how many eggs were hiding in their yards.  The highlight of my day was listening to neighborhood doors swing open & hearing the excitement & laughter in the neighborhood as kids searched for the eggs we hid.

And then of course Trek & I hid a TON of eggs in our front & backyards for our kids to find.  These Potter egg hunts are competitve & usually involve stealing, sabotaging, & in some rare cases, tackling in order to get the most eggs.  It's all done in fun & laughter. . . it's what makes it funny.  Everybody always ends happy & full of eggs, candy, toys, & money.

On your marks. . . get set . . . 

GO!!!

After the hunt is over, we all sit together to see what everyone gets.  (aka to count the money to see who got the most.).  When Oma is in charge, there is always SO MUCH MONEY.  I swear she gets $200-$300 in just one dollar bills & puts them in eggs, & then there's always a $20 or a $10, & a few $5 bills as well.  With the banks closed right now, I basically scrounged what I had in my purse which was I think 7 $1 bills, a $20, two or three $5, & some Euro.  It wasn't nearly as exciting as Oma's hunt, but the kids seemed to enjoy it.

Taya found the $20 bill.

Canyon was the big winner of the day though.  He got the 20 Euro bill & the 10 Euro bill making him the money winner.

Cadence had a grand total of 2 $1 bills & a Euro coin.  We all laughed because Canyon got the $$$$ & he's the youngest & Cadence got the least & she's the oldest.  But at the same time, she got most of the chocolate so she wasn't complaining.

It was a lot of fun.  Easter is such a fun time of year.  We hope all our friends out there had a wonderful Easter holiday & fun filled egg hunts as well.

April Adventures

April just flew by crazy fast!!  Although we are in quarantine & pretty much never leave the house except for a walk or a bike ride here & there, we do enjoy the sunshine & being together.  We've done a lot of "virtual school" projects, themed days, game nights, & other fun family things this month.

Sunday afternoon walks through the farmland is our FAVORITE thing to do these days.

Where we live allowed us to watch the 60+ satellites that just got launched into space to appear all at once in the night sky.  Night doesn't happen until REALLY late here so we had to stay up pretty late to see it, but we were glad it did.  We were able to see them all just after 10pm as the sun was finally setting.  It was amazing.  It was almost like watching a train of lights in the sky.

We've also started loving our family bike rides through the German countryside.  It's a great way to get exercise as a family & it's just fun too.  All the kids love it.

Trek was awarded Field Grade Officer of the year for his Squadron, Group, & Wing level for 2019.  This is one of the 3 awards he received.  Soon, he will be up for the next level once all this craziness ends.  I did end up marrying the best of the best.  He works hard to get the job done & I'm proud of all he's accomplished in his 19 years in the service so far.

Another favorite pastime right now is playing football, soccer, & ultimate frisbee in the soccer field by our house.  (Yes, we live in an AMAZING location that has all sorts of neat things).  We're loving all this extra family time.

Video #1

Video #2

Video #3

With Trek being in the Stake Presidency in our church congregation out here, he had the chance to make an uplifting video for our church members to watch.  He did it in our happy place (the beautiful yellow rapeseed flowers in the farms).  It was such a beautiful backdrop for a video message focusing on finding joy in the small things.

The kids have had a lot of fun art projects, math projects, science projects, & even some hilarious host nation (German) projects.  As much as I despise (being honest here) virtual school, there have been some fun activities the kids have loved.

Craiger's Art Project

Canyon's House Art

Craiger's Happy House Art

Canyon's Stars & Sun Project

Canyon's Warm & Cool Colors Art Project

Bladen's Optical Illusion Art Project

I've been baking bread several days a week.  There's no bread in the stores here & luckily I have food storage of flour, sugar, yeast, salt, & milk so I can make bread.  I make extra large loaves so I only have to bake it every other day.

Canyon is my toothless wonder this month.  He lost 3 teeth in April.  Now he has the cutest little lisp you've ever heard.  What a cutie pie.

 I've been doing Young Women "Virtual Mutual" activities every week since we started quarantine.  (girls in my church ages 11-13).  Once a week we meet over zoom & do a fun 30-40 minute activity together.  Taya's favorite was the Lego Master Challenge.  They had 30 minutes to build a house for their favorite story book character.  They all had fun with that.  It's been nice to find ways to keep my kids connected with their friends.  It isn't always easy, but we make do.

Bladen has been baking like crazy this month which cracks me up.  He all of a sudden loves to bake cakes & cupcakes.  He's learning how to frost too & he loves it.

 It's been a crazy, but fun month for all of us.  We hope all our friends out there are healthy & staying safe during this difficult time.  Keep smiling!  Keep having adventures & find JOY in the journey.

"One Day More" in Quarantine

We were so sick of doing NOTHING on the weekdays & weekends that we spent 2 whole days putting together a video describing what Quarantine life is like for our family right now.  The girls helped me rewrite the words to one of our favorite Broadway songs from Les Miserables.  Once we started we couldn't stop.  It was getting funnier & funnier as we wrote.  Then we enlisted Trek & the kids to help us sing it & act it out.  Trek has amazing editing skills & put it all together for us.  It turned out pretty funny.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it.

Quarantine Egg Hunt Fun

For Easter, our church congregation came up with an awesome way to still have a group Easter Egg hunt, but while still adhereing to the "social distancing" rules in place here in Germany.  Each family hid 1-5 eggs somewhere near their homes in the many forests & trails that surround each of our villages.  We then geo-cached the locations of our eggs & put all the locations into a master egg hunt spreadsheet.  We spent the entire week before Easter searching for each others' eggs.  I loved it so much, that I set up a Squadron level egg hunt for Trek's squadron as well.  Everyone loved it.

Being the "Potter Family," it was only natural that we decorated our eggs as Harry Potter characters.  We painted 6 eggs & hid them in the beautiful forests & farmlands behind our house.  I love where we live.  The beauty never ceases to amaze me.  It's gorgeous here right now.

We gave each of our eggs a good home for a week so others could find them.  Harry was in the furthest forest behind our house.  He was guarding our favorite tree.

Ron took over the bee farm just behind our house.  He watched over the hives.

Voldemort was in our favorite play area of the forest.  There is a fort in the woods that my kids love to play in.  He guarded our fort & scared away any intruders.

Hermione enjoyed the sunshine next to the rapeseed flower farm.

Dumbledore hid in a stump near the chicken coop.

And Snape, Snape, Severus Snape guarded our back yard by hanging out on our fence.  This was my way of making people walk past my house in hopes of having SOME sort of adult conversation (with 6 feet social distance) during all this.  I am SO lonely & missing other adults right now.  It worked brilliantly.  I could keep watch out my back windows & when someone from the squadron or from church stopped by to take a picture of Snape, I'd rush outside to say a quick hello from afar.

In turn, I took the kids out all week long in search of our friends' eggs.  It was SO MUCH FUN.  We went to yards, forests, ponds, treehuts, & everywhere you could imagine.  The kids had a blast.

Sometimes we never found the eggs, but we sure had a blast looking.  These forests here are SO fun.  Even though we had to remove a bazillion ticks everytime we wandered them, we loved every minute of the woods.

Trek took the kids one of the days while I stayed home & got some work done.  The kids loved having some time with DAD searching for more eggs.

Jumping Rivers

I'm SO glad we found a way to have fun while still in quarantine.  We all needed some fresh air, & what a FUN FUN FUN time looking for Easter eggs this way.  This may be a new tradition for us.  We loved it.