Ribbons Undone

We spent Easter vacation in Italy this year, but before we left we made sure to dye eggs and do an Easter egg hunt with our neighbors Ella and Louis.

You can’t buy these plastic, fillable Easter eggs here, so whenever I break them out they’re a huge hit with all the kids.

They were so excited for the egg hunt- I could barely get them to stand still long enough for this pic!

checking out their loot

Aren’t these egg clamp paint palettes cool? I bought them here at our local grocery store.

Quinnie made some Easter artwork decorations and cards…

These Kinder Sorpresa (surprise) Maxi chocolate eggs are gigantic (Quinnie’s eating one in the pic above). They have a cool toy surprise inside the plastic capsule.

Another Easter egg hunt with friends at the beach in Italy.

Quinnie made this picture for the Easter Bunny.

…and left these out for him also!

The Easter Bunny found us in Italy (the girls were a bit nervous)!!

When we left Köln, it still looked winter-ish and bleak.

When we got back home two weeks later, Spring had finally arrived!

It’s so nice to see so much green again!

One of the perks of living in Köln? Being eight years old and getting to sing with your school choir (Chor) in Basilika Sankt Gereon! Definitely click on that link to see a pic of the outside- I didn’t get a good one myself.

The Wikipedia page on Sankt Gereon states that “the first mention of a church at the site, dedicated to St. Gereon, appears in the year 612.” Amazing. It also mentions that St. Gereon is “one of twelve great churches in Cologne that were built in the Romanesque style.”

Quinnie and her Chor are occasionally asked to sing during church services there. Something else that makes Basilika Sankt Gereon special to us? Oma’s parents were married there! It’s so incredible (and unusual to me) to be living in a place that has so many family ties that go back generations (for Simon and the girls at least).

(Quinnie is in the red sweater)

Video of the Chor singing. You can click on the bottom right corner to view it full screen. Quinnie is in the middle of the middle row (she keeps picking at her eye because she had an eyelash stuck in there).