Easter

On Sunday, April 20th, I had my family over for Easter. We normally go to Oma and Opa's house or in the past few years we have bounced around to Aunt Susannah's and the Mercier's, but now that Hudson is older and we have another one on the way, we decided it was time to start our own Easter tradition. I was a little nervous about hosting especially because I was attempting to make Oma's traditional Easter meal of rouladen, dumplings, sauerkraut, peas and gravy (most of which I hadn't made before). I prepped as much of the food the day before as I possibly could. I assembled all the rouladen, mixed up the dumplings and stayed up way into the night making the cake pops I had promised Hudson. On Easter morning, I cooked the rouladen, dumplings, and sauerkraut and made chocolate covered strawberries. The hardest part was the gravy because it had to be made using the drippings from the roladen. I had written down Oma's recipes when I was little, but I discovered as I was making everything that the recipes required a lot of guessing still (probably because Oma doesn't actually follow recipes so I was trying to stop her and measure things along the way-plus I was young and didn't have any handy technology like an iphone to snap pictures of each step). Everything still turned out great. I was so nervous about under cooking the roladen that I over-cooked them a little, but other than that, everything turned out really good. A lot of my family members even said it tasted a lot like Oma's. We also served the ice cream punch Opa always makes and my mom made deviled eggs and salmon pate. Everything was absolutely delicious and we all ate until we were stuffed!!

Here is the table with drinks, appetizers, and desserts. I love the way the banner turned out and the tulips I picked up from the grocery store looked so beautiful!

While I was finishing up the food, my mom and dad gave Hudson a few gifts. They got him a bucket and shovel, bubbles, light up pool rings, some cute clothes and a winter hat. 

After we ate, we did the Easter Egg hunt. It was really fun watching Hudson excitedly point and run around collecting eggs. Then Tyler did bubbles with Hud (one of the gift's he got from Nonna and Opa). 

After the egg hunt everyone enjoyed some desserts and we watched Hudson open his Easter basket. He got lots of fun goodies like sidewalk chalk, a bunny cup, bunny ears, a new duck for the bathtub, a slinky and a few Easter books. He was very excited about the gifts and played with each one as he pulled it out. 

Here is a picture of the cake pops I made. My good friend Lauren Ballard gave me the book Cakepops by Bakerella a while ago and I have yet to use it. It is literally one of Hudson's favorite books to read so I decided I needed to make some Easter themed pops this year (I did Easter Egg cake pops a few years ago before I got the book using her website: www.bakerella.com). I knew Hudson wouldn't be able to eat them, but he still loved them. The bunnies were strawberry and the chicks were lemon. They turned out really cute and were so delicious! 

I was exhausted by the end of the day, but it was such a wonderful and fun Easter and I look forward to hosting many more!