It was a good Easter, with a bunch of family in town. The best part of it for Isabella (besides the chocolate) was seeing her two girl cousins. One cousin is Madeline’s age, and one is a year or so older than Isabella. Of course they paired off by age. In the past, the younger cousin wanted to hang out with the older girls, but this time around, she stuck with Isabella.

There was a conflict between the older girls and the younger girls concerning turn-taking on the trampoline. Madeline insisted that the older girls didn’t need a stopwatch to time the turns; they were perfectly capable of measuring the time that each side spent on the trampoline. Uh huh.

It was cool to see Isabella with a teammate, a partner. Her cousin has two good qualities that helped out. One, she’s headstrong (so that she can fend off the older sibling and cousin) and two, she’s patient. Patient is good.

Unlike last year, Isabella didn’t yell during the egg hunt. Instead, she stopped to look into each egg as soon as she got it. Madeline’s basket was overflowing by the time Isabella opened her second egg. I finally had to tell Madeline to put the brakes on it, at which point she said she was going to get one more, at which point I threatened to single-handedly eat every piece of chocolate that she got that day.

Despite the fact that we’d agreed to no longer get the confetti eggs, Carrie apparently overruled me due to my inattention and laziness. Once again, the girls took unusually fervent delight at aggressively smashing the eggs on my head. Luckily, like last year, thanks to hair gel, very little confetti made it to the grass. Good times.

Isabella said that her cousins are her best friends. Forget the Easter bunny; forget the eggs; forget the candy. Seeing her cousins was definitely the highlight of her weekend.