Life, Love, and Marathons: Celebrating Easter & St. Patrick's Day

We managed to celebrate two holidays on Saturday--first up was visiting the Easter Bunny at the annual Anthony Thomas Candy Company open house and then afterwards we went to the Dublin St. Patrick's Day parade.

Anthony Thomas is a locally owned candy company and their factory happens to be right next to where I work; in fact, some days when I leave work our parking lot smells like chocolate. We even parked in my "normal" work parking spot that day too since it was pretty crowded. Every year when I see the big pink inflatable bunny go up on their roof (see the picture below), I know it's getting close to their annual open house. We had never been before but thought what better way to have Lucy visit the Easter Bunny this year than at a chocolate factory! Like I said, it was crowded, but well managed and they had 3 Easter bunnies ready for the kids so we didn't really have to wait in line (plus, you took your own picture so we didn't have to pay for one). Afterwards, you took a few flights of stairs up to the self-guided tour where you could look down below to see them making different types of chocolate and candy treats. We were able to see them making chocolate Easter bunnies, Buckeyes, caramel corn, chocolate dipped strawberries, and they were packaging up Easter baskets. Once the tour ended, you went back down a different flight of steps which led you right into their candy shop. We let Lucy pick out a couple things (how she managed to pick out the 2 smallest items is beyond my comprehension but I was glad that her grand total rang up to 85 cents) and then Todd & I picked out a bunch of other goodies (unfortunately, our total was a little bit more than Lucy's). They also had another Easter bunny in the candy shop so Lucy was excited to have another turn sitting with him.

Standing in front of Anthony Thomas

Posing with the Easter bunny

Todd & Lucy watching them make chocolate

This is where they were pouring chocolate into the bunny molds

She couldn't tear her eyes away from them making caramel corn

They hand dip each chocolate covered strawberry

Best picture we could get with Lucy actually looking

Sitting with another Easter bunny

The event started at the back of the building near the parking lot they wanted you to park in and the shop is in the front of the store so they had a trolley shuttling guests back and forth; it wasn't a far walk by any means but the second Lucy saw a trolley, we knew we had to ride it back to our car

Right after we left Anthony Thomas, we made our way over to Todd's cousin's house, who was having a St. Patrick day brunch followed by watching the big St. Patrick's Day parade. They only lived about a quarter of a mile from the parade route so a bunch of us all walked over from their house. Lucy is at the perfect age for parades because literally everything excites her. She was loving all the marching bands and waved to everyone that went by. Oh, and I can't forget how happy she was to see a school bus in the parade too! It was like one of the best hours of her life and I'm sure the free candy she was getting too didn't hurt.

The start of the parade (we were actually sitting near the very end of the parade route so this was about 20 minutes after the official start of the parade)

Family selfie (we didn't bring a bag for Lucy to collect candy in {lesson learned} but I had a ziploc bag in my purse that I carry around with extra clothes for her in case she has an accident so her "pee bag" as Lucy likes to call it became her candy bag....and it was obviously clean)