Our EGGcellent Adventure

Easter was quickly approaching and our calendar was getting full, so we dug into decorating eggs on the Thursday before Easter. I purchased 5 DOZEN eggs a couple of weeks early, in hopes that they would be old enough to peel easily. It mostly worked.

So we set ourselves up with the eggs and dye and got right to work. As the years have gone by, I've gotten less traumatized by cracked eggs and colorful spills. That was helpful for this year because we now had six kids involved...of varying skill levels.

When you dye eggs, you have to be very patient. Nathan demonstrates this trait here.

It is fun to draw on the egg with crayon first to end up with a neat design after dyeing. Sarah was a quick study on this point. But she wasn't real skilled. The eggs suffered in her hands...or when they repeatedly left her hands.

Before too long, we had a nice collection of colored eggs. They were pretty!

The dye kit came with stickers. The girls put some on the eggs.

Leah put some on her face. Of course.

Sarah was nearly a decorated egg herself by the time we were finished. It did bother me a little, but mostly because she'd just had a bath that morning. (We are not every day bathers.) That onesie may be forever spotted.

My HECK! Another picture of my dirty house?!?

While we had 60 eggs to color, we did run out of them quickly. I had to snag 6 for myself before they were all gone. I used my Silhouette to cut some vinyl designs and stuck them on the eggs before slipping them into the dye cups.

I really like how they turned out!

These will be fun to search for! We're going to be eating a lot of eggs!

Easter Eggs and the hunt

Easter finally arrived at our house. We waited a long time for it. Some of us were getting fairly antsy in anticipation!

The kids made decorations for the house to celebrate the coming of the holiday.

Maybe next year we can get some pictures of a resurrection scene. We'll work on that.

Regardless of the desired topic of Easter, we still color eggs. I bought eggs about a week or so...white ones...so the colors would be nice and bright...not camo (which is what coloring brown eggs looks like).

We finally have enough white crayons to supply each decorator with their own. Daniel made good use of his.

There aren't very many colored crayons, so those had to be shared. Rebekah got one here. I think that tongue has something to do with the creative process.

Leah is showing me her egg. Nathan's probably wondering if she really thinks I can see the white crayon on the white egg.

Joseph doesn't feel any less able to color eggs than the rest of the kids. It makes me a nervous wreck, but we both survived. Some of the eggs weren't so lucky.

Our end result was a very pretty display. It won't be very many more years before we'll have to color more eggs just to give everyone enough to decorate. They'd better pick up with their egg eating then!


This year I organized 3 treasure hunts with clues in plastic eggs. The girls had one, the boys had one and Chad had one...each with a new game at the end of the hunt. Each one varied in difficulty. The boys had to help Chad with his. ;)

The girls found one clue in the cookie jar. "Here is where you lookie, when you want a cookie."


The boys are looking for a clue in the library. I can't think what clue this would have been, so I'm guessing they're looking in the wrong place. :)


Chad's final clue led him to the cookbooks. "1 c. flour, 2t sugar, bake at 350." (or something like that)

Nathan wanted to show me what one of the games was. Wow...look at that mess on the floor behind him. Someone should really clean up around here!


We held the treasure and egg hunts on Saturday, before General Conference started. The kids had fairly simple baskets this year. They got a fish aquarium as a collective gift. (The aquarium and games came from Craigslist...love that CL!)


We made the kids go downstairs while we hid eggs and set out their baskets. Then we called them up and let them into the room according to age.


Except for Sarah. We let her see where we hid the eggs. She promised not to tell. :) Cute girl! She was the perfect size to wear this cute bunny outfit. I think it was a hand-me-down from her cousin. ?


Electric toothbrushes were the highlights in the baskets. Rebekah liked hers enough to request a picture with it.


Sarah's Easter basket held only one item. Everyone gets a stuffed bunny on their first Easter.


FINALLY! It was time for the actual egg hunt. Joseph started us off. He really liked finding the plastic eggs because they had candy in them. :) Smart kid!

That didn't stop him from finding (and cracking) the real eggs.

The last egg was in a tricky place and we had to give a few hints. Daniel found it.

Enough fun already! Sarah was tired of it all and wanted to move on to something else. See that cute puckered mouth? She's crying. She cries with her lips closed. It's very funny, cute and quiet. It doesn't last though. If you make her go long enough, she'll open up and give you a lung full.

Easter 2008

Easter seemed so early to me this year. I figure that has a little something to do with the fact that it came less than a week after St. Patrick's Day. It's really asking a lot to expect me to switch gears so quickly.

Fortunately, I am so organized and have all my Easter stuff in a bin. Unfortunately, it was in the garage, trapped beneath two of the very heavy Christmas bins. I was able to free it (3 days before Easter) with minimal grunts and groans and only one lost slipper. What joy the kids expressed when the lid came off and the colors came out! I was surprised to find my "misplaced" Valentine's Day decorations in there. I do seem to remember storing those two holidays together once upon a time. (I was even more surprised to find Chad's shoe shine stuff in the Easter box. Of all the unrelated places! I made him guess where they were and now he owes me a dinner.)

We tried something a little different (for us) this year. We had "fun" Easter on Saturday and "real" Easter on Sunday. I liked it better that way...less stress before and after church. Anyway, I've digressed. We decorated 2 1/2 dozen minus one eggs on Thursday night. (I ate one that erupted during boiling.) It was a good math problem for Daniel.

We really like to decorate eggs. I usually endure a high level of stress as eggs are dropped, plopped and slopped. I'm just waiting for a nasty lime green dye to get spilled and stain my floor and walls. Rebekah was especially good at making me gasp throughout the event. She pre-cracked them for us. Nathan had fun decorating, but reminded us that he wouldn't eat any. He's sworn off hard boiled eggs since last year's never ending supply of egg salad sandwiches. I like Leah's expression here and can't help but think that she's eyeing the competition
...which apparently was Daniel.


We went to a community Easter egg hunt at the high school on Saturday morning.
As it was 20 degrees, we looked more suited for cutting down a Christmas tree than gathering eggs, but what do you expect when Easter falls on March 23rd? They had the fields divided by ages and we were a little dismayed to find that we had 4 kids in four different categories. So Rebekah pretended she was 3 and Daniel pretended he was 6. Heck, I know there were true 6 year-olds bigger than him! I went with the girls and Chad with the boys. Joseph was in a cocoon in the stroller with me. All the eggs were labeled with local companies' names. They were waiting off to the side to give the kids even more sugary prizes if they presented the right eggs.

I thought we should have had hot chocolate once we got home...but that doesn't really seem fitting the holiday.

Later that day, we had our own Easter egg hunt. We hid our dyed eggs plus an additional 39 plastic ones.


Some eggs were harder to recover than others.









I bought some hoppy balls (you know...the kind you sit on and bounce all over the place?) for the kids that they had to find from clues in specially filled eggs. The smell of the rubber just about knocked me out. I still make a face when I go downstairs and step around them. I intend them to be outside toys, as soon as the weather cooperates.


The next day was Sunday and we were fortunate enough to be speaking in Sacrament Meeting. Chad's mom drove out to sit with Joseph and Rebekah while the rest of us sat on the stand. Leah, Nathan and Daniel gave a short talk, then we all stood up to sing "He Sent His Son" and Rebekah joined us for that. It would have been nice if she sang instead being so interested in the podium. Then I spoke, followed by a flute number and Chad finished up. The girls looked cute in their semi-matching dresses. The boys got new ties and Joseph got a new shirt. He then christened his new shirt (through his onesie) while grandma held him and endured to the end. I nearly put him in the women's bathroom sink after that, but used 20 baby wipes instead.

And that was our Easter 2008. Today I bought next year's Easter goods at 75% off. Long live Wal-Mart.




I'll try to post about April Fool's Day tomorrow. I've run out of time tonight. (It's no wonder since I blabbed on and on in this one!)

Sorry for the small pictures...I was economizing on space. Hopefully, Blogger will cooperate and allow you to click on them and make them bigger (huge, actually).