Every year our children get the fun of having two Easter egg hunts. One put on and done with friends from church, and one with just our family. Even if the one with friends falls out for some reason, they still have ours to look forward to. Two years ago when we were in America over Easter, I bought 3 bags of plastic eggs. You know, the kind you pull apart, fill with something, and then snap back together. These are, apparently, a uniquely North American thing, and try as I might I couldn't find any here, at any price. They do have some very cute metal ones, and we have slowly collected those through the years, but nothing says Easter like brightly colored plastic eggs. 🙂
Friday night, after the kids had a bath, I let them color their eggs. I had bought a couple different coloring kits this year, because the eggs on the cover looked sooo pretty. But there were a few difficulties in actually achieving this look. First, the eggs themselves still had to be warm, almost hot, for the dye to work, making them too hot for the kids' sensitive hands to hold. Second, everyone needed plastic gloves to protect their hands from the permanent dye. Two kits, two pairs of gloves, four kids wanting to color eggs. Not good. Third, the dye itself also had to be warm before it would work. I thought I had warmed it, but when we went to squeeze it out of the tube, out came this thick gelatin-like substance, which didn't want to smear around the egg at all, and left no trace of color. Next year, it's the old stand by of colored disks dropped in the cold water/vinegar mixture for us.
Anyway, we did get a couple eggs colored using this new-fangled method, but the kids all had to wait for me to help them. Made the whole process take much longer than usual. Eventually, I just broke out the normal watercolor paints and let them color their eggs that way. They actually came out very pretty, and we will also use this method again next year. By the time the kids don't want to color eggs anymore, I will be a pro! haha
After breakfast the next day, I filled all the plastic eggs with the candy I had bought earlier in the week. The Easter Bunny usually brings chocolate, so I made sure to fill them with other things. Chris suggested that next year, I just fill them with small toys and money, which will end up costing us less than the dentist bills. I may do that, actually, but it was too late for this year. The candy was already bought, and I had no more time to do anything different.
Saturday after lunch, it was finally time to go hide and search for eggs. We drove up to our usual playground near the school to hide them, but there was a few kids already playing there, and we didnt' want to chase them away, nor have to share our eggs, so we went over to the school instead. There was no one at the kindergarten playground, so we decided to hide them there. The kids went to play at the big playground while we hid them. Now, usually, Chris is the hider of the eggs, while I keep the kids entertained and prevent any peeking. He really gets into it and loves to hide some of the eggs in difficult to find spots. There were so many eggs this year, that I stayed to help and was treated to a constant stream of "This is not a good place. There aren't any really hard hiding places. Next year we need to go back to the regular playground." It was kind of cute. He just was very worried the kids wouldn't have as much fun searching because they were almost all out in the open.
Turns out, he needn't have worried. We ended up having to count the eggs that were found several times to determine just which eggs were still "out there". Eventually, after much searching, we found it. Noah had painted an egg with brown paint, and I thought it would be a good idea to hide it in the bushes near some brown leaves. haha. As usual, by the time we drove back home, Alexandra had already eaten over half her stash, with the others not far behind.
That evening, I had them clean out the empty plastic eggs from their baskets, so that the Easter Bunny would have room to put in his goodies. I was shocked at how many empty eggs there were. Good thing there were only a couple small pieces of candy in each one. I really do think puzzle pieces, and other small toys, plus money will be the way I go next year. The Easter Bunny can still bring his treats, but I don't need to give them more on top of that. Anyone else have good ideas for non-sweet things to put in the plastic eggs?