Easter Egg Hunts are for Winners

According to Grant, Easter is one of the greatest holidays ever. I believe second only to Halloween--it's the costumes that really put that one to the top. After several moments of contemplation and talking to Amanda, I'm going to have to agree with him. Easter is eggs-cellent!

Apart from the obvious and most important reason we celebrate Easter, let's further discuss the secular blessings we get on this beloved day. The day is devoted to eating ham and candy, how can you not love it? I am pretty sure I've loved the holiday ever since I can remember. Easter morning we woke up early and hunted for our Easter baskets that the Easter bunny had hidden for us. Who doesn't love the adventure of finding prizes? Next, we put on our new Easter dresses and headed off to church. Who doesn't love a new fancy dress? Then we headed off to Grandma and Grandpa Lloyd's for the traditional Easter party. Grandma had been up all night the previous night stuffing chocolate covered marshmellows, pennies and nickels and candy that I have no idea where she bought into colored eggs that were used every year and taped together to prevent them from exploding and to hold them together. Grandpa would then hide them throughout the house. The younger kids' were all upstairs and the older kids' were downstairs. I remember the first year that my eggs were downstairs. I really felt like I had arrived. Every year one of the downstairs eggs would never be found (the older kids got harder hiding places). Every year we looked forward to this Easter egg hunt.

I just celebrated my first Easter in California (although I lived here last year, I was visiting Kellie, Brigham, Abbie and Grant over Easter last year). So, in the grand tradition of Easter, a hunt was inevitable. Gnu and I were in charge of the hunt portion of the Easter picnic festivites, and, I have to say, it was super classy! Probably the classiest. So classy that I am going to need to document this play-by-play style in order to replicate it in the future.

The egg hunt started on Saturday. It began with a pile of empty eggs and toys and candy. (Best toy award goes to the bouncy ball although the ninja came in a super super close second. The yo-yo's come in a dead last--so lame.)



Note that those are fun size candy bars. I said this was classy. Gnu was so happy he swam in the toys and candy.



The egg stuffing began. We worked like crazy trying to stuff as many toys and candies as possible into each tiny little egg. Eggs these days are not as great as they were when I was a child. The eggs that we had didn't click and lock closed. Instead they had this wavy thing that did not hold the egg together, seriously bad form egg making companies, bad form.



We stuffed eggs until we were tired and needed a break. Here we are on our Kit Kat break. Yum Kit Kats.



Look how pretty the Kit Kat is.



The stuffing of the eggs and the Kit Kat break wore me out. I had to make Gnu finish the eggs by himself.



After he was all done, we discovered that we got an extra egg bottom. Total bonus! Gnu enjoyed playing with it and admiring all of his leftover classy candy.





Gnu decided that it would be best to put the leftover candy in a bowl and place it on the bookshelf for all of our visitors. He carefully filled up the bowl and then walked it over to the bookshelf. I'm happy to report that no candy fell out of the bowl. Well done Gnu! Well done!




We then dyed Easter eggs. The best part was writing messages on the egg for Courtney to read when she put the dye on. She loved it. Day before preparations were done, and we just had to wait for the picnic to start.

Easter arrived and it was a beautiful sunny day. Hurray. Our prayers were answered there would be no rain ruining our Easter picnic. Friends came and picniced. I love friends, they really have a way of making awesome parties even better. Maybe they make them awesome in the first place? Who knows, but I totally love them.



Marcus helped Gnu and I hide the eggs. We were at a park so we found a grouping of trees and tall grass and went to work. Ordinarily the Easter bunny would hide the eggs, but we were helping him out.



We had to make the hunt fair so we were sure to get organized and provide everyone with equal opportunity to hunt. This is Courtney telling them all the rules.



Sean kept trying to cheat and get a head start. I am pretty sure that he did cheat because he got more eggs than anyone, by like a lot.



The race to the eggs was on. Some were much more enthusiastic than others. Check out Carl!







And the hunt began. Several strategies were used in egg hunting. Kevin examined each egg carefully before deciding which ones to put in his bag. Sean grabbed them as quickly as possible. There were a lot of eggs and a lot of hunting. I wouldn't be surprised if we even left a few eggs hidden in the park for future children, birds, squirrels and homeless people to find. We are so nice and sharing.














That last picture was Clark yo-yo-ing like a pro. Gnu had troubles when he tried. At first I thought that the problem lie in the 12 cent yo-yo, but based off of Clark's skill I've had to reconsider.



So, Easter was awesome thanks to friends, candy, potluck dinners and, most of all, Easter egg hunts! I hope to make these types of classy hunts a tradition that'll last forever. Thanks friends for making Easter awesome!