Easter Eggs

We hosted an Easter Egg hunt at our house yesterday. We invited eight kids over to hunt for eggs in the back yard. At the suggestion of one of the five-year-olds, the big kids (ages four and five) hid the eggs for the little kids (ages two and three). That was a great idea because it gave the big kids a fun job to do. The six little kids did a good job of finding the eggs and when they reached their quota they stopped or helped the others find eggs. With some prompting from Matthew, Linus shared a few of his eggs with Chase. Then we all marched back inside and watched the little kids open their eggs while a couple of the dads hid eggs for the big kids. I got a kick out of watching the younger ones shoving candy into their mouths and moving on to more of their eggs. In addition to candy we put bunny barrettes, rubber lizards, paratrooper bunnies, and stickers in the eggs.

After the big kids found all of their eggs all of the kids ran around the yard digging into their baskets, playing with the paratrooper bunnies, and generally having fun. We wrangled them all together to get a group picture and then everyone packed up to go. It all went smoothly and not a single kid ended up in tears.

Later I went for a haircut and when I returned Linus gave me a gigantic hug and said, "Thank you for coming home." Then, to keep the non-stop celebrating going, we colored eggs. Linus preferred to dip each egg into at least three colors. Those eggs turned a pretty brown color. I did one egg, Matthew did two, and Linus did the rest of the dozen. He really got into the process of putting an egg into a mug, waiting and monitoring the other eggs in their dye baths, and then moving the eggs into other colors.

(The one picture shows Linus and Chase interacting very sweetly together. The parents were taking pictures of the group and I zoomed in on the two of them.)