This year, as happens more often then not, Easter Weekend crept up on us. As we are trying to simplify, tone down our spending, and keep the kids teeth in their mouths we decided to change up the Easter Egg hunting tradition. For posterity sake I will briefly ( I know, I know, briefly is something I am not very good, laugh chuckle ha-ha) explain the old tradition.

It years past we would put dots in the eggs and then hide them. The dots represented different stations where you could choose different varieties of candy. This served two purposes, first and most importantly we did not have to stuff each egg. Secondly it allowed for some healthier choices to be used in stead of the little candies, that are never healthy, which fit in the eggs. Some of the items you could get for a three dot egg for example were full size candy bars or granola bars as we got smarter. The one dot eggs would fetch a few Tootsie Rolls

Any way this year we deiced to use instead a concept which would not only limit the amount of junk they get but also teach them something. So we (Mom) came up with a cute poem and we printed and enlarged a poem and picture depicting the tomb where Christ laid for three days before he was resurrected. Next we designed a jig saw puzzle and cut out the poem and picture into 62 different pieces. We stuffed the eggs with the puzzle pieces and went to a park, Grandma and Grandpas house is unusable this year as the grass has been planted and is not in yet, and hid the eggs. Then each of the kids ran around like little mad people looking high and low for the eggs.

One draw back to this method is the fact that only two people hid the eggs. Not such a big deal normally but when each egg contains a piece to a puzzle it is a little bit more important to find ALL the eggs. So Mom and I divided the eggs up and did our best to remember where we hid each one.

In the end we ended up only missing one egg, not bad for two old farts and eight seemingly sugar starved kids.

So once we had the eggs we returned home to Grandma and Grandpas and began putting the puzzle back together. Everyone of the kids helped and most stayed until it was completely put together. It was alot of fun, and I am sure I would have enjoyed it if I had thrown and tantrum and left. Once it was together Big Little Dog read the poem and all the kids did as it said. They were each rewarded with a coupon that gave them a choice of a trip to Krispy Kreme Donuts or Dairy Queen for a treat of their choice.

Thus the goal of less candy was accomplished and there would be no hoarding it keeping candy around until Halloween.

Before bed we gathered our kids together and did the annual egg coloring thing. I do not have much to say about that as I was outside replacing an alternator on my car, click here for more on that. Mom however did mention that next year we have to get the glitter egg colors as they both wanted something a little more spunky. Even though we did not have spunk this year they really enjoyed themselves and wanted Mom to boil more eggs, luckily it was bed time and a simple explanation of the time required to boil eggs made it easy to encourage them that it was bath time, and off they went.

Bed time was easy and they all fell asleep rather nicely and as planned there was NO candy all day and no hyper kids. Seemingly a great healthy Easter party.

So why then did Roo wake up at 1:09 puking her cute little stomach content all over her bed, the hallway, and our bathroom . . . we may never know!