A Great Easter

The Easter Egg Hunt (2004)

We were visiting at Grandma's house and had planned to head home to "dive" Easter eggs. That's when Uncle Bob innocently asked four-year-old Julia if she had been on any Easter egg hunts. She didn't know what an Easter egg hunt was, so Uncle Bob explained it. What a fantastic idea! Right then she wanted to hunt for eggs. Problem: we had no eggs at Grandma's. They sat, uncooked, in our refrigerator at home.
This fact did not deter Julia in any way. She was on a mission to find eggs: any eggs, any where. RIGHT NOW!
Logically, I thought we could clear this up with a simple explanation. . . .

In order to have an EFFECTIVE Easter egg hunt, a person
(or a bunny) needs to hide eggs first.

We waited until we were ready to leave Grandma's house and were further delayed on the way home, stopping to pick up job applications for 18-year-old, big sister, Kerry. "Grown ups" can be so slow when there are important things to do!
Utterly exhausted, Julia napped in the car and after at least 20 minutes we finally arrived home.
Kerry and I strolled in the house, but Julia leaped out of the car to search for eggs. Surely she'd find a few if she looked all over the yard. She searched the front and then the back yards.
Wait a minute!!!! After a good 10 to 15 minutes of searching, she found NO eggs. She marched inside to complain.
"Look, Julia, see them in the refrigerator?" I said opening the door to peek at the cardboard boxes full of white eggs. "We just need to 'dive' them and then we can have a nice Easter egg hunt, OK?"

It sure took a long time. ALMOST FOREVER! We waited for the big, shiny pots of eggs to boil. We spread newspaper across the table. We filled up our coffee mugs with smelly stuff, dye and water. We watched as the dye colored the eggs: blue, red, green, and yellow, orange, purple. Yah, I guess they're pretty, but when can we HUNT for them?
Luckily, after forever, Grandma came to the rescue. She hid a couple dozen brightly colored eggs on the back deck.
Julia was delighted! Wow, this was fun! And while she was finally hunting for eggs, Kerry stole some "already found" eggs and hid them in the front yard. Grandma and Kerry had a great system going, stealing and "rehiding" eggs over and over and over again. Julia never tired of it.
We're not even sure if she caught on to the fact that she was finding the same eggs over and over again. But it didn't matter. All that mattered was this Easter egg hunt was wonderful! Finding each egg produced excitement; from the first one found to the 150th . (You might think that was an exaggeration. It's not!) What a magical Easter memory!
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