Aside from having to celebrate Easter on a Saturday due to the custody schedule, that wasn’t the only difference to this year’s Easter plans. Traditionally, we have been hosting family and friends for food and an Easter egg hunt. Although last year I think we decided on a peeps bunny piñata instead of eggs, this year I wanted to stick with the usual egg hunt. Although I would have loved to have all of our friends over, seeing as how most of them are like family, it just wasn’t going to be in the plans this year. Never one to be stopped, we had an Easter egg scavenger hunt for the boys and their cousin. It was a total hit, thankfully, because this was a first and so there’s always room for a mess up – which there was – but we saved it!
It doesn’t matter how much you love to host, plan, or obsess over every holiday – I know you feel me when I say stuffing eggs sucks! My dilemmas are always the same.
1 – I don’t want to just give them candy candy candy
2 – Everything has to be evenly spread out but girls like girly things and boys like boyish things. My niece is quite easily the girliest of all girls. I’m talking glitter, unicorns, the works! She’s not going to be super thrilled about basketball erasers or tiny toy cars – I could be wrong.
3 – There’s always going to be like 5 things you buy that won’t fit into your eggs……dammit!
4 – Money….yea okay. Pennies, nickels, quarters don’t sound like a lot until you’re splitting them between 30-40 eggs …… I’m going broke here ya’ll!
So this year I wanted to try something a little more exciting and a lot more different … scavenger hunt! Vince and Ley are old enough to read so I figured tiny one sentence clues would be perfect. Dex can’t read yet but I figured a picture of a car, fridge, or piano would be easy enough. I scoured Pinterest for hours looking for relevant clues to things I actually have in my home. I did have to come up with a few of my own given that not everyone has a piano at home or fire pit. I did 15 eggs a piece, 3 different colors, and thankfully I have a printer because I was not trying to write all these out. I was even a little extra and put some Easter clip art next to each clue.
Honestly I wasn’t sure how this was going to go. I’m blessed with this constant need to think everything out ahead of time – so I was running scenarios through my head the night before. What if Dex gets left behind because the other two bigger kids are figuring things out faster. What if they’re all clumping at the same clues and it gets crazy confusing. What if one of them decides they want to be in a bad mood today (because kids) and they don’t want to participate. Don’t judge me ya’ll – this is what makes me successful! 😉
So frights aside the hunt actually turned out to be way better than I could have planned. There was one almost major hiccup, I somehow managed to put one of the last clues in the wrong egg and had to divert 3 very ambitious determined children to another clue so as not to ruin it all within 5 minutes. The littlest one actually took this hunt by storm and was the first one to the prize. Which was the biggest chocolate bunny I could find at Target – one for each of them of course. It cost me a little over $5 a piece and way better than a million pieces of candy or 50 erasers. Next year I am planning on sticking with the scavenger hunt theme. Watching them run as fast as they could through the yard and the house looking for their next egg was super adorable – reading their next clues all out of breath and shouting “THE BATHROOM – WE HAVE TO GET TO THE BATHROOM” = priceless!
Along with all of this, of course, there was plenty of food. Ham, potatoes, rolls, class deviled eggs, and even some mac n cheese. I was feeling a little less effort food wise this year but it turned out perfectly. We had carrot cake, chocolate cream pie, peeps cupcakes and tons of chocolate Easter candies to much on for dessert (all store bought, again – lazy Jen). I think we did alright considering the current situation. I’m just thankful we were all healthy and able to enjoy each other’s company – what more could you ask for.
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