16 kids (9 and under), 2 babies, 240 plastic eggs, 16 pounds of "fruit flavored" jelly beans, 4 pounds of robins eggs, 1 pound of chocolate, and one gorgeous April Saturday...what do you have? The Annual Hippie Easter Egg Hunt. It was a chaotic blast! Lots of great food, candy, coffee, conversation and laughter, plus one broken window, one awkward moment as my mil tickled the neck of my brother mistaking him for a son=), and lots of muddy footprints in the bathroom.=) It all added up to a great time!
 |
| 16 pounds of color |
Our Easter Egg Hunt started out 8 years ago with the four oldest nieces and nephews. It has literally grown every year as the amount of descendants has multiplied. We shoot for Easter Saturday, though sometimes we have done it earlier or later. We have had snow, and rain, and freezing weather. This year was perfect. Not too warm to melt the chocolate, and not too cold to be outside. It was sunshiny, and breezy. A perfect early April day.
 |
| My egg filling posse' |
I don't dye eggs, and we don't do Easter baskets. I have tried the dyed egg thing before, but what do you do with all those hard boiled eggs anyway? And the color never turns out as vibrant as on the box. And though I think the beautifully designed eggs are wonderful-I don't have the skill, time or patience to turn out my own. So, we do plastic.=) I did consider buying baskets for collecting the eggs in this year, but here's the thing...do you send them home with the kids, and just get new ones each year? That gets costly. Or, do I keep them year to year? But then I need someplace to store 25 baskets. We stuck with brown paper bags.=)
The food was delicious, as always.=) I made a ham(the biggest I could find), potato salad, baked beans, and marshmallow jello, and the sils filled in the gaps. This is the Easter food I grew up on, and I've managed to convert Mr. Hippie's extended family to some of our traditional dishes. Like the homemade potato salad, and jello.
 |
| the leftovers |
 |
| eggs... |
 |
| and more eggs |
 |
| Decked out in their finest for Easter Sunday. |
 |
| the girls in all their tulip glory.=) |
Sunday was a much calmer day. We went to church, and got to sing many of my favorite resurrection hymns. We came home and ate leftover ham sandwiches, and then lounged the afternoon away. (we were supposed to run, but we were both rather not motivated) We made a very simple meal of lamb, couscous and asparagus for dinner. Talk about easy..."hands on" time was about 10 minutes. This meal has become our traditional Easter dinner here in the Hippie household. We do it with just us. It is always delicious, and not much fuss after the big dinner the day before.
And now I will get asked multiple times every day by my offspring if they can eat an egg. I will sometimes say
yes, but more often say
no, until I am fed up and dump the remainder in the garbage.
Jelly Beans, anyone?
