I like to think of holidays (including birthdays) as sort of fluid. There’s no need to be bound by the actual date, is there? In our house, we open Christmas presents for a good week. It isn’t that we have so many gifts (although with five children there is certainly a respectable pile under the tree) but that we like to S…T…R…E…T…C…H out our Christmas celebrations. Once the last present is open, it means Christmas is over.
Although my primary Love Language is probably quality time, I have a strong love of gifts. It seems rather shallow in comparison to some of the other gifts. Although maybe you aren’t supposed rank the 5 love languages – I guess that kind of defeats the purpose of understanding people feel loved in different ways and in order to make them FEEL loved, you need to speak the language that communicates best to them.
Still, I feel a bit childish to admit that a present makes me happy. What am I, five? None the less, it’s true and I’ve come to accept it about myself. Thankfully I have a husband who LOVES to give presents almost as much as I enjoy receiving them. Aren’t we a wonderful team! One year my birthday lasted for several weeks with Tim bringing out a steady stream of presents. It was heavenly!!
I digress (it was all that talk of presents, got me a bit giddy). I was hoping a discussion on elaborate, stretched out celebrations would distract everyone from the fact that today’s pictures revolve around dying Easter eggs.
And Easter was several days ago. Sigh. I blame this terrible breech in egg dying protocol on my mother in law. I also blame my mother. My mother in law went and caught the flu this Easter. Now how are we supposed to dye Easter eggs and eat jelly beans and chocolate all day if Grandma is sick? Especially if I am on record as being generally opposed to candy and rely on the grandparents to provide my children with confections of all sorts. Some people have no respect for proper traditions.
Daniel, Joshua and Andrew wait patiently for Grandma to fire the starter pistol on the great Egg Dying Competition of 2000.
Rachel’s hogging the blue in 2000.
And my mother? She loves dying Easter eggs. She will work hard to gather some children (even if they are grown up, not a single one of them under the age of 10, or even 25) for an afternoon of Easter egg dying. She does, however, live in Michigan. Yes, Michigan. That is MUCH too far to go for an afternoon of egg dying. Some years our family has managed to combine our Michigan visit with Easter (truly a worthy feat).
Here my brother, Phil, and Daniel work hard at their eggs in 2004.
It’s 2004 and Sarah lets Aunt Jenn help her a little bit but eventually she wants to get her hands on that spoon and do some dipping herself.
Of course, this produces ONE yellow egg and some very messy fingers requiring serious cleaning up.
With all these mothers not cooperating a bit, it’s amazing we managed to dye Easter eggs at all. Thankfully we had an episode of Bonanza to console and buoy our spirits. Afterward, it was time for some serious egg work.
How can we possibly eat any of the children’s precious works of art? “No, don’t eat the [insert color here] one!” With five children (and parents who want to play with the pretty colors as well), how many eggs do you need to hard boil? How many egg salad sandwiches can one family eat? How long do hard boiled eggs last? These are significant questions. I remember talking to my mother last week.
“Are you ready for your company, Mom?
“Oh, yes. We’ll have an easy lunch, that’s all settled. I’m worried about something else, though.”
“Oh dear, what’s wrong?”
“How many eggs do I boil? How many will each person want to dye? 3? 4? More than that? I’m a bit concerned.”
Pause.
“Um, Mom, is Dan coming over with the kids?”
“No, it’ll just be the four of us. Thom and Jenn are coming for lunch. But you know your father, he always surprises me and wants to do his fair share of Easter egg dying.”
“I’m sure you’ll work it out, Mom.”
So, you see, some of the great questions in life must be puzzled out each year.
Happy Late Easter Egg Dying!!
Kathy
We had lots of fun!! Even I couldn’t resist Bonanza. Yes, how could Grandma be sick on the day she serves as Candy Grandma!!! Yesterday we had a spring break so we were free to dye Easter eggs, watch Bonanza, read Mandie, go to a friends house, the whole works. Lets do it again soon!!
I think it is time to confess what I find out now is a scandalous neglect in my upbringing. I can only remember having dyed Easter eggs once. Ever. “Is this serious?” I ask myself. “Probably not,” Myself answers. “But it will probably be remedied next time you spend Easter near the Cousins.” Then I ask Myself, “When will that be?”
Congratulations on day 100!!!
Hope your spring break was relaxing, now, go do 1 day of BSF!
Love, Beth
That is so cool even the adults get involved!
You got to the Easter Eggs before we did this year. LOL
Dying Easter eggs is one of our favorite things, but alas, this is the first year we did not get to dye any. Next year we will defintely remember to ask someone to send us some dye! I remember in our house we would often have multiple easter egg hunts, although as we ate more and more of them, the hunts got quicker and quicker.
Beth – thanks for recognizing the P365 100th day. Too cool! Amazing how the days are flying by. I am a little tired of the P365 title. Ha! I’ll be truly stunned if I can keep it up the entire year.
I did some of my BSF today!! Thanks for the encouragment. You are the best!
Rebecca – we need you here! See how things are falling apart without you guys. I can’t believe you don’t have more Easter Egg dying memories. That’s just not right. I always think the Easter egg dying is for the little ones and then the big kids (and grownups) jump right in and want their fair share of eggs to dye. Never too old I guess.
De’Etta!!! I thought for sure you all had dyed eggs this year. In fact, I went looking on your blog for a picture (I was going to link to all my internet friends who have already dyed eggs) and couldn’t find one. But I ran out of time to look, I was sure I had just missed it.
Well, it looks like you all were busy with other things, wink wink, nudge nudge. Ha!
Tina – rats! We should have sent you all an Easter egg kit. I guess they aren’t easy to come by at Christmas time when we sent out our last package. We’ll do better next year.
Miss you! Glad you are back in town (relatively speaking).
We managed to fit in the egg dying at 9:30 on Saturday night! Just barely made it in time for Easter!