Easter Happenings

We had a lovely Easter celebration with our family. As I know my mom would say, there's nothing funner than celebrating Jesus. The only downer was that my dear sister and her family were not able to make it. We missed her! And I missed her desserts, too! She makes great chocolate treats for our family get-togethers, and Easter was my sugar-free diet day off. The only other chocolate at the family dinner was (what else) Easter candy. The cherry delight was good, though, Mom. But as I say, treats without chocolate in them is just a waste of sugar.

So I had my small portion of cherry delight, and then when we got home I levied a mommy tax on my kids' chocolate candy. They've got more than enough, and...it's not good for them anyway. When it comes to candy, we don't believe in private property in our home. We're more like a benevolent socialist dictatorship.

Mom and Dad had small Easter baskets for the kids after following clues in scavenger-hunt fashion. They splurged on treats and little toys from Wal-Mart for the baskets. It was a little embarrassing to have my 4-year-old give his bubblegum-shaped eggs back to my dad, telling him he doesn't want them. "They'll turn my teeth black." Oh well. I guess you can't unteach your kids just to avoid an awkward moment. I noticed he didn't give the rest of the candy back, though.

Of course, I bought a few things for our kids' Easter baskets. I only bought a few pieces of (chocolate) candy, though. The risk of buying too much chocolate is not necessarily that my kids will get too much candy (although I don't want that either), but that I will eat all the candy before it even reaches their baskets. I hid their baskets and made up clues for a scavenger hunt for them to follow in order to find their baskets.

So we had a scavenger hunt here at home before church, and then there was also a scavenger hunt at Grandma and Grandpa's house in the afternoon. This was my older son's first experience with scavenger hunts (at least since he learned to read and write), and now he is all about SCAVENGER HUNTS. Last night he spent HOURS cutting out little pieces of paper, writing clues on them, and taping them to various places in the house. Every few minutes he would ask me if I wanted to do a scavenger hunt. He used clues like "Look in the bedroom" (can we get a little more specific here?), and "Go to the refrigerator" (he needed help spelling 'refrigerator').

I'm trying to think of a way to harness that "scavenger hunt" energy for learning in school. But my mind is drawing a blank. Must be all that sugar I ate.