Celebration of the Egg, 2014

I love that over the years, Celebration of the Egg has become the premier event in the Kennedy holiday household.  In fact, when people ask me about Easter and what we did for it (thinking that maybe we visited family), I casually drop the name of the event, and their interest is immediately piqued.  In fact, over the past couple of years, some of my friends have actually stolen the idea, and are now hosting their own celebrations!

I love Celebration of the Egg.  It is a party unlike any other.  Think of the Olympics, Easter style.

We actually postponed Celebration of the Egg this year.  Ethan and Rebecca were flying back home three days after Easter, so we waited until the following weekend.  It gave me a glimpse into what it will be like, having kids who have their own lives.  It was a monumental effort for me to plan Easter on the actual weekend, and then plan a party the next weekend.  I'm thinking that in the future, it will be more of a "come if you can" event so that I'm not planning multiple events for one holiday.

That being said, I'm glad that Rebecca could be here.  It's crazy to think that at this time last year, she and Ethan weren't even engaged!  Ethan knew he loved her, but I'm not sure Rebecca knew :-)

A couple of months prior to the weekend, we were talking to Ethan and Rebecca (I can't remember if it was over Skype or over the phone), and we were telling Rebecca about the egg hunt.  It usually involves money, seeing as we have older children now who prefer greenbacks to chocolate.  John, without really thinking about this, shot off that he was going to have a $100 egg this year.  Yep, that's right, folks.  In John's words, "It's all about the Benjamin."  Needless to say, there were some pretty high stakes.

The morning dawned lovely and sunny, although the weather forecast said it wasn't going to stay that way.  A requirement of the day?  Everyone must don the brightest, Easter colored clothes they own.  I would not be surprised if someday in the future, we convince John to wear a pink suit.  Okay, maybe not (seeing as he won't even wear gloves when he changes a tire), but you get the idea.

Before the real festivities began, Ethan and Glo spent some last precious moments together in the front hall building Legos.  They had dumped every single Lego we own (I can't even describe the container that holds them all) onto the front hall floor days before and had been working through building various Star Wars ships.  I can't tell you how "happy" I was, being woken up to the "claw", foraging for some random, minuscule Lego piece!  Even when Glo was at school earlier in the week, Ethan would send her text messages like this:

"I found it, Glo!"  Notice that the Legos have spread into the dining room?

We got cooking, creating all the tasty things that go along with Easter dinner.  Ham, potatoes, frog-eye salad, bread.  Hmmm, my mouth is watering just thinking of it.

I think John is missing his potato-peeling buddy, Mark.  It's a one-man show nowadays.

Obviously, I had a bit more frog-eye salad than was going to fit into that bowl!

Hannie was right across from me, setting up the egg-dyeing activity.  The intense concentration for this important activity is evident :-)  No joke, I love the thought of my kids continuing this tradition.

Someone decided to play a cruel joke on Hoot.  That cat will eat anything, but a CERAMIC carrot?  Nope.

As the sky began to turn cloudy, John suggested we get going with the activities.  First up?  Dyeing the eggs.

Of course, we were prepared with snacks....because egg-dyeing is such a grueling sport ;-)  It's the only time of the year I make deviled eggs (mostly just because I have the special plate), and they were gone in seconds.

Ethan, Hannie, Aris, John, Mark, Glo and Rebecca

Awww.  We have seven eggs now!  I'm not sure that we did a very good job this year of representing ourselves very well.  Of course, you can't expect much when we're using a white crayon on a white egg!  Of course, Glo channeled every bit of her drawing skills into Mark's egg--a fairly good representation if you ask me.

Missionary Mark

Next, it was egg toss.  We had some raw eggs set aside for this.  Undeniably, John and I were the champs at this game, possibly winning both rounds.  Ethan was undeniably the biggest loser in this game, possibly getting his leg slimed with raw egg.  What to do?  Drag an unsuspecting puppy over to lick it off.

The winning raw egg.

Next on the game plan was target practice.  Basically it's seeing who can lob their hard-boiled egg the farthest to land it closest to the trampoline.  In a perfect world, the eggs would land ON the trampoline, but we are far from perfect ;-)  I completely forgot to take a picture, but I do believe Hannie won that one.  I DO know that I did NOT win, seeing as I didn't throw my egg further than about 20 feet :-(

Next was the premiere event of the day.  The egg hunt (cue music please).  John and I hid 74 eggs in total, with three holding candy and six holding prize slips.  Yep, 65 eggs full of money.  Of course, you never knew what kind of money you were going to get.  John's favorite trick is to scoop up all the random pennies we have (including coins from around the world which are utterly useless in the States) and fill eggs with those.  So, from the sound of things, you are scoring big when you pick up the egg, but in reality, you are not.

Probably my favorite picture of the day.  There were seriously high stakes going on, 

In the end, Glo found the Benjamin...and three of the "prize" numbers as well.  It was a lucky day for her to say the least.  The favorite moment in my mind (again, I wasn't wielding my camera well at all) was seeing Rebecca count up her money.  I don't know if it has something to do with the fact that she's studying finance, but she had her coins stacked perfectly (by type and amount).  In other words, she knew exactly how much money she had found!

At this point, it was looking like rain, so we skipped the egg-on-the-spoon race, and headed out for a new event:  bb gun shooting.  Like I told my friends, what says "Easter" more than shooting raw eggs with bb guns?!

John had actually slipped away at some point to head to WalMart to buy one more bb gun.  Because, you know, four wasn't enough.  He needed more bb's too.  Everyone got a crash course in how to load a bb gun, and the fun began.  John had set up the raw eggs on the tops of milk gallons and bottles.  At first, it was slow going, but by the end, not only were the eggs being destroyed, but so were the bottles!

If this picture doesn't say it all, I don't know WHAT does.  As Jared said, John is looking pretty darn gangsta.  Agreed.  Because, you know, gangsta and Easter--they go together like Oreos and milk, right?

Man, it was a fun day.  Somewhere along the line, Ethan and Rebecca went for a walk and miraculously found a geo cache.  The day ended with some TV, followed by some serious cuddling on the love seat by two of the cutest peeps on the planet.  Long live Celebration of the Egg!