Egg Hunt

This weekend we celebrated one of our annual family traditions. We don't buy our children birthday presents, I don't even do cards, they just get a "happy birthday dude" on the phone or facebook.  I have on occasion even forgotten to do that!  With our bunch totaling twenty seven, we have to keep our Christmas's modest, so, we do other things through the year and one of those things is an Easter Egg hunt for the big "kids", ranging in age from twenty three years to thirty nine!

This year each colored egg was worth one dollar and camouflage eggs were mostly worth $5, but a few had $10, and a couple had $20 written in them.  We usually schedule it on Saturday of Easter weekend, as most of them spend Easter with their other families.  With a family this size we have found it easier to let the other families have the actual holidays and we celebrate on other days so we can all be together.  They all came for lunch, this year it was spaghetti and we were treated to the usual trash talk about who would be the champion!  After we clean up the dishes, we loaded up the bus and headed to where Pa and I had hidden the plastic eggs.  I did my best to explain the boundaries, but they were so hyped and anxious to get started they didn't listen.  I know this because they were constantly screaming to ask us if there were any up here or over here and I had to scream the boundaries again.  I have to scream over Mark who is screaming at them that they should have listened the first time.  Soon, there are shouts of "CAMO EGG!", followed by "GOOD JOB HONEY!".  Meanwhile Grandpa and Grandma corral the grandkids and we hide candy for them in a different area so they have something to hunt too.  After about forty five minutes we gathered to count eggs.  Knowing there were thirty two camouflage eggs and only twenty were found some headed back out again, but many stayed behind being too pooped to go on looking.  Eventually even the "die hards" give up, accepting the fact that some of the eggs will stay hidden forever!  Back at home we sat down and counted out each couple's eggs and I paid out the loot.  There was much hootin' and howlerin' and braggin' by the winners, and pictures were taken of each couple and their haul!  This years winning couple was Ryan and Karen.

The kids always look forward to it, but they always tell us "you don't have to do this guy's".  We know that, and we probably won't do it forever, but  right now we all enjoy it.  We get a kick out of creating fun for the Daddy's and Mommy's who we watch put so much time and effort into doing things for their own children.  We have as much fun, if not more, planning the day, the place, and hiding the eggs as they do finding them.  And as hard as it is to make ends meet as a young family, our goal is that they will all find enough to take their family out to a movie or dinner.  We love making memories with them.  But most of all, we love watching thirty-somethings take out running across a field with a sack in their hand, searching for plastic easter eggs and how excited they get when they find one.  I guess it is true, there's a little kid inside of each of us, no matter what our age!