Just a little solidarity moment for us Easter Bunny helpers, hiding the eggs, stuffing the plastic eggs, pinching our fingers in the @#$#@@#$## plastic eggs as we try to stuff them, fighting with the dog who is trying to eat the plastic egg that we just pinched our fingers stuffing, and all those who are doing similar fun stuff involving late nights/early mornings, hiding chocolate instead of eating chocolate, and creating wonderful Easter Baskets that will be demolished in moments--good luck.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
This is why I let my mom do the plastic eggs.
Our kids are getting breakfast snacks, juice boxes, a few candies from See's, and a few coloring things from the Target One Spot. In baskets. That's it.
Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
My son isn't getting very much (A Jump Start game and his "Easter Shirt"), but the little stinker won't go to sleep so I can hide the eggs outside! (I do not make elaborate Easter baskets, thank goodness!). It's after midnight here and every time I think he's FINALLY asleep I hear from the other room, "Mom, did the Easter Bunny come yet?"
I'm NEVER going to get to sleep.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
Tell him that the Easter Bunny will only come once he's asleep, and if he doesn't fall asleep before morning he'll skip your house.
That's what we tell our five year old about the EB and Santa. Two nights a year, she falls asleep early... (And by early, I mean before 3. Usually she is so anxious and worked up she will lay there not sleeping for HOURS.)
Posted by andi330 (Member # 8572) on :
Wow, you're more dedicated than my mom was. The easter bunny didn't hide eggs outside at my house, only inside, and usually in a specified area. I suspect that's so that it was easier to remember where the eggs were in case we missed some.
Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
I'm minimizing the candy this year. It's easy to go overboard. Everyone (including my husband and I) gets a Dove chocolate bunny (only the best) and a toy. Well, the baby isn't quite 11 months old and I'm being tyrannical about not letting her have candy, cakes, cookies, etc. until she's 1 so she's just getting a toy. The baskets look a little bare, so I may have to adjust in the future, but I wanted to give everyone something they wanted and not just fill the basket with junky cheap toys (like in the pre-made basket). I'm also not inclined to put healthy food in there because that's what we normally eat so that's no fun. Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
Oh, and it might be worth noting that I'm not pretending to be the Easter Bunny. I did Santa but I just can't get behind an enormous rabbit laying eggs. It's weird. My son helped me pick out a new basket for the baby yesterday and while I am setting them out in the wee hours of the morning, I don't intend to pretend that scary bunnies dropped them off. Same with the Easter egg hunt.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
Yeah, I put breakfast in the baskets mainly to make up for the very low chocolate content (at least compared to when I was a kid!) But the chocolate that IS in the baskets is See's. If you're gonna have chocolate, might as well be the good stuff.
I'm ashamed to say that my 11 month old has been eating chocolate for a month. I was super-vigilant about her older sisters, but the fifth time she grabbed chocolate from her sister and stuffed it in her mouth the moment my back was turned, and didn't react, I decided to give in and let her have it when the rest of us do (granted, in more limited quantities.)
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
We are re-gifting. Hard non-eaten candy from previous holidays (Smarties, Sweet Tarts and the like) with practically unlimited shelf life are going from the junk-candy container into the plastic eggs.
The Easter Basket has a couple of toys we've picked up, but is small so it doesn't look empty.
Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
We had a great Easter - an egg hunt with all us 'kids' - with the family dynamics, the kids this year is my 13 year old sister, me, my husband, and our 4 1/2 month old baby. Needless to say, my sister cleaned up on the egg hunt.
(As she should have.)
However, after a great lunch (homemade minestrone with parmesan dumplings, grilled duck salad with walnuts and vinno cotto), my Mum brought out the chocolate for the adults (me and hubby - yes, we double dipped): we had three types of local, organic chocolate: white with cointreau soaked cape gooseberries (very good), milk with honey almond praline ( very very good) and dark with caramelised chili macadamias (unbelievably good).
I am now chocolated out.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
My daughter got socks, new pajamas, sundrops (vaguely organic M&Ms), and bunny graham crackers. I worried we were being a little on the spartan side, but she seems happy enough, and that's what's important.
Posted by Christine (Member # 8594) on :
quote:Originally posted by ketchupqueen:
I'm ashamed to say that my 11 month old has been eating chocolate for a month. I was super-vigilant about her older sisters, but the fifth time she grabbed chocolate from her sister and stuffed it in her mouth the moment my back was turned, and didn't react, I decided to give in and let her have it when the rest of us do (granted, in more limited quantities.)
It's definitely been harder the second time around! I actually fished an m&m out of her mouth a couple of months ago. She was NOT happy about that. I can imagine that if I had a couple more, I'd just give up. Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
My 8 year old daughter left two small baskets out with notes identifying them as baskets for the two cats. With a request "cat food please."
So, this Easter bunny helper actually put cat food in plastic eggs last night.
She was upstairs laughing at me, I'm certain.
Posted by ClaudiaTherese (Member # 923) on :
quote:Originally posted by Belle: My 8 year old daughter left two small baskets out with notes identifying them as baskets for the two cats. With a request "cat food please."
That's sweet!
Posted by CaySedai (Member # 6459) on :
My daughters are 13 and 15 and I haven't done Easter baskets for a couple of years or so. But last night I did make a stop at Wal-Mart and Hy-Vee and picked up some candy and two small plastic tubs to put the candy in. A solid chocolate Hershey bunny each, starbursts, hershey kisses and kitkats. Oh, and a small Russell Stover sampler box each. They were pleasantly surprised. And I just stopped their dad from cherry-picking from Amanda's basket (he stopped by - lives about a block away) because I did divide the candy evenly piece by piece to be fair.
Too late for this year, but there are a couple of versions of items you can put into the plastic eggs to represent the Easter story. (3 dimes for 30 pieces of silver, a small nail, etc.) Obviously this requires parental supervision,
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
My Easter Bunny hid chocolate eggs and bunnies in the garden. A squirrel (or perhaps a bunny!) took the silver wrapping off my bunny and nibbled it.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
CaySedai, I do the even dividing thing too-- to the point where I counted out the same number of each color of jelly bean to put in their baggies.
Sounds dumb but saves a loooot of trouble...
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
kq and Cay, our friends with only 2 kids in their family used to do that too, the countthejellybeansthatsnotfair thing. We had 4 so there was no possible way. Mom just said "life's not fair" when we would try that. Though of course she tried to get things mostly fair. I think the more kids you have, the less you worry about it. Hey, if everyone is fed and watered and clean and has clean clothes and a bed to sleep in, that's way more than fair from a global viewpoint. =)
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
Bob's mom sent the kids each a basket from See's, so we bought a few non-candy items to add -- games and puzzels. Candyland was a big hit -- John wanted to play it again first thing this morning.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
Tatiana, my mom had 4 and she did the counting thing... So did my mother-in-law, she also had 4.
I think when they get to a certain age they can understand that life's not fair. I see no point in making things unfair when I can easily make them fair when they're this young. My eldest is already running into the fact that bad things sometimes happen for no reason. I don't want to be unfair, or what she percieves as unfair, on the things I CAN help when I have to be "unfair" to her for reasons I can't control right now.
Posted by Amilia (Member # 8912) on :
I had no idea the Easter Bunny was such a big deal in Other People's Houses. The one time the Easter Bunny came to our house was the year my mom saw a rabbit in the back yard Easter morning. So fun to see everyone's traditions.
Easter prep at our house consisted of hours dyeing elaborately colored eggs. We would have an Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning. My folks would hide the eggs--there was no pretense about it being a bunny. And we would have boiled eggs for breakfast quite some time afterwords.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
I tip I saw too late but am probably going to start next year was to fill baskets with gardening stuff or stuff for other spring/summer activities -- new gardening gloves, tools, seeds, sandbox toys, etc.
Posted by Artemisia Tridentata (Member # 8746) on :
I read these posts and remembered counting jelly beans for my children. Then, I tried to remember what Easter was like when I was a kid. You know, I don't remember how many beans I or my brother ever got! What I do remember is driving out to a spot on an unpaived road that we called the "hunkey dugway" where it traversed the south facing slope of a desert mesa. The south face allowed for some new cheat grass and russian thistle sprouts to show green aganst the drab of winter. And, we rolled boiled eggs down between redrock boulders to crack them for a picnic lunch. What a great time. Many years later Mom learned to hand-dip chocolates. She beat Sees six ways from Sunday. But, what I remember is sitting on the side of a desert track eating hard-boiled eggs with my brother.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by dkw: I tip I saw too late but am probably going to start next year was to fill baskets with gardening stuff or stuff for other spring/summer activities -- new gardening gloves, tools, seeds, sandbox toys, etc.
Oh! We would always get new sandbox toys - shovels and pails and sieves and so forth. When we were too old for the sandbox there were other "springtime" toys like kites or bubbles or jumpropes. Hula hoops one year. And pinwheels for decoration.
Even later, stockings (they came in an "egg" back then.)
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
That is terrible! And not at all in the spirit of dyed eggs and jelly beans.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Yeah. Read that and found myself wondering how many folks are exposing themselves to similar tragedies by keeping handguns "hidden" in their bedroom under a pillow, under an upper corner of a mattress, in a nightstand drawer, etc...
Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
This was actually the first year the "Easter Bunny" hid eggs at our house. We have so many other egg hunts (one at preschool, one at my mom's house, and at least two out at our "extremely large family gathering") that the Easter Bunny never thought hiding eggs at home was all that important....
Until my son came home and told me that we HAD to put out carrots for the Easter Bunny this year. The Easter Bunny, apparently, had been skipping our house because we weren't putting carrots out for him. When I tried to point out that the Easter Bunny filled the nests every year (we do nests not baskets) he just rolled his eyes. After a long dissertation on the nature of magical bunnies, I concluded that there are actually two different Easter Bunnies. One is an Easter Bunny who is really just a person in a Bunny costume, and THAT is the Easter Bunny that visits Pre-school, takes pictures at the mall, and fills the inside Easter Nests. Then there is the "real" Easter Bunny, who is a magical bunny who likes carrots and will stop at any house that puts carrots outside (it had to be outside) and hide eggs. Unfortunately, this Easter Bunny is apparently a little too wild, so along with putting out carrots the Easter Bunny was supposed to eat, we also had to cover our garden so the Easter Bunny would not accidentally eat any of the vegetables he wasn't supposed to.
In the end though, it was all worth it. Apparently my son had been coming up with this convoluted nonsense because someone (probably an older kid at school) had been making him question the existence of the Easter Bunny. On Easter morning I heard him get up and peek out his blinds, then he came running into my room with the biggest smile on his face that I've seen in a LONG time, shouting "Mommy, Mommy, the Easter Bunny IS real!".
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