Holidays Gone By

I have a bit of catching up to do...wouldn't you say? I'll dedicate this post to holidays, specifically the most recent three that have passed. I wasn't feeling very festive about St. Patrick's Day this year.  The fact that it landed on a Saturday had much to do with my diminished zeal. 

I started to find t-shirts to decorate for the kids, but if they weren't going to wear them to school, what was the point? The kids reminded me of a tradition I didn't know we had...that of making shamrocks from bread stick dough.  I picked up some cans of dough from the grocery store and found a very old container of green sugar.  See?  Everyone was happy enough!


Bread stick Shamrocks

The kids were pretty disappointed that the leprechauns never pulled their expected pranks this year.  I guess those little green trouble makers were too busy being mischievous in other homes to bother with ours.  Or they were just too tired to care and went to bed.  You can decide what you think really happened.

April Fool's Day came next to our home.  It was a little more of the same holiday apathy that nearly killed this celebration as well.  Plus, it's hard to get really naughty on Sunday...it just didn't feel right.

We did switch the kids' blankets after they'd fallen asleep.  Daniel nearly ruined the whole thing when he woke up before we went to bed to mention that his blanket was missing and he didn't like the one he had.  Party Pooper!  The kids were pretty confused when they woke up.  They had forgotten about April Fool's Day.

We also tried to "get" them by putting some lemon extract on their toothbrushes.  In fear of over-doing it, I didn't put enough on.  They didn't even notice, but knew something was up because Chad asked them if they'd noticed anything when they brushed their teeth.

I snuck up before bedtime and made sure they'd notice the second time.  They were all probably wondering why we were suddenly so bossy about them brushing their teeth!  (See?  We're not perfect parents; we willingly avoid the toothbrush fight sometimes.)

The most recent holiday to celebrate was Easter!  I bought 5 dz eggs to color.

We ended up with quite a colorful assortment of eggs.  Chad and I got a little silly near the end of the decorating.  Can you find a watermelon, football and strawberry?

A not-so-funny story happened while I boiling eggs.  If you don't already know the details, I won't bore you with them now.  But I have to show you the eggs we colored for the kind persons who delivered additional eggs to give us more to color again.  I let them know that these eggs were from our chickens and were NOT boiled.  Can you imagine what an unpleasant surprise that would be?  I thought the brown eggs looked kind of neat in a "natural" sort of way.

The egg coloring was in the morning and the egg hunt was that afternoon.  We had a little Easter Bunny hide the eggs.  This was not the bunny, but I think she looks qualified for the job!

The Easter baskets were handed out, the contents examined, and the hunt began.

The nice thing about a big yard, is that there are endless hiding places.

Some of them were camouflaged...

...some of them were a little easier to find.

Everyone had a chance to fill their baskets with eggs because we had 102 eggs hidden.  At the end of the hunt we were short 6 eggs.  We kept going back out.  The last two were a little tricky, but we felt silly when we finally found them.  :)

Stripes could smell some of the eggs better than others because of the large cracks a few of them had. She would have had a snack if we'd let her!

Because of an idea I'd seen on Pinterest, we filled some plastic eggs with glow sticks and got the kids out of bed for one last hunt.  They were a little confused at first, but it was fun to see a bright color shining out of a dark corner.  Some of the glow sticks didn't light up very well and some of the eggs had to be taped shut, but it was still a lot of fun.  I took this picture with a night feature on the camera.

A little while back we started celebrating the fun part of Easter on Saturday and left Sunday for church and lessons centered on the Easter Story.  I made matching skirts for the girls and we snapped a few pictures before church.  It was a little bit of a challenge to avoid the ugliest parts of the yard since nothing was really blooming yet!

We enjoyed some nearly perfect Easter weather this year, including walking home for the last stretch of road.  Ahh...country living!

Boiling eggs to make popcorn

Many of you already know my rather stellar moment I had in the kitchen on Friday. I must save the memory for the generations.

It's become necessary to buy a large quantity of eggs each Spring for coloring. With six kids and two adults that still think they are kids, a couple dozen eggs just doesn't seem to satisfy our creative spirits. So I buy the big package of 5 dozen.

I don't know about any of you, but I don't have the resources to boil that many eggs at once, so I was doing it in two shifts. The first half of the eggs boiled while I made and served lunch to Joseph and Sarah. I could see and hear them and never strayed too far from the kitchen.

The second half of the eggs was not so well guarded as I had put the kids down for naps and went to the computer to start something while I waited for the water to boil.

Then the phone rang. I talked for a while. When the phone call was done, I went back to focusing on my computer task. Eventually, I heard occasional banging noises coming from the kitchen (you know where this is going). I wondered if Joseph was now up from his nap and getting into something...or it could be the cat. I wasn't curious enough to check right away...I waited until a good stopping point on the computer.

As I walked toward the kitchen, I heard another bang. And then I smelled. And then I remembered! I grabbed the smaller pan off the burner just as another egg exploded in the bigger pan, sending white and yellow bits of egg into the room. I reached to turn off burners and move pans and then stood in chagrin. I can't believe I forgot about the eggs! Two pans of 27 eggs boiled completely dry and kept right on cooking while I prepared pictures for the Relief Society blog.

Here is what they looked like as I combined the carnage.


Here are the pans.


I soaked them in some undiluted Melaleuca cleaner and then scrubbed with a copper scrubbie. One pan looks no worse for wear. One pan was still a bit stained, but still much improved.


I thought I was the biggest idiot on the planet, but I have since learned this has happened to several other people. So I am either normal or just in good company. Either way, I am sure I will never forget about my eggs again!

We had a very kind neighbor who dropped off two dozen eggs for us on Saturday morning, along with a dye kit, treats, a scripture/Easter Egg activity, and a story. I love nice people who like to do kind things for my children.

By the way, my kids took the news of the lost eggs well and didn't complain when they only got 4 eggs each to color. But they were really happy to get to do three more.