Better Late Than Never?

Because we were in an airplane all day on March 20th, we missed out on our usual celebration of the Spring Equinox (the Pagan holiday, "Oestar"). This didn't come as a huge loss to me (usually we celebrate by eating an egg-rich brunch, doing an egg hunt, and by blowing out chicken eggs and filling them with birdseed (and then throwing them at trees and making a wish for spring)), and we likely would have just gone along without taking much notice if it weren't for the boys finding an abandoned plastic easter egg at the park. Clearly, this was evidence that they had missed out on one of their favorite activities. I explained that we had be in New Mexico, and we had missed the Spring Equinox this year.

"But we can still do an egg hunt, mom! Better late than never!"

I guess so.

So, on Tuesday of last week, Jasper and Zeben and I walked into town to hunt for chocolate eggs. Most of the stores had packed them away or sold out, but we managed to find a couple of bags, 50% off at our favorite chocolate store (of all places!).

It was odd to be in town with just Jasper and Zeben, pushing them in the twin stroller. I'm so used to looking down and seeing two same-sized legs and same-sized feet, and it was fun to instead see two kids of such different sizes. Zeben loved getting to sit next to his big brother. This was probably one of the last trips to town with the double stroller, though, since Jasper is definitely just about bursting out of it at this point (well, he is five afterall!).



When we got home, we quickly got to work hiding the eggs for Lukas to find when he got home from school. The rules were that the eggs had to be hidden in such a way that you could still see them without having to move anything (other than your own body).




Lukas was thrilled (to put it mildly) to get home to such a surprise. He took his job as egg hunter very seriously. Jaz stood by excitedly while Luke found all the eggs.



If the story ended now, it would have been a lovely story. Instead, as soon as Lukas had found all his eggs, Jasper decided it was his turn to be the hunter. Jaz covered his eyes in the living room while Luke got to work hiding eggs in the playroom. There was calm for all of about 20 seconds, until Jasper burst into tears because, as he said, "I can hear where you're hiding them Lukas!" Music helped to drown out the tell-tale signs of which hiding spots Luke was choosing, but Jasper's raw state didn't really improve. As he was hunting, he kept insisting that Lukas was giving him too many hints (which, honestly, is kind of true), and there were so many tears and much yelling on behalf of all three kids (Zeben got upset because he wasn't allowed to find the eggs). It was pretty miserable.

When all was said and done, we were left with a bowl full of chocolate eggs. So now I can be the mean mom who says, "no, you cannot have a chocolate egg for breakfast," and the apathetic mom who says, "sure, fine, go ahead and have your 5th chocolate egg of the day. We're not having dinner for another two minutes anyway." And of course, by the end of the week, my thoughts on egg hunts had changed from "better late than never" to something more along the lines of "we're never doing this again!"