Life Through My Lens: Boys & Girls & Eggs, Eggs, Eggs

I LOVE dying Easter eggs. It is just as much of an art form and creative outlet as anything else to me. I will always (I hope!) have a childlike excitement about this annual ritual. Pulling a once white, boring egg out of a cup of color has always made he happy. I have very clear memories of dying eggs at very young ages and have always loved the boiled egg-plus-vinegar smell that Easter eggs create.

The bonus of all of this is that kids LOVE to dye eggs. The double bonus is that it always makes for great photos.

Friday night I headed over to take care of all of this with Spencer and Sam. That afternoon someone asked me how many years I'd done this with them, and I couldn't believe it when in my head I counted all the way to 9 in my head before answering. I can remember one chubby, blond-haired, only child little Spencer doing this with me all those years ago. Now he is 10, has braces, and proceeded to read the news out loud from the newspaper we used to cover the table while his eggs were in the cups. Something about this kid will always feel like some sort of first-born to me.

Sam, who is a bit of a tazmanian devil in life in general, will sit for AGES doing this. It has always amazed me that he is all but hypnotized by this process. He has been since he was a baby. He loves it. About halfway through our time I turned around just in time to see him send the cup of pink dye FLYING off the table. Wall, window, bench, clothes, floor....EVERYWHERE. Kid didn't miss a beat. Stood up on the bench with his little egg stirrer still going in another cup with one hand while I stripped his shorts off and cleaned up the neon pink lake that was quickly spreading all around both of us.

After saying "please try to not get a ton of color on your hands" so many times, you just give up...

I went home that night and promptly boiled 6 dozen more eggs for an adventure with some of my girls (and no other adults) the next day. The flash of "What on earth are you thinking?!" was fleeting, and the next morning I headed to pick up 5 VERY excited little girls for lunch and more fun. It was egg-cellent (oh come on, I had to do it somewhere...)

First we went to Chick-fil-a, where a nice man who held the door open while I pulled them out of the car one by one and let them run in told me that he never knew a Toyota doubled as a clown car. :)

I thought I was in the running for a Nobel Prize by getting the eggs all boiled up front so we wouldn't have to wait on that. I did not, however, think about 5 little girls having to wait on those little tablets to dissolve. Patience? Not so much. But then I brought out all the eggs and they sure were excited.

I realized my camera was inside and asked them to please not touch the eggs for two seconds while I ran inside to get it. I couldn't even turn around to come back out before I heard "BECCA! BECCA! You said not to touch the eggs and Nora picked one up and she dropped it and it broke!" I turned around to Maggie behind me, egg in hand, making sure I knew Nora broke the rules. Then there were the rest of them, all with eggs in hand. Ah well. If Nora jumped off a bridge I assume they'd all be right there with her... But dang is she cute.

Once they got going it sure was sweet. They would just shriek and squeal in delight with every egg that revealed itself. The magic of it was never lost on them, not with a single one of the 6 dozen eggs.

I especially appreciated my sweet Olivia, who took all the time in the world, did hers so carefully and one-by-one - never had multiple ones going at the same time. She was so painstaking and detailed and thoughtful about how many she had of each color and making sure she'd made one for each member of her family... I just sat and watched her for a while while all the others played tag in the front yard. She's totally me 25 years ago.