The Day Before Easter

We have an Easter tradition, my friends and I. We go to Mike and Jess' every year to dye eggs, hide eggs, find eggs, and then eat egg salad sandwiches.

It's very fun.

Probably more fun for this kid:

Because she's the one who gets to have all the finding fun. 

Jessica, why is your kid getting so big? I was looking through the Easter albums of the past, when my favorite eight-year-old was my favorite four-year-old, and sheesh. She's so tiny!

I've been telling her for years that she's not allowed to grow anymore, and every time she claims it's not up to her because her mom makes her eat vegetables. 

Whatever.

So here we are, Saturday morning...er, afternoon, because some of us may have gotten there a couple hours later than we were told. The dying crew consisted of Jess, Mike, Brittany, Justin G., Liz, Brad, me, and of course Gwen.

I find this egg hilarious for some reason. It reminds me of a bad character from Veggie Tales or something. You know, like the bad king from Rack, Shack, and Benny?

I think Gwen made it, which makes it even funnier.

And some egg-cellent egg sayings:

And the hunt begins!

Now, in years past, we've been careful to hide eggs where she'll be able to find them, reach them, see them, perhaps step on them. Because Easter's no fun when the five-year-old starts crying that she only found four of eighteen eggs. 

But the kid's eight now. So we decided it was time to start challenging her in this egg-finding process.

She looked high.

She looked low.

While the rest of us looked on.

And Mike, in egg hunt tradition, brought out the funky guitar,

And followed her around, strumming a ballad.

It kind of looks like they're gathering to pray here, doesn't it? Actually, they're all huddled around the hardest to find egg, which was pretty much buried right there, in an attempt to give Gwen a hint. Because the egg hunt had been going on for quite awhile at this point.

This is Gwen when she realized Justin had been stealing eggs from her basket and re-hiding them where she'd found them.

Like this one, up in a tree. This was her second time retrieving it.

Mike and Jess, in a picture Jess will surely be stealing for her own blog.

(But don't do it, Jess. I've got a better version saved for you.)

Then the game went from stealing and hiding the eggs, to stealing and hiding the whole basket.

Ah, Easter.