Egg Dying

Saturday was Easter-prep day which, of course, meant that we filled multiple containers with permanent dye and vinegar and allowed the children to chuck eggs therein with only newspaper separating our carpet and floors from a rainbow of un-removable rainbow colors. It seems like a bad concept. A fabulously fun, terrible idea.

But, against all odds, my carpets gained no new stains, no clothing was ruined, and a good time was had by all. Sasha did note her disapproval of the vinegar smell several times, however.

We started with a dozen eggs. Ben did a smashing (I mean, "really good" - I guess I should avoid the adjective smashing when talking about eggs) job hard-boiling the eggs, which I believe to be an essential life skill, while Sam measured out the vinegar and prepped the supplies. The boys really enjoyed writing on the eggs with white crayons, but Sash never totally grasped the concept and just complained that the crayon "wasn't working," which is a reasonable assumption when writing on a white egg with a white crayon.

WanYing was the most sensible of any of us and busied herself eating as many eggs as possible as quickly as possible. She also had a lot of fun decorating her face with stickers. It was hard to argue, since putting stickers on her forehead made about as much sense as putting them on colored eggs.

We unanimously agreed that a dozen eggs wasn't nearly enough, so after soccer Ben biked over to the grocery store, picked up two more dozen, and boiled 'em up.  This time, we moved outside for the dying because I wasn't going to tempt fate (or the carpet stain gods) with two episodes of egg dying in one day.  Plus, it turned out to be a beautiful afternoon and we couldn't resist the sunshine.

Again, WanYing displayed remarkable good sense and busied herself with egg consumption.

And after the egg dying came the egg wars!  For the uninitiated, egg wars are where the opponents smack their eggs together to see whose cracks first.  It's fabulous fun, even though Daddy is kind of a poor winner.

Egg wars are so popular that we had to add a rule that you don't get to initiate an egg war unless you're going to eat the loser (losing egg, that is).  Everybody except Sam (who survives solely on peanut butter and chicken nuggets) has decided that smacking the eggs together is worth the punishment of having to eat them, although Ben and Sasha refuse to eat the yolk, which they alternately call the "core" and the "cheese."  They also won't eat the egg unless they get to slice it with the wire egg slicer.  I can't blame them there, I find using the egg slicer oddly satisfying myself.