Whine-Free Egg Hunt

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"Mooooom, Cookie is getting all the eggs and she won't give any to me."

"Cookie, you are only supposed to find the ones that aren't on the ground."

"I know mom, but he keeps walking right past them."

"Pablo, that was an easy egg, you are supposed to leave those for Sweet Terror to pick up."

"But, mooooom, she's not even looking. She is just sitting over there eating jelly beans."

Sweet Terror, after eating her jelly beans, screams in an ear splitting shriek as Monster Man snatches an egg right by her foot.

"Monster Man!"

"Sooooory. Here, Sweet Terror."

She grabs the egg and promptly sits down to eat its contents. Then Monster Man start complaining that she didn't say, "Thank you."

My eyes have rolled so many times at this point that they hurt. I need a whistle and referee shirt to play this game. Two years ago, after getting so disgusted with my children and the whole Easter Egg Hunt drama that I almost canceled Easter, I had an idea. This idea has completely changed our egg hunts and have made for a fun, peaceful hunt. What is my miracle trick? Color coded Easter egg hunt. We buy several bags of the colored plastic Easter eggs and fill each color with an equal amount of candy and little things like chapstick, a wind-up toy, etc. Now, each kid gets assigned a color

Cookie=Purple

Pablo=Blue

Monster Man=Green

Sweet Terror=Pink

Mom=Yellow

Dad=Orange (or whatever color is left)

Now, not only does this guarantee that everyone gets an equal amount of eggs, and that no one gets an egg unfairly snatched from them, but it also makes the whole hiding thing a lot easier for the Easter Bunny and more fun for the kids too. Depending on the age of the child, certain colored eggs get hid at different difficulty levels. Sweet Terror's pink eggs are just thrown on the grass in plain site, and not even that far from each other, while Cookie's get hid up in trees and under things and are in every far reaching corner of our lot. I like to put special things in DSSH's eggs and hide them throughout the house, with a difficult clue in each egg to help him find the next one. DSSH loves me and so he just puts my eggs in a basket on the table so that I can eat them while taking pictures of everyone else. =)

I gotta tell ya, this has made Egg Hunts with toddlers SOOOOOO nice. Tune in tomorrow and I will tell you how I get the kids to pick up the hard boiled eggs too (Yes, my kids are so spoiled that they refuse to pick up the real "yucky" eggs so they have more time to find the candy filled ones).