Better late than never

So what if it's nearly a week after Easter. We still have candy left, so I figure it is well within the appropriate time frame to get a holiday post in.

We headed to Toledo where we spent the holiday with my parents. Nothing extravagant (I'll spare you the egg pun that could so easily be inserted here!) but fun nonetheless.

It only seemed appropriate that my kids colored eggs and had an egg hunt there. Because you see, I hunted eggs for many many years at my parents home. The story goes like this:

I'm an only child (need I go on?). So the Easter bunny came, like he does to most American homes and hid eggs. The Easter bunny was more traditional than he was creative and because we always lived in Ohio, the Easter bunny stuck to hiding eggs indoors. Well, the eggs wound up in the "traditional" spots year after year. So much so that I never really had to hunt for the eggs. I just had to get nostalgic. Base of the coffee table. Check. Planter. Check. Trombone (yes, we had trombone on our mantel all growing up. And no, no one in my family actually played the trombone.) Check. And then there was the annual, "Where DID the bunny hide that 12th egg?" question that got answered by the giveaway odor a few days later.

I'm going to expose a skeleton in my closet as I share with you that I hunted eggs well into college. Can you believe that? The memory of my 20th and FINAL egg hunt in my parents' home is clear as day. I was home from college, I got up that morning, dragged my basket around and having a dialogue inside my head,

"But my mom loves this so much. It will really crush her if I tell her I can't bare to do this another year."

"NO! I have to tell her I cannot bare to do this another year!"

So I reluctantly shared with my mom about how much this tradition had meant to me over the years and how I had appreciated her hard work to make holidays special. But perhaps this would be my last egg hunt. Her response?

"Finally! I was wondering how much longer we were going to have to do this. I've been going along with this for years because I didn't want to crush you and disappoint you."

Can you believe that? I had been hunting eggs for what had become a creepy number of years all for a lack of communication!

From the looks on my kids' faces the egg hunt is still a win/win. I'll just try and keep the communication lines open!