Monday, March 31, 2008

Are you sure that is a good idea?

Well, Chan is looking for stories to entertain her, and she most specifically wants stories about “Someone talking you into something.” So I am going to give you the story of why it is not always a good thing to be talked into hunting for Easter eggs. (She is doing this as a contest for her Bloggiversary, but it ends tomorrow!)
We moved to Minnesota in the summer of 1999, and the following Easter was April 23rd, and was promising to be beautiful weather. I had talked to our kids a week or so before hand about egg hunting and was informed that they were getting a bit old for such things. Well, it was brought up a couple of days before Easter by Hubband and when they told him the same thing he was obviously disappointed. The conversation went something like this:
“Too old! But it is going to be beautiful weather! We have all this great space and trails to hide eggs on! So much better than having to hide them inside, or in a tiny yard! I was thinking it was going to be so much fun to hide the eggs in extra great places! TOO OLD??!!!
Children look at dad, look at each other, look at me (I just shrug my shoulders), look at each other again and say (with a wee bit of a sigh I think), “OK Dad. We'll do an egg hunt on the trails around the house.” So we decorate eggs the day before (we were planning on that part anyway), so that we will be already for the hiding part on Easter after lunch. After a family conference, it is decided that Hubband and DTY will go hide eggs and then others will go in search. Off goes the first contingent and a while, twenty minutes or so, they are back. The second wave heads out with DTY along, to help with the finding if needed. A while later the second wave returns with an egg count report. They never found one of the eggs at all, one of the eggs that had been up in the crotch of a tree was on the ground, and a couple of the eggs they did find were already partly eaten. Somehow they were beginning to be a bit dubious about this idea, but they were OK with the indulging the dad thing. After they had been back for about ten or fifteen minutes I heard someone say, “ I have a tick!” (I am still not sure which child it was). Then Hubband said something about having found one too while they were out hunting up the eggs. Well, they all decided it would be best to do a thorough tick-check. As I recall the lowest per person count was three or four and DTY came in with the highest count of ten or eleven.
They informed their dad that they would not be looking for Easter eggs on the trails in the future, no matter how hard he tried to convince them. Of course, if they had been home this year, they wouldn't have had to worry about ticks just yet. I am not sure about the partly eaten eggs though. I am certain that they would have had to wear gloves, hats, snow boots, and worry about the eggs freezing if they stayed out too long though!

5 comments:

  1. What a hoot! Had Sissy been around, I could tell you why some of the eggs were eaten. She believes all food should be eaten, THEN AND THERE...

    Thanks for the publicity!

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  2. ROTFL!!!
    I can't even imagine 10 or 11 ticks. Every now and then we'll find one. Although, with me doing yard work today, it makes me want to go check my head. LOL

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  3. I just wanted to let you know that I used you as my Spring Fling Coffee and Yarn swap weekly question 1 subject. Man, that's a mouthful :)

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  4. That is a RIOT! My kids insisted last year that they were too old for Easter baskets (14 & 16 then), but they looked crushed on Easter morning when there weren't any...so I carried around that guilt for a year and made sure they were back again a couple weeks ago!

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  5. If you are ever looking for more stories of things you were talked into, just mention Chi Chi's and Japan. I started out the evening thinking it would be nice to go to France.

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