Easter Egg Dyeing

We're spending today at my parents' house, while tomorrow we'll be spending Easter with Andy's family.

We're all here, including Posa. We'll spend the night here and then in the morning drive to Andy's parents. Mariposa will stay behind with my parents.

Ivan's actually been here since Thursday night when my parents picked him up from daycare and brought him here.

The idea for today was to come and have big lunch, color eggs and do an Easter egg hunt in the back yard. I had purchased all the supplies.

Originally, Ivan and I were supposed to color eggs at our house during the week but it didn't work out: I bought the eggs on Sunday, boiled them on Monday or Tuesday, I forget, on Wednesday the Champion window guy came and was selling us siding and windows from 7 to 11, and on Thursday Ivan was at my parents.

So the egg coloring got postponed until today.

It had been years since I dyed eggs. I expected it to be a cumbersome and long process that would take us at least one hour or two. I was looking forward to doing this activity with Ivan.

But things of course didn't go as planned.

First, when I set out to color eggs in the afternoon, Ivan really wanted to eat his Yoyos. (Although he had eaten five Yoyos yesterday, and one Yoyo earlier today.) So he wasn't interested in coloring eggs, although I did want to peel an egg. He did a great job.

Second, the eggs I bought and boiled were brown not white. Until I dunk the eggs in the six colors I prepared, it didn't occur to me that the dye wouldn't show on brown eggs.

Third, the whole thing took like 15 minutes. With six dyes and some dozen eggs, the dyeing when by really fast.

Ivan took some interested near the end of the process. He wanted to dunk the eggs in the cups with dye. Of course, he wasn't allowed to do that.

He especially liked to watch the colored water be flushed down the toilet.

Some time later, while he was eating oatmeal (although he really wanted another Yoyo), he and I put some stickers on one egg. He enjoyed that. Although the stickers were really tiny so it was a bit hard for him to manouver.

All in all, the egg dyeing wasn't as hand-on, photo op activity like I had hoped for (like pumpkin carving was for Halloween).

Since it was raining today, we couldn't do an egg hunt. We'll do it tomorrow morning before we go to Andy's parents. Andy's family (all the cousins included) are preparing an egg hunt there as well.

I'm looking forward to it.