Healthy Easter Memories!

I will admit, I am a big fan of a certain chocolate that's only out at Easter, I love the pastel coloured candies, a solid waxy chocolate Easter bunny must be present (although I have no interest in eating it!) and there would be no Easter morning without jelly beans! Not sounding so healthy so far!

As much as I go candy crazy at Easter and it's true, I do focus more on healthy memories than the healthy breakfast, but I do try to balance it a little. I fill them up with a healthy Easter Brunch and 'add extra rainbows' as one friends says! They get scrambled eggs with cauliflower, fruit kebobs and muffins made with flax, whole wheat, and bran.

The fun side of Easter however, I go full out!

With 3 kids I quickly learned that the oldest was going to get all the goods unless I found a way to evenly divide the hunt. Those plastic coloured Easter eggs can be filled with stickers & pennies instead of jelly beans and as long as you assigned colours to each child, you control how many each kid finds! I spend a long night counting and sorting and then place a green & yellow egg in oldest child's 'collection' basket - she knows those are her colours - and place the basket at the foot of her bed. If she finds a pink egg on her way downstairs, she leaves it there and moves on . . pink and blue are her youngest sisters colours. Works every year and even allows me to hide the oldest daughters eggs in harder and higher locations!! And hide we do - eggs everywhere, trails of jelly beans from their room to their Easter baskets and even a hunt throughout the backyard . ..with the same eggs they found in the house, just secretly recycled and re hidden out back!

My favorite tradition has to be the paw print. I've had a kitty paw stamp forever and each Easter eve, as the kids sleep, I sneak in and place a paw print on their cheeks and on the back of their hand. The don't notice until someone tells them the next day . . . or now that they expect it, they run to the mirror to see when they wake up!!

Our last tradition is another fun one for the kids, aside from the usual colouring of eggs, we also grab fallen tree branches from outside, sometimes spray paint them white and hang the tiniest of decorative egg's on them with some we've coloured . . . our Easter egg tree is out earlier and earlier every year as the kids can't wait to decorate it!

Perhaps what surprises me most every year, is not how much the kids indulge in the candy palooza that goes on here at Easter, but how quickly they loose interest in the chocolate and the jelly beans after Easter! I leave the candy out for all to see and sure the first couple of days they ask for something every 10 minutes . . . but as the days go on, they forget and within weeks the gummies have hardened, the chocolate's disappeared to moms freezer stash and the jelly beans are a distant memory!

We like to have fun with food and it seems like around here it's the anticipation, the hunt and the memories that leave us with the sugar high! Enjoy your Easter everyone, stay healthy and be sure to sneak in a few sugar coated memories . . .we'd loved to hear about them!

Easter Bunnies Last Hop!

It happened in an instant, I had no more than a 2 second warning but I saw it coming . . .for those 2 seconds you could see me in super slow motion shouting “Nooooo” and reaching out to cover my kids' ears. Right there, hands in our popcorn bowl, giggling at a silly movie, right before my very eyes, the Easter Bunny vanished. I couldn’t prevent it, I couldn’t take it back, I couldn’t explain it away. I couldn’t lie to my 9 year old anymore. It’s been a big couple of months for her. The tooth fairy had recently had her last flight and there were tears and a pinky promise to not tell her sisters . . . I blogged about it. I was holding out hope for the Easter Bunny, at least until after Easter.

The evening started out like many other family nights. Our kids school does a monthly movie night and we all wear our pj’s, take pillows, blankets and loads of quarters for the .50 cent bowls of popcorn. We lay on the gym floor for an hour and a half and watch a movie with 150 of our closest school friends (yes I am an awesome mom!) while volunteer parents run the show. Tonight’s movie was Mega Minds . . . a futuristic cartoon battle of good vs. evil where good gets the girl in the end – who knew the Easer Bunny would bite the dust! Evil guy was taunting the girl who believed against all odds (you know the story) that good would prevail and Evil guy uttered the words . . .”Oh, and you probably still believe in the Tooth Fairy and the . . . . (noooooooo don’t say it!! where is the remote? mute the volume . . .noooooo) . . . EASTER BUNNY.”

My 9 year olds head swung around so fast to glare at me, I thought she might just shout out her obvious question for the whole gym to hear. I ignored the glare, secretly squeezed my husband’s hand and hoped she would forget what she had just heard . . . but I knew in my heart the Easter Bunny was done. The movie ended 30 minutes later, and the second those lights went on that head swung around again, “Mommy, is the Easter Bunny real AND DON’T LIE TO ME.”

I told her we could talk at home to avoid bursting the fairytale for the other 149 kids in the gym and get distance from her younger sisters listening ears. We had another talk similar to the tooth fairy talk (its mom, I do it to make fun happy memories for you, I promise I will hide chocolate for you when you are 76 and, the best part . .now that YOU are in the Easter Bunny club you can help mom hide eggs for your sisters!! insert over exaggerated happy mom face). She had another cry, and she slowly raised her pinky to once again bear the burden of a pinky promise to not tell her sisters.

Why would a movie geared to children sell out the Easter Bunny? My other two kids are 7 and 5 and neither of them noticed a thing cause they still firmly believe, but my daughter was wavering as kids do around the age of 8 & 9. She couldn’t have been the only one who’s dreams of big furry 6 foot tall Easter Bunny hoping through our house hiding jelly beans were dashed because of that movie? Maybe these movies could carry a warning . . .”PG – Some scenes may crush young girls belief in Easter Bunnies!” I would have at least waited until after Easter to let her watch it.

She's cool with it now and excited to "know" as we prepare for Easter this weekend, but still . .this wasn't how I envisioned the Easter Bunny going down! How did your kids figure it out?