Adventures in Easter

*This was originally published in April 2011 when I taught Lily how to hunt for Easter eggs. It has been edited somewhat for today's post*

In the back of my mind, I've been trying to decide how many Easter festivities the Rush family is going to attempt.  And by that, I mean all the Easter Bunny-type activities.

Dying eggs, Easter baskets, hunting for eggs.... all these things Lily could care less about.

So part of me is thinking why bother with all of it.  But then the other part of me is thinking that she may never get it if I don't at least try.

So try we will.

Like many things in our lives, this requires some outside the box thinking, along with some plain and simple common sense.

Lily is not going to hunt eggs for 15 minutes or compete with her cousin to see who can find the most.

In fact, she may not hunt for a single egg unless I can find some way to show her that while she may not care about the egg itself, she will love what's inside the egg.

Based on some tips from Lily's therapists who hosted an all-out Easter party at school yesterday, I have formulated a plan.

It goes a little something like this:

Dying real eggs?  Forget about it.  All the kids wanted to do at school was eat the eggs.  They saw absolutely no point in taking the time to color an egg when you could simply consume it.  So we will not take the time to dye eggs this year.

Hiding large plastic eggs?  This we will attempt.  But there are some guidelines that might make this a little more successful for us.  I'll fill the eggs with edible treats only - no stickers, little erasers, or cutesy toys for us.  Lily is motivated by Skittles and M&M's - candies she doesn't normally eat because of the dyes. So while we won't go totally nuts with the amount that we let her eat, (or else we'll have a child going nuts on our hands!) I'll put a couple of these candies in each egg.  Hopefully, this will encourage her to roam the backyard a little looking for eggs so she can have what's inside.  And if I can get her to look for 2 or 3 eggs, I'll consider the hunt a huge success.

We'll be having a practice egg hunting session this afternoon so that maybe by Sunday, Lily will know just what to do with all those eggs that the adults have scattered around.

Don't you just wonder sometimes what the kids are thinking, though?  I imagine Lily is wondering why we have to go to all this trouble when we could just as well snuggle on the couch together and eat a bag of Skittles.

Speaking of Easter treats, have you seen some of the recipes floating around the web?  Some of them look almost too pretty to eat... almost.

Whimsical Spring Bark - this looks too sweet, even for me.  But I love the colors!

lovefromtheoven.com

Bunny Bait - such a cute name and looks even cuter!

Muddy Buddies - Easter Style - we call this Monkey Munch at the Rush house.

countrychiccottage.net

These cute little pancakes are more my speed - quick, simple, and no recipe needed. 

tasteofhome.com

I would love to try some of them but I have decide it they're worth making yet another trip to HEB.

Kind of like trying to decide if hunting eggs is worth a few Skittles.

P.S. - Need a few new Easter egg filler ideas? Well, here's 37 of them.