The traditional coloring of eggs. Easter is not Easter without it. Fortunately, Tom had Good Friday off, so he came home Thursday evening and was able to color eggs with us Friday afternoon. After getting everything set up and giving each kid 9 eggs, we set them loose.
Declan was a bit clueless at first because this was really his first year doing eggs and being old enough to understand it. He used his hands a lot and ended up with extremely colorful hands. He was pretty much a mess and after a few minutes I had him stripped down to his diaper. He would grab an egg sitting in one dye with his hand and immediately drop it in another color. Fortunately, he had only the two blues by him for the most part. After first he just used the two eggs I gave him and dyed them over and over again. They got pretty dark. He did try using the cotton swabs ... it was one of the yellow ones ... I noticed he was using it just as he dipped the yellow cotton swab into the cup of green dye. He was excited to give it all a try and had a lot of fun.
Payden is my child who loves to color. She's really careful and has been coloring in the lines since she was three. Dying eggs was similar for her. She took her time. She loved to soak her eggs A LOT and had many deep, rich-colored eggs. She also usually had about half the dyes in front of her at all times. She liked dipping eggs in one color and then another to create new colors. She also tried the cotton swabs as well. She was very focused on her work, especially for a four year old.
Taylor ... if you know her, you know she tends to be constantly in motion. She is a quick thinker. She likes to get things done and get it done fast. Always has. I had a hard time getting pictures of her because she was constantly grabbing eggs, dipping them, and so forth. In fact, she probably finished a good fifteen minutes before the next person did, yet in that time she: used rubber bands to make stripes, colored with the cotton swabs of dye, wrote words on her eggs, put stickers on her eggs, and did the traditional dipping. She was just super fast at it, which you can see in her eggs as they are mostly light-colored.
Shelby was slow and methodical and careful. She's a perfectionist, so, as always, she finished last. Some of the other kids saw her undone eggs and begged to color them. She enjoyed trying different methods of decorating her eggs: writing words on them, wrapping with rubber bands to create stripes, using the cotton swabs filled with dye (something new I found this year) as well as the usual dipping in dye.
Tom joined in for a bit. He loves doing this, and we usually get some unique eggs from him. Unfortunately, he always has a flare-up with his bad lung each year (and it's worse in Texas) and this is when it happened. He felt pretty miserable all weekend long and ended up on a Z-pack by the end of the weekend (i.e. used to treat bronchitis). He stuck it out as long as he could, did a few eggs, and then ended up relaxing on the couch while we finished up.
Here they all are. Notice Taylor's eggs are almost all finished, Shelby doesn't have a single one done, and the others are about halfway done. Love it!
The finished eggs. Shelby's are the bottom left. Taylor's the bottom right. Payden's, mostly, the top left. Declan's the top right.
I love the holidays. I love the traditions we make. I love this time with my family!
