Mashed Potatoes for Easter

Well, we broke with our tradition of not doing anything for Easter, and we had an Easter egg hunt. Far from being a hedonistic, pagan ritual, we actually had a great deal of fun. Some wonderful grandma's and grandpa's sent us Easter money, so we were able to go to Walmart and buy some of those plastic eggs and a couple bags of candy, a two dozen eggs and a tie dye egg dying kit and a glitter egg dying kit. The girls had a lot of fun choosing their Easter baskets, and then the whole family came home and stuffed the plastic Easter eggs with all the candy. Reagan didn't quite get the idea and kept stuffing jelly beans in her mouth, but on the whole we had a great deal of fun. The next day, I learned how to boil eggs WITHOUT cracking the shells, and then Kate and I dyed eggs all day long. We just took our time, so whenever she got tired of painting, I let her go play and then when she was all done playing we'd go back to egg dying. The next day was Saturday, and someone from our church emailed me a recipe for Easter cookies. It was really fun to make, and after every step we read a scripture about Jesus' journey to the cross.

It went kind of like this: we took whole pecans and beat them and read the scripture about Jesus being flogged. Then we took vinegar and read the scripture about Jesus being given vinegar to drink. I never realized how mean that was until I sniffed the stuff while reading the scripture. Then we added salt and read about Jesus crying. Then we took egg whites and beat them until they were stiff and mixed everything together. The whiteness of the cookies represented the purity of Christ's sacrifice, the pecans looked like rocks for the rocky tomb that Jesus was buried in. Last of all we put the cookies in the oven that had been heating up this whole time. We turned the oven off, and put tape around the oven so that no one could get in to eat the cookies. The girls were sad to leave the cookies in the oven. They wanted to eat them right now, but they had to wait until Easter morning for the cookies to be done. Next morning we took the cookies out and bit into them. They were hollow! Just like the tomb on Easter morning.

Then we had the Easter egg hunt.

Reagan wasn't too interested in it until one of the plastic eggs cracked open and candy fell out.

THEN she started hyperventilating as she ran from place to place stuffing as many eggs as possible into her hands becaus she couldn't remember to put them in her basket. It was a lot of fun watching the kids walk by a brightly colored egg over and over again. Finally all the eggs were collected, I double checked and counted them all, so we went back inside. The girls of course opened the plastic eggs first and started gorging themselves on candy while I cracked one of the hardboiled eggs and started to eat it. Reagan saw me and frowned. She looked at her plastic egg filled with candy and then looked at mine. Then she came over to my chair and said, "Mommy, I want mashed potatoes, too!" I handed her my hardboiled egg and she said, "thank you," and stuffed it into her mouth. I didn't know her mouth was that big, but the whole egg fit into her mouth and there was still room for her to chew. It took her a few minutes, but she managed to swallow the egg, excuse me, mashed potatoes, and then she held up her plastic egg and said, "I like my egg, mommy," and then ate some more jelly beans.