Mae unrhyw beth sy'n werth ei wneud yn werth ei wneud wych!

(Anything worth doing is worth doing Fabulously!!!)

Presenting the 

2nd Annual Renberg Family Easter Egg Hunt!!!

To truly understand my obsession with the Easter Egg Hunt I must take you back in time to the days of my youth. I can't place exactly when my first memory of Easter Egg hunting happened - I have pretty much blocked out most memories from my childhood, so everything is a little fuzzy - but what I do remember is that Easter Egg Hunts were epic adventures. My father, who has a tinge of the CDO (It's like OCD, except alphabetical like it should be) was a ruthless Easter Bunny, and if you wanted your candy, you were going to have to work for it. Each child had their own color of Eggs - Todd was Blue, Kevin was Green, I was Yellow, Karen was Pink, and Carisa was Purple - and we would tear through the house trying to find them. (You will notice that I said through the house, our father found that there are a lot more difficult places to hide eggs inside instead of outside, so we always did our Egg Hunts inside.) 

As I said, my father was ruthless. He would put the egg in a plastic bag and float it in the toilet tank. He would bury it in the flour. In the couch cushions. In the bag of cat food. Anywhere that you could ever think of, he probably put an egg there, as well as places you would never think to look. One year Todd did not find all of his eggs, and my father could not remember where it was - mom found it two months later when she got to the bottom of the laundry detergent - which led to the formation of "The List," a pad of paper that my father carried around with all of the locations of the hidden eggs.

My first experience in being the Easter Bunny was at my Grandparents house in Oregon. I can't remember why we were there for Easter, but with my mom, any reason to go visit her family was a good reason, so we were there. My mom has 9 brothers and sisters, which means that I have approximately 15,000 cousins, all of whom wanted to find eggs. I can't remember who was supposed to be in charge, but I overheard them say that they were just going to put all the eggs out on the lawn and just let the kids go and get them. I remember being appalled by the idea of big kids getting to get Easter Eggs without having to work for them, and I informed everyone that I was taking over. (Of course they didn't fight me on this, they all wanted to sit around eating warm bread and jam and talking into all hours of the night, don't try to pretend otherwise!)

Here I must interject for a moment and tell you about Easter in England. Easter Eggs in England used to be big chocolate eggs filled with little candies. Then the candy companies started to put full size candy bars outside the egg, giving you a box with a big chocolate egg and a couple of candy bars. While I do like the chocolate egg thing, the thing that boggles my mind is that there is no hiding and finding of the eggs, the fat little English kids just expect you to give the box to them. When we would tell them about hunting for Easter Eggs they would react with abject horror and exclaim, "You have to work and find your eggs?!?!" Fat little bastards....


Anyway, I separated the cousins by age and egg finding ability and hid the eggs in different locations throughout the yard. The toddlers were just out in the grass, the next older kids had theirs throughout the swingset, the rambunctious boy cousins had all of their eggs hid up in the climbing tree - Which has since been cut down...it doesn't matter that I have only been to Grandma and Grandpa's house once in the last 15 years...I know that the tree is gone, and I am still not ok with that - and my poor sister Karen, as the oldest egg hunter, had her eggs hidden so ridiculously hard that I had to help her find them! (I had them inside irrigation pipes, on top of outdoor light fixtures that were only visible if you were standing on the other side of the yard...it was epic win.)

Anyway, a few years later my sister was getting married over the Easter Weekend, and so there was lots of family in town, and because of the stress of trying to get things done, someone had suggested that we skip the Easter Egg Hunt. I think they just knew that if they made such a ridiculous suggesting that I would volunteer to do it, which of course I did, but this time I had a wife to help. I don't think Beki truly grasped my obsession for Easter Egg Hunts, in fact I think she is just now figuring out that they must be epic, but as relatively newlyweds it was fun hiding eggs for the 15,000 cousins together. My favorite part about this one is that some of the eggs had dollar bills in them, and   my cousin Angela, who was 21 at the time I think, was running around finding eggs, shaking them and putting them back if they made sound, only keeping them if they made no sound!!

Which brings us to this year's 2nd Annual Renberg Family Easter Egg Hunt. By the title you can probably guess that we did one of these last year, which we did, you can find it here: http://therenbergband.blogspot.com/2010/04/spring-break-and-great-easter-egg-hunt.html
This year we originally started with 5 kids, then we invited 2 more, then one wanted to bring a friend, then we invited 2 more, then we invited another one, so in the end we had 11 Easter Egg Hunter's and 11 Parental units all in my little house!! (Mostly we were outside.) We had it set up so that when they got there the kids had eggs to dye, cookies to frost and pictures to color until everyone arrived. Once they were all there I explained the rules - things like how they should avoid the giant trash piles that I have in my yard and not to look in the shed flower box because there is a bird nest and mommy bird will attack you (Trust me on that one) - as well as assigning everyone their colors.

Parents with kids 4 and older got a "list" of the egg locations in case they needed some hints (and in the case of the poor 10 year olds, lots of hints were needed!) but if you had a 3 year old or younger I was expecting you to be able to help them find all their eggs. (Apparently my expectations are a little high...) After the eggs we had hot dogs, hamburgers, and sausages and the children chased each other around for the next hour and a half. It was a lot of fun, totaly fabulous, and all our friends who are stuck in town homes with no backyards got to go on a real Easter Egg Hunt. (And the real reason I do it - I get to be the one in control of the social situation!) Anyway, enough talking, here are the pictures!

 This is the night before as I am filling another 30 eggs - notice the high quality candy, I don't mess around - Starburst Jelly Beans are the one beans worth your money, Reeces Pieces Eggs are to die for, Peanut Butter Cups speak for themselves, Robin Eggs cause my wife likes them, and M&M's because I think they deport you if you don't use them. 

 Owen has become a pretty awesome helper, if you give him a task, he'll usually do it!

 Yes, that is two layers of Puffed Rice Eggs...so delicious!!!

 Owen was not a good Egg Hunter last year...luckily he has improved!

 Besides the 10 year olds - to whom I was pretty merciless - Owen's eggs were the next hardest to find. Sorry Buddy, that is what you get, I have high expectations!

 This one was tricky because it was above eye level - for some reason we don't look up for Easter Eggs...

 I did give him a couple easy ones...no really I think there were only 2 that were easy.

 This one he could only see by standing at the back fence, he found it eventually with some help from Mom.

 Funny Face!!!

 Just so you can get an idea of people hunting for eggs all over the yard, and me helping one of the 10 year olds...

 This was Owen's last egg...he thought it was the funniest place for an egg to be. (That is inside the outdoor walkway light)

 While everyone was finishing up their egg hunting, I fired up the grill, and then got some grilling tips from Lumi, I always appreciate grilling tips!

 Half of the children ate at the table...

 While the others lounged in lawn chairs of sat on the bricks!

And after a long day of being Fabulous...I was out cold...thanks for taking this picture honey...