I always loved egg hunts when I was young so it’s been fun to see how much my kids enjoy them. What I have learned as a parent is that hiding the eggs is quite a process.
First is coming up with what to put in the eggs. Next is remembering to count all the eggs before you hide them and after they are collected so you make sure the kids retrieved all them. Then there’s remembering where you put all the eggs in the yard. And finally there’s the challenge of making the hiding places both easy and hard so that the younger kids can get some and the older kids are challenged.
One of my favorite Easter memories was my Grandma Cahill’s egg hunts. She lived in a small condo with a tiny backyard. And she was a master at hiding eggs.
The eight of us Cahill cousins could never find all the eggs she hid every Easter. After the kids tried, the adults would begin searching the yard for the few missing eggs and at least one always remained missing every year despite the search efforts. I remember finding one or two at random times in the year playing in her yard but wouldn’t be surprised if eggs remained missing for over a year. She definitely had a skill when it came to hiding eggs for an egg hunt.
The other thing my Grandma did was that she always hid money in the eggs. There were a few eggs that had a dollar bill in them and boy did we think we hit the jack pot if we found those when we were young. She would also have some old collectors’ coins she would mix in among the quarters, pennies, dimes and nickels like the Eisenhower dollar and Kennedy half dollars. I now realize those would be the jackpot if we saved them!
The other part of this memory is the fun we had gathering for these hunts every Easter. It’s so hard to get family together now so I really appreciate the fact that all my Cahill cousins could gather for these hunts and dinner every Saturday before Easter.
So as Easter approaches this year, shout out to all those organizing egg hunts which I learned as a parent is not an easy process. But a special shout out to my Grandma Cahill for her simple but fun egg hunts which always stumped the entire family.
It’s a shame Grandma never got to meet my kids and organize hunts for them as I know my kids would have loved them. But in her tradition I always make sure to fill some eggs with coins. I know I am not nearly the master at hiding eggs like she was but I’m so glad to carry on the egg hunt tradition she had with my kids.
And on an unrelated note, how 80s is this photo? I can’t figure out why I am wearing a shirt and pants with pandas on them for Easter. I had no fashion sense then and not surprising, still don’t have any. But seriously pandas on Easter?
