Easter Egg Smackdown 2017

I dyed eggs with the kids all on my own this year, as I've done a couple other times in memory. Somehow Andrew manages to be gone right around Easter quite a lot. As my eloquent friend Lindsay put so perfectly on Facebook, "...We succeeded in accomplishing the most stressful of the conventional traditions. I'm all for traditions, but anyone else wish we could do away with the small children dunking eggs in cups of dye every year?"

Seriously.

Every year I give myself a pep talk about being the happy, cheerful parent that I know I can be, but then within the first two minutes two or three eggs get smashed and a cup or two of dye nearly tip over and I'm basically hyperventilating through the process. My, but isn't this fun!?

The kids put the dye pellets into the cups and then labeled the papers with their guess of what colour it would turn out to be. They were pretty spot on, except for purple and red.

Here's Rachel designing her egg on paper first:

Here's Zoë pretending she's ambidextrous—and by that I mean she had to have both hands working at the same time:

Here she is after she remembered that she is actually somewhat familiar with holding pencils:

Here's Miriam working on her "lucky" egg:

And here's Benjamin scribbling away on another one of his—he burned through all of his eggs within the first couple of minutes (oddly enough, in the same time frame that all the breakage occurred (he dropped two and Zoë smacked one on the table for whatever reason)):

Here are all the kids working away:

The older girls were a lot more meticulous in their designs:

Here are the contestants we ended up with (after initially disqualifying the ones that had been cracked the day before):

For someone who thought hunting for eggs in the grass was ludicrous, Zoë sure was accepting of our annual Easter Egg Smackdown tradition.

It probably ranks pretty far up there on her list of "best days of my life."

She loved cheering on her siblings, she loved competing with her siblings, she loved the whole process. Sure, she dropped a few eggs, but we all forgave her...eventually.

Here's Benjamin, fully recovered from the trauma of having his little sister drop his precious egg, competing with one of Miriam's eggs (Candy Swirl) against another one of Miriam's eggs (Strawberry).

And here they are comparing damages:

Honestly, none of us had any hope after the first two rounds. Although Moana was technically Zoë's egg, it was made by Miriam, and the rest of the eggs in round three were all Miriam's as well. So by that point she'd already won the smackdown. The only question was which one of her creations would take the title of winner.

The upside of this was that since she was constantly competing against herself, her siblings all got to take turns competing against her!

Here's Benjamin trying to wedge himself between Zoë and Andrew:

And here's Zoë trying to shove Benjamin out of the way so she could get back to doing what she was doing before...

...which was crashing her car into Daddy's arm (naturally).



Here are a couple of pictures of Rachel and Miriam competing:

And scrutinizing their eggs for damages:

Here's Zoë having another turn:

Here's a sad-faced Miriam, pretty sure she lost this round (I think this is Lucky Charm—she was sure Lucky Charm would carry her to the win, but alas...)

And here's Rachel, very seriously sending her egg off down the court:

In the end, Shooting Star (one of Miriam's eggs, of course) won the title of 2017 Easter Egg Smackdown Champion. Here it is, on the right, looking pretty good next to some of its smashed-up peers:

 Here's our final bracket:

Though there were a few tears, I'm happy to report that a fun time was had by all. And we had a delicious Easter dinner of egg salad and random chips and crackers that we found in the cupboard because we were woefully underprepared for a traditional Easter meal...or any meal—our loaf of bread also even gone moldy so we weren't even able to throw together a decent sandwich! But we enjoyed each other (and are all so happy to have Daddy back home) and that's all that matters.

In case you're interested, here's a list of all the past winners (Miriam and I really need to step down our game and give everyone else a chance (alternatively the rest of y'all could just bring it on)):

2017: Miriam
2016: Miriam
2015: Me
2014: Me
2013: Miriam
2012: Andrew
2011: Rachel
2010: Me
2009: Patrick Q. Mason (yup, the author of Planted)
2008: Me