2018 Easter Egg Smackdown

Ah, the Easter Egg Smackdown, that beautiful annual tradition of fun, mess, and tears! 

This year we had to squeeze in the smackdown between sessions of General Conference. Andrew wasn't around for dying Easter eggs (again) so I called in my mom and brother for backup (more on that later). I wasn't planning on having all the eggs compete (we made a lot because we were going to have a lot of family over for Easter dinner) but Andrew made up the bracket without me present and included every single egg—all 33 of them (minus a few that were too cracked to compete)!

Here are a few of the contenders...

Miriam's BB-8:

Benjamin's B-10:

Zoë's...something:

Rachel's Chickety:

And Rachel's Prince Albert (we're not obsessed with any historical docu-dramas, not at all):

And my Cherry Bomb:

Please ignore the quality of any and all recent photographs. The silly photographer didn't notice that the camera had been knocked into the "scenery" function. So...yeah.

Here's our setup this year (right by the front door, like classy people):

The stairs gave us a lovely aerial perspective of the event:

The kids were all on a rollercoaster of emotion: excited, devastated, elated, angry, happy, sad... There were plenty of smiles and a whole lot of pouty faces, a few doors were slammed, kids were jumping up and down with joy and throwing themselves on the floor in agony. It was great.

Here's a (blurry) picture of Benjamin sending his egg into the fray:

He was one of the more emotional children this year (he's about at that age) and kept accidentally injuring his eggs. He tossed a few into the arena instead of sliding them across the floor and once (when he was trying to slide his egg) he ended up putting his body weight on his sliding hand and smashed his poor egg to smithereens.

Both he and Zoë had to take a (self-imposed) break from competing for a while because they were getting so worked up about things. They sat on the stairs together and pouted:




At one point Miriam and Benjamin were competing against each other and after their eggs collided I was checking them for damage. Benjamin brought me his egg first and I said, "Oh, that's a pretty big crack..." Miriam immediately declared victory, whooping loudly. Benjamin ran upstairs crying, completely crushed.

And the winner is...

But then I looked at Miriam's egg and her egg had sustained worse damage, meaning that Benjamin had actually won a round (he hardly ever made it through a round unscathed) so I ran upstairs to tell him so. We came back downstairs with Benjamin beaming, only to find Miriam had dissolved into a puddle of tears because she'd lost.

Seriously—why do we do this?!

Somehow, year after year, loss after loss, the kids end up thinking it's fun. But, boy, it's exhausting to go through all the emotional legwork necessary to pull it off!

Here's (crazy-eyed) Miriam cheering for Rachel while Zoë nervously looks on (I can't remember who Rachel's competing against here):



Since Andrew missed colouring eggs, he didn't have any eggs competing so he stepped in for others when (a) they would otherwise be competing against themselves or (b) Zoë or Benjamin were too upset to compete. The best carnage happened when he was racing for one of those two. My egg nearly tore his egg in two. It was pretty amazing.



Here he is playing again:

I don't know why Zoë looks so lifeless in the picture above because she was actually quite animated...

 

We have a few pictures left...you're almost there.

Getting Zoë to release her egg on the count of three was rather difficult. She simply didn't grasp the concept of "one, two, three, go!" and would sometimes let go of her egg on count two and other times continue counting to six or seven.

Here's a picture of me helping Benjamin perfect his sliding stroke while applying an appropriate amount of pressure on his egg (gently does it, Ben).

Here's Zoë giving a little pout because Benjamin won that round...

Here's a picture of Miriam taking her last shot...

And here's the moment I realized that I'd pulverized Benjamin's egg (when I had been intending to not to).

And, yes, his pants are on backwards. With how often he puts his pants on backwards I've decided he must be on the knee-preservation program or something (like, is he trying to wear the knees out on both sides of his jeans?). I swear he has holes in the knees of 95% of his pants.

Anyway, Rachel and I competed against each other in the championship round with Prince Albert and Cherry Bomb, respectively. Rachel beat me. So I pouted. Because that's what we do around here.

Here's Rachel gloating over her poor grieving siblings (and me)...

And here she is, front and center, looking all smug while we continue to feel sorry for ourselves in the background...

Here's Rachel with her winning egg:



And here's the final bracket:

And here's (some of) what we turned into three dozen deviled eggs and a huge bowl of egg salad for sandwiches.

A fun (and/or terrible) time was had by all!

I'm already looking forward to all the drama again next year. Who will triumph? Who will fail?

I feel like we need to make a chintzy trophy to pass around or something, but for now a cheesy blogpost will do. Well done, Rachel, our 2018 champion!

2018: Rachel

2017: Miriam

2016: Miriam

2015: Me
2014: Me
2013: Miriam
2012: Andrew
2011: Rachel
2010: Me
2009: Patrick Q. Mason 
2008: Me