Easter Egg Smackdown 2019

We dyed about a million eggs (okay, only sixty) in preparation for this year's Easter Egg Smackdown. As Andrew pointed out, everyone quite enjoys deviled eggs, so eating that many hard boiled eggs shouldn't be terribly difficult for a family our size. Plus, we all had so many ideas for decorating eggs this year! We could hardly contain ourselves.

Any idea someone thought of was immediately countered by another, usually involving a pun. I decided to make a Pokeball, for example, and the next thing I know, Rachel's drawing spikes on an egg to make a "poky ball."

Then she decorated an egg as Eleven (from Stranger Things) so I decorated an egg with an eleven. 

And then Miriam made a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle egg and Rachel made a crass joke about making a turd-le egg (which is a word we don't ordinarily use in this household, but for the sake of a good pun we're willing to look past a whole slew of things) and so...I made a rainbow poop emoji egg.

me and Miriam showing off our, uh, turtle eggs

Plus we had there little ones who were scribbling on and dying eggs as fast as they possibly could. Alexander was thrilled to be allowed to colour on something other than paper. He's really my worst offender when it comes to that crime and I frankly can't tell if it's because he's sneaky or because I'm too tired to worry about it as much (I do know that keeping drawing materials picked up is a battle I'm constantly losing).

I left him unattended with a crayon for longer than I should have and he got bored and started to eat it. I said, "Alexander! Are you eating that crayon?!" and he looked at me, with bits of fuchsia wax dribbling down his chin, batted his eyelashes sweetly, and said, "No."



 He doesn't quite have a handle on the whole yes/no thing yet.



After Rachel sketched her idea out on paper before trying it on her egg, Zoë decided she'd follow suit. She drew a happy face (with legs) and then painstakingly replicated it on her egg.

Rachel's plans for Eleven

Here she is waiting for her egg to finish dying (she died all of her eggs purple this year):



Here's sweet Benjamin drawing on his eggs, which he aggressively named "cracker" and "firecracker" and "ball of fire" and other such things.

 

Here's Miriam with the start of a Ninja Turtle egg:

And here she is dipping an egg into blue dye (she called this one "The Swede" since the other half of the egg is yellow):

 

And here's Rachel laughing about something (oh, she's laughing because I discovered her "poky ball" egg and she thinks she's hilarious (she's not wrong)):

 Zoë loved sitting and working by Daddy:

She started to imitate him, which was adorable:

Just waiting for those eggs to dye...

Today we had our 12th Annual Easter Egg Smackdown with Andrew's in-town siblings. Emily wasn't able to come because she was up in Idaho and they were just down not too long ago for Grandpa Frank's birthday party. And Sarah couldn't come because, well, she's in prison. Which 100% is not funny. Except that by now you've probably learned that our humour gets a little rowdy at times.

Well, Emily called this afternoon so that she could talk to everybody and Grandpa put her on speaker phone and said he would pass her around to everyone, which is something he does when Sarah calls sometimes. Andrew and I somehow completely missed out on the announcement that it was Emily on the phone so we believed we were talking to Sarah (phones garble voices, you know, and the room was rather boisterous).

So the phone voice said, "Who's there?"

Grandpa said, "Everybody."

"Who's everybody?"

"EVERYBODY!" said everybody.

Rachel said, "We invited Sarah but she couldn't make it."*

And then Grandpa said, "Yeah. She was...detained."

And the entire room erupted with laughter.

I could not believe that Rachel and Grandpa were cracking such brazen jokes to Sarah! Her stint in prison is not undeserved but it's still difficult and is a situation we've been trying to approach with compassion and forgiveness.

But the voice on the phone just chuckled and responded, "That sounds like a lot of people. I'm just glad I was actually invited to a family function...for once."

"Well, let me start passing you around," Grandpa said.

It took Andrew and I several more minutes to realize that we were talking to Emily and not Sarah! The joke was still funny (and still bordering irreverent) but now we couldn't stop laughing about how scandalized Andrew and I were from thinking the butt of the joke had been on the other end of the telephone. (Hopefully she'll be in good spirits when she reads this later on down the road and will see that this was just a teensy bit amusing).

Anyway, here are the pictures from the smackdown. Zoë was thrilled to participate and thought her smiley face egg, Bob, would be a good candidate this year. In fact, she would make it to the final match with Bob (but her victory was snatched at the last minute):

Here's Rachel with the egg she proudly dubbed Constipated Rainbow:

Here's Kayl getting ready to take an unknown competitor down:

Katharine and Kayl nearly swept us all out of the competition! Their eggs seemed nearly uncrackable, so being the poor sports we are, we developed this theory that dyed eggs are weaker than undyed eggs (Katharine and Kayl simply drew faces on their eggs with permanent markers, see, so their shells remained pristine while our eggs had been dipped in vinegar, which promotes decalcification). 

Andrew and Katharine on the playing field

Later Katharine joked that perhaps it was simply due to their hard water (which is also a good theory because our eggs were cooked in the InstantPot, so they were...steamed...not hard boiled, while Katharine's eggs were hard boiled in a pot of hard water, thus strengthening the shell).

Here's Shayla and Rachel before playing Pokeball against Poky Ball:

Shayla is almost 37 weeks pregnant and can't wait for this baby to come out

Here's some of the general chaos that was ever present during the Smackdown (all the kids dancing around screaming and cheering):

Kayl had a whole system by the end of the competition; here he is perfecting his form before sliding his egg:

Here's Rachel laughing about the crater that disqualified her egg from advancing:

Here's Katharine competing against Jacob, while Kayl watches:

Here's me and Shayla having a go:

Here's Benjamin being Benjamin:

And Miriam and Katharine's eggs about to collide:

Here's cute Kayl getting ready:

Here's Carter watching as his mom and dad compete against each other:

Here's Zoë silently wishing for her egg to emerge unscathed:

Here's Rachel adjudicating after Miriam and Kayl's battle:

I guess she decided on a rematch, and now Miriam is upset because she lost:

We made at least three children cry, so it was a pretty good year for that. It's good for them—more of that, uh, Challenging Parent Behaviour stuff.

Here's Rachel and Miriam competing:

And Miriam and Katharine:

The final round was Zoë, with Bob, and Katharine, with Cat. Here's Zoë just after sending her egg sailing:

And here are this year's champions, Katharine and Cat:

Here's our final bracket:

And here's a close up of the carnage:

A fun time was had by all, and we had a big plate of deviled eggs with our Easter dinner!

And, in case you're interested in looking back at past years, here's a list of previous winners (with links to each write up):

2019: Aunt Katharine
2018: Rachel
2017: Miriam
2016: Miriam
2015: Me
2014: Me
2013: Miriam
2012: Andrew
2011: Rachel
2010: Me
2009: Patrick Q. Mason
2008: Me

We've really got to get Benjamin on that list (maybe next year is your year, buddy)!

* I realize Rachel would have been speaking about Sarah in third person here. But, it seemed to fit the character of the conversation, okay?