We held our Easter Egg Smackdown on Sunday after church. Miriam went and played the organ—and had a marvelous time doing so! We recently got a new organ installed at the church and because it was Easter and the new organ has fun, fully-functioning stops, she went wild with the bells and chimes.
Here are the boys setting up the bracket:
To get through things quickly (because I have so much other writing to do)...we slid eggs across the floor and crashed them into each other to see who would win and who would crack. Everyone mostly kept their emotions in check. Alexander got a little growly at times. Zoë cried (but only for a little bit). And overall we just had a good time.
Here's me and Benjamin squaring off:
He won.
I was out ridiculously fast this year. You know, I have this theory that the egg dye actually weakens the shell. The one year Aunt Katharine competed with us her family brought eggs that they hadn't dyed and she ended up winning. This year the kids had a number of eggs that they decorated in...ways other than dying them. And—not to spoil things, but—one of the eggs that hadn't been dunked won.
The dye contains vinegar, and as we all know vinegar...erodes...eggshell.
Or perhaps you didn't know that. But there's this whole experiment where you leave an egg in vinegar overnight and the next day all that's left is the membrane, the shell having completely dissolved.
So, I'm suspicious about these un-dyed eggs.
Not that Benjamin beat me in this case because his egg was not dyed. Clearly his egg is blue.
But still. It's a theory.
Here's Rachel and Zoë checking out the damage to their eggs:
And some more pictures from our competition:
Here's the single round Phoebe competed in:
Guys...there are just so many pictures...
Oh, Alexander got sad after one round, so Phoebe ran to give him a hug. He is one of her favourite people to hug, we think because he is about her size so she can actually hug him (and not, like, his leg or arm or whatever).
Zoë had to get in on the action as well:
Look—here I am squaring off against Benjamin again!
I lost. Again. But you can see that this time it's against one of the eggs he didn't dye.
Here's Benjamin and Rachel:
Like Phoebe, Grandpa only played a token round:
He doesn't get into the sport like Daddy does (also, he hates hard-boiled eggs).
Rachel split Daddy's egg almost in half!
Here's Zoë competing against Alexander:
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It looks like their eggs missed each other entirely...
Here's Miriam preparing to take Alexander out:
And here he is sending his egg off sailing across the floor:
He won! (At least...the battle...the war, as they say, was far from over).
Here's Miriam going against Rachel:
Here are the kids inspecting the damage:
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I'm pretty sure she won this round.
Here's Zoë looking mighty serious about taking down her competetor:
She really wanted her fox egg to win this year (she never been the grand champion, ever, which she maintains is worse than the fact that Andrew has a longer losing streak than years she's been alive because at least he's won once (and she really might have a point about that)). For how much she wanted to win, she really held things together pretty well.
Here she is pleading for everyone to say her egg was unharmed...
And here she is moaning, "Nooooo!"
And here's evidence of those years I told you about:
Don't worry, Zoë! You'll win...sometime. (We played Scrabble the other day and...she won that...so it's not like she never wins anything! Sometimes she does!)
Here's Benjamin, feeling pretty confident in the final four:
Alexander was already out, but he was rooting for Benjamin, so he was pretty excited when Benjamin took Rachel out:
He's flying in both of these pictures!
Here's Miriam coming up to the plate with "Polar Bear in a Snow Storm," an egg she left completely white:
Andrew abbreviated it as PBiaSS and kept calling it "Peanut Butter," which was pretty funny.
I think I said above that Benjamin took Rachel out. But here's Miriam taking her out again, so I guess she wasn't out out at that point. She had two eggs in the final four, so we thought for sure she'd make it to the final two.
(Some of these pictures I'm sharing just to show how chaotic it is over here, with everyone moving around all the time and literally climbing the walls)
Here's Rachel realizing that she is now out out:
And here's Miriam excited to have taken Rachel out:
Miriam and Benjamin were the final two eggs in the championship—Tech vs. Polar Bear in a Snow Storm (aka Peanut Butter).
And the winner was...
Benjamin! It was Benjamin! For the second year in a row!
He danced around the house singing some wordless "doo-doo-doo-doo-doo" song before we finally calmed him down long enough to take a decent picture.
He was extra excited because he named this egg after some character in some show that met a tragic end that he was really torn up about on Saturday night. Cried himself to sleep on his huge pillow.
Here's Miriam pretending to be sad:
And here's Benjamin not pretending to be thrilled:
Congratulations, Benjamin!
Now, about my theory on the un-dyed eggs...
I'll go over the rest of the names below, but let's focus on the final four for now: Tech (Benjamin), Eye of Sauron (Rachel), Gregg (Rachel), and Peanut Butter Polar Bear in a Snow Storm (Miriam) all had not been dyed. If that's not suspicious, I don't know what is!
Jimmy B
Death's Sting
Egg
Bluey
Halloween
Easter
Eye of Sauron (had one fewer round than other eggs)
My eye!
Bluey II
Link's Awakening
CNPUF (??)
West Egg
Bingo
Gregg (had one fewer round than other eggs)
Grogu
Thanksgiving
Exploding Empire (???)
Fox
Egg-cetera
Jason Potluck (had one fewer round than other eggs, and was un-dyed)
Blue
NYE
Polar Bear in a Snow Storm
St. Patrick's Day
East Egg
Boko
This list may have complicated my theory, since we can see that not only were 3/4 of the final four not dyed, but they also had one fewer round than other eggs. We'll have to see how to level the playing field next year.
I helped, too, after taking this picture...by taking Phoebe out of the mix!
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