Easter Egg Smackdown 2024

 Like many families in the world this week, we dyed Easter eggs. Below you'll see (from left to right, in columns) Phoebe's, Miriam's, Zoë's, Alexander's, and Benjamin's eggs, respectively:

We were big on puns this year (though that might not actually be different from other years). For example, here are Rachel's eggs:

From left to right she has "Alas, Poor Yor-egg!" then "Egg-lizabeth Bennet" and finally, "Homelette."

And here are "Alas, Poor Yor-egg!" and "Homelette" with one of Miriam's creations, "Egg tu, Brutus?" (he has 23 stabbed wounds, naturally):

Here are Miriam's eggs all together—"Inside Out," "Egg Tu, Brutus?" and "Egg-alité":

Andrew's cleverest egg was the Shai Hegglud (in the middle):

His other eggs are "Green Lantern" and "Pastel Tricolors."

I thought my eggs were pretty clever (however lacking in artistry they were):

I have "Uovo Ragno" (Spider-Man in Italian is Uomo Ragno"), "Яйцо (Yaiksa, technically "yaitso" but it sounds a bit like yikes, so the bilingual pun works (it's funny!)), and "L'œuf (L'ooph)" (which is French for The Egg, but also what you might say if you were to bump into something).

And that's about where I stopped taking pictures of people's individual egg creations because the kids were raring to go. But we had some other clever names. Phoebe's weren't particularly thrilling. She had "Ph Yellow," "Ph Orange," and "Ph Blue." But Alexander nabbed "Lady Egg-beth," Benjamin made a great "Link," and Zoë created a wonderful character called "Nofalofagin." 

Here's Zoë with Nofalofagin:

Oh, and she raced one of Rachel's creations "Rosencracked" (who should have been in the Shakespeare group picture, I guess, but he missed out).

We were dropping eggs left and right while we were dying them. It was absolute chaos. We're lucky everyone ended up with three to compete in this year's Easter Egg Smackdown!

I, personally, had very bad luck. All my eggs lost on their very first round, so I was kicked off the bracket rather quickly.

That was fine because no one else really wanted to take pictures, anyway. Losing meant I was free to take pictures! 

Here's Rachel in disbelief that Egg-lizabeth Bennet lost on her first round as well:

And here she is comparing damages after going up (and losing) against Dad again:

Alas! Poor Yor-egg!

Here's Miriam taking another turn:

Here's Phoebe going against Benjamin (if I'm not mistaken, she won this round):

Phoebe needed quite a bit of support with her egg rolling in the beginning:

But she started getting the hang of things:

Here are a few pictures of the kids with their game faces on:

Let's see...here's Miriam playing against Daddy again:

She lost, and rewarded us all with a lovely little pouty face (though I don't know why she would have expected Julius Caesar to be triumphant in the end, anyway):

This is really such a silly little tradition, but I love how invested everyone gets in watching and cheering each other on...as well as on winning:

It's been a good way to teach the kids about sportsmanship. Here's Zoë having a little pouting session after a loss:

We told her to cheer up because she still had eggs in the running. And here's Alexander not pouting:

And here he is running around excitedly after a big win:

And here's Zoë celebrating after defeating Miriam:

If she's not careful she's going to drop that egg!

Here's Zoë and Phoebe challenging each other:

Phoebe had been doing so well with assistance that we decided to let her try handling a match on her own. She...did not do well. She went to roll her egg and instead just...put all of her bodyweight on it...and smashed it.

"I win by forfeit!" Zoë celebrated.

Phoebe didn't know enough to care, so she didn't pout about losing...

But she was a little upset that "this crunchy paper" was coming off of her egg.

She tried desperately to put Humpty Dumpty back together again for a few minutes... (look at her little pout!)

And then she discovered that peeling the shell off was much more satisfying (and doable) than her attempts to put the shell back together...so she started peeling the egg.

Here's Benjamin going against Daddy in one of the very last rounds:

How Green Lantern (Daddy's egg) even made it this far is a wonder because that egg was in bad shape! But somehow it managed to crack Benjamin's egg without causing further damage to itself and progressed to the next round (where Zoë's Nofalafagin quickly took it out).

Here's Zoë and Benjamin squaring off between Link (Benjamin) and Rosen-cracked (Zoë, using Rachel's egg) to determine whether the final round would be Nofalofagin v. Rosen-cracked (Zoë v. Zoë) or Nofalofagin v. Link (Zoë v. Benjamin). Link took this round, however, so the final round was Zoë v. Benjamin, with some great odds for Zoë, truly! Her eggs did amazingly well, all things considered, with a full half of the final four!

Here are Zoë and Benjamin posing with their eggs before the final match:

And...here they are posing with their eggs after the final match:

It was a particularly hard loss for Zoë because she had been so close to winning and it was—somehow, miraculously—Benjamin's third year winning in a row! That's practically unheard of since there's very little technique to this little sport and the results seem quite random. Needless to say, we're all pretty determined to unseat him next year.

Here's Phoebe trying to stuff some Robin's Eggs into Zoë's mouth after her loss. Chocolate makes everything better, right?

 

And here's Phoebe continuing to offer comfort to her big sister while everyone else was busy peeling Easter Eggs:

Here's this year's bracket (in case we ever need that some day...)

And here's our running list of Smackdown Champions:

2024: Benjamin
2023: Benjamin
2022: Benjamin
2021: Rachel
2020: Alexander
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

Enjoy your title of reigning champion, Benjamin! You're going to need all the luck you can get next year...