Easter

I actually don't have much to report about Easter. We dyed eggs on Saturday, we had a short indoor egg hunt (short because the Easter bunny is a cheapskate who decided to just use last year's plastic eggs, even though she could find only seven of them), Sean and I went to church, and we all went to my sister's house for Easter dinner.

(Allie is doing much better. She has no symptoms now other than the rash, which is resolving slowly, and apparently after a few doses of the antibiotic she is no longer infectious.)

At my sister's the discovery that I buy cage-free eggs further solidified my position as the family's resident liberal loony. If only I had true crunchy credibility to live up to that reputation -- instead of my usual half-hearted attempts at social responsibility! If nothing else, those brown eggs sure looked really cool after their dye bath…

My family has a grand total of one holiday tradition -- at Easter, we play a game with the dyed eggs called Uppers. It's a game my grandparents played, but I'm not sure of its actual derivation. It goes something like this: Two people square off at a time. One person holds an egg in his or her hand, leaving only a small opening. The other person attempts to crack the first person's egg by tapping it. Each person takes turns being the tapper and tappee (yes, I just made those words up). The person whose egg cracks on both ends first is out of the game, and the winner proceeds to the next person, and so on. I love this game, silly as it sounds. And I'm not just saying that because I totally won this year.

I especially love the idea of passing on a tradition to my kids. It's not quite the same as it was when my grandparents were alive (they were quite competitive and yielded about a centimeter of egg surface when it was their egg being tapped), but I look forward to it every year. I hope Sean and Allie will, too. (For some photos, click here.)