Every Easter morning, we rush from our beds to find out what the Easter Bunny has left for us. My husband and daughter want to start the day off with some chocolate but I have a firm rule of no candy before lunch. I point out the healthy snacks that Mr. Bunny left too, but no one seems to be in such a rush to eat the real carrot sticks and sugar-free fruit chews.

Then its off to the Grandparents house for a traditional Easter egg hunt. After all the kids have assembled, we set off with our baskets to find the hidden eggs. Sometimes theres extra excitement when we manage to find an egg that had been hidden too well the year before. Thats when Im really glad we dont hide hardboiled eggs any more. The eggs we hunt for now are plastic and filled with stickers or tiny toys. (Nothing edible since the ant fiasco of 1998 but thats another story.)

When I was growing up, we spent the weekend before Easter dyeing eggs. The whole house stunk of vinegar no matter how many windows we opened. I remember you had to carefully lower the eggs into the dye with a little wire egg dipper. Who came up with the great idea to mix small children with permanent dye, little pieces of wire and eggs? It certainly wasnt a mom that had to clean it all up.

Actually if it was up to me, Id skip the eggs entirely. You cant eat them after theyve been dyed and they end up as just one more thing lurking in the back of the refrigerator. Mine usually take up residence near the half bottle of tartar sauce without an expiration date and the fancy but funny-tasting mustard thats too expensive to throw away. The eggs stay hidden in the refrigerator until I can safely throw them out without my daughter getting upset that I have destroyed her creations. Hey, Ill bet even Pablo Picassos mother had to throw out his dyed eggs sometime. Theres only so much room in the fridge.

My daughter loves dyeing eggs, but her favorite part of Easter (aside from the candy) is the egg hunt. Her only disappointment is that it ends much too soon. So last year, after the regular Easter egg hunt finished, we had another egg hunt with empty eggs. And then we did it again. And again. And we did it every day for the rest of the week.

Im sure that the neighbors thought we were crazy when we were still having Easter egg hunts on the lawn weeks later. On rainy days, we moved the Easter egg hunts inside. That meant finding a whole new set of hiding places. We continued the hunts over the summer and I began to wonder if my daughter would be hiding frozen eggs in a snow bank in November. Fortunately, she tired of the hunts long before the snow started (but long after I had tired of them.)

I managed to keep the eggs put away for months, but my daughter is really looking forward to this years Easter egg hunt. Shes already announced to me that she wants to start doing more egg hunts after Easter. So youll probably find me in May still hiding Easter eggs in my front lawn. There wont be any prizes in the eggs. But for my daughter, theyre still filled with fun.