Forgotten Easter Eggs - Parenting Plights & Delights

Every Easter my husband's family gets together at Jim and Linda's. The highlight of the day for the kids is the egg hunt.

After the egg hunt, Jodi Frobenius and her son Fro got creative with the plastic eggs. 

A younger Frobenius designed a stylish new Easter bonnet/hat. 

About 15 years ago, 10-year-old Donny found a faded egg in one of the bushes. Jim rushed over and carefully took it from him. "We don't want it to crack," Jim warned. He knew it was an egg from the year prior, now faded from the elements.

When the kids found out it was an old egg and might be rotten, they followed Jim to the trashcan as if he were the Pied Piper. They were curious to find out what a rotten egg smelled like. The egg had a tiny crack, just enough to give them a good whiff of its stench.

P.U.! It made some of them gag, which is why Jim and Linda hide eggs outside. It could have been a disaster if it had rotted inside the house. So if you hid real eggs, you might want to double-check to make sure you found them all. And if you had an indoor egg hunt, I hope you used the plastic eggs.

One Easter some joker--we know it was you, Mike Frobenius--hid a few raw eggs for the kids. Luckily, we were on our toes and saved them before someone ended up with egg on their face. (I know, not funny, but courtesy laughs are appreciated!)

Forgotten eggs can cause terribly embarrassing moments. I remember when my youngest child, Sunflower, was still a baby and I had a doctor appointment a couple weeks after Easter. I smelled something stinky in the diaper bag on the drive there.

Once parked, I dug through it and found a receiving blanket with some spit-up on it, so I took it out of the diaper bag before going into the clinic.

While I read a magazine in the waiting room, I realized the diaper bag still smelled. I looked inside it but couldn't find the source of the stench. When the nurse called me in, heads turned as I walked across the room, carrying Sunflower and the putrid diaper bag. I hoped people didn't think the nauseating fumes  were coming from me! *Cringe, cringe.*

The doctor never said a word about the smell, and he had to have noticed it in that small exam room. I guess he didn't want to embarrass me. Maybe he thought it was the baby. I just wanted to get out of there.

Once I got home, I was determined to get to the bottom of the smell once and for all. I took everything out of the diaper bag. Finally, aha! Mystery solved. In one of  the side pockets that I never used I found not one, but two cracked Easter eggs.

It turned out that five-year-old Lily had stuffed them in the pocket at the family gathering to bring them home. Out of sight, out of mind, until they crack!

Q.  What came first, the chicken or the egg?

A.  Neither--the Easter Bunny!

Do you have a parenting or grandparenting memory

or another story you'd like to share? 

If you're not a parent, memories from your own childhood count, too! 

Warning: I might feature your story in a future post. 

(Names can be changed to protect the guilty!)

I'd like to thank all those who have shared their stories. 

These posts wouldn't be the same without your input.

If you don't want to leave a comment but would rather contact me by email, 

here's my address: lynkelwoohoo at yahoo dot com.

(A version of these stories appeared in the Highland Community News in April of 1999.)