What came first, Chicken or 600 plastic eggs?

Here comes Peter Cottontail,

swimming down the bunny trail. 

Splish-ity, splash-ity, Easter's on it's way!

Yes, the Easter Bunny visited us despite the recent downpours which have turned every yard into a swimming pool and every swimming pool into an outdoor bathtub.

But we Hoosiers won't let a few April showers stop us from searching for chocolate-filled plastic eggs.  We may be sweet, but we definitely won't melt! 

Bo: I might melt.
Chicken: No, you won't.
Bo: Okay, but theoretically given the right circumstances
        I could be swept away in the flood waters.
Chicken: Well, that's plausible.  Jump in and we'll test that theory.

Okay, well maybe it was a bit more than a few April showers.

But that's why we all take swimming lessons as children, right?
So we didn't let these spring showers dampen our Easter spirit and went along with our festivities as usual.

The Dog Egg Hunt:
There are no grand babies, but there are grand doggies; so we had our first ever dog Easter egg hunt!  Bo took the smallest eggs she could find and put a dog treat in each one.  Then she put the treat filled eggs in a bag with some dog kibbles and let them baste in the scent for awhile. 

It was rather comical to watch the dogs (and their owners) dart about and egg hunt.  Bo's dog found the first egg, Ashes's dog found 4 eggs, and the oldest dog in the egg hunt -Pete- found four too. 

The puppy of the group, Miss Annabelle, didn't quite understand the concept of the egg hunt; but we have no doubt that she will lead the pack next year.

All-in-all, our 1st annual dog egg hunt was a tail-wagging success!

 The Tween & Teen Egg Hunt:

Going into this hunt, our two cousins had two very different strategies for finding the most eggs. 

Lady Bug, being the youngest of the two, went into the hunt with the

All-Hyped-On-Mountain Dew-and-All-I've-Had-To-Eat-Today-Is-Chocolate strategy. 

While Butterfly, the elder of the two with more Easter egg hunting experience,
went into the hunt knowing that slow and steady wins the race! and
taking the road less traveled by  will lead to more egg finding possibilities.

At the end of the hunt, the eggs were tallied and . . . it was a tie!

Apparently it doesn't matter how hyped-up on sugar you are or what road you take.

Ashes: The moral of the story is NEVER try.

The Grown-Up Kids Egg Hunt:
Okay, let us start out by saying that our grandma, Nonie, is very serious about our yearly egg hunt.  So serious in fact, that she was digging small holes to hid some of the eggs and then covering the holes with leaves.  There were eggs in trees, under leaf piles, hidden in the woods, they were everywhere. 

Chicken was helping with the hiding of the eggs and Nonie kept picking her eggs up and hiding them in new places because she said, "we're going to make them work for their candy." 

There were 443 eggs hidden. . .

we searched high. . .

we search low. . .

over hill and dell. . .

We only found 412. 

Which means somewhere out there 31 eggs are still waiting to be found.

Our 2011 Easter was a time of great food, fun, and family.  We continued our old traditions and started some new ones, including a barefoot whiffleball game.  This year our Easter was soggy, muddy, and very hoppy!