Chapter 393 Limited Edition Metallic Easter Eggs

Sorry not to post much yesterday. Easter is a day for celebrating with family around here, and that doesn’t leave time for much else.

Tom and Huck started by coloring Easter eggs in our kitchen:

Later in the day, we took the eggs to my parents’ house, where, prior to eating Easter dinner, the kids had an egg hunt. Can you see the egg hiding in the flowers below?

Tom and Huck both saw the egg at the same time:

As an experiment, we dyed about 6 eggs using metallic leaf. Tom’s holding one, here:

Tom and Huck like Easter egg hunts.

Continuing a tradition started by my late, Great-Uncle Frank (my mom’s uncle), we assign different types of eggs different monetary values. The kids hunt for plastic eggs and hard boiled eggs. The plastic eggs might have a small prize, like jelly beans, inside. The hard-boiled eggs are worth different amounts of money depending on their color. A purple egg might be worth five cents and a yellow egg worth 15 cents, etc. The metallic-leaf eggs are worth the most, at twenty-five cents a piece, and there are also very few of them to find. They are considered real treasure, sort of like a limited-edition book. My Great-Uncle Frank used to make speckled eggs (something no one in our family has ever been able to duplicate) for Easter and hide them with the regular eggs. Then he would conduct the hunt for my mom and her cousins. At the end of the hunt, each kid would bring Uncle Frank the eggs she found and he would act as banker and pay them a few cents for each type of egg. The speckled eggs, like our metallic eggs, were always worth a quarter. This tradition continued in my childhood, when my mom and her cousins had grown up and had their own kids. We don’t really know why Uncle Frank ran his egg hunts this way, but we find it adds excitement to the egg hunt and we have kept the tradition.

I’m only sorry that everyone doesn’t have an Uncle Frank. Uncle Frank appreciated life. He did things like host Irish dancing contests for my brothers and me in his living room after Thanksgiving dinner. He always played Bing Crosby records when we visited. He believed in steak for dinner every Friday night, he rode the train to The City for work every day, and he worked for the same company for 30 years. He liked to take us kids to Preston’s for ice cream and pastel mints when we visited. Everyone should have a Great-Uncle Frank to liven things up once in a while and to create traditions. He was my Great-Uncle, but he was also just great. Though he passed away over a decade ago, I am always reminded of him at Easter.

Here’s where Gayle, my mom’s cousin, sits and acts as banker, much as Uncle Frank did. The telephone booth piggy bank holds some of the coins we use to pay out the egg hunters.

Here are Huck’s egg finds:

It was a fine day.

Today, it’s back to reality. I have quite a bit going on this week. Tom and Huck are off of school all week, and I have plans to do a few fun things with them like we did last year. I’ve also been called to report for jury duty, I have a funeral to attend, and was planning to spring clean the house and to work on a special scrapbook for Huck.

Oh, yes. I almost forgot. I’m also trying to finish proofreading and double-checking the Dante catalogue. So, writing for the blog will most certainly be light this week. Depending what happens with jury duty, it may not happen at all. I promise I will be back as soon as I can. I miss the blog when I get too busy to post daily. Thanks, as always, for reading.

In the meantime, Happy Spring!