Each year we’ve done an egg hunt in our backyard, with one of Bracken’s buddies joining us. This year I thought he would really enjoy a bigger egg hunt and found out about one that looked like so much fun. Bracken and I prepared for it by hard boiling eggs and I dyed some of them with turmeric, but that was the extent of my dyeing this year. (Thankfully our chickens give us eggs in all colors, though, so I can get away with it.) We didn’t get too fancy with our egg decorating this year either, but Bracken enjoyed drawing on the eggs with crayons and colored pencils.

Bracken got sick in the night on Saturday and I was so bummed for him to miss out on the egg hunt he had so been looking forward to. (My friend told me her daughter often got sick before events she was excited about.) He was such a good sport about it, though. When it was raining in the morning (it hailed for a moment as well), he thought doing an indoor egg hunt would be fun. I had learned my lesson from before, though, that year when we hid hard boiled eggs all over the house and then came up one short after they’d all been gathered. As you can understand, I was more excited about doing one outside. The skies did clear and I hid the eggs all over the yard.

The egg hunt ended up being in our backyard after all, but Bracken really enjoyed himself. I’m hoping next year we’ll make it to the other egg hunt, but I think that honestly I was more disappointed than he was. I always want to make every holiday and event so special for him, but keeping things simple can be special too. I’m sure he would have loved going to the bigger egg hunt, but when I watched his face and how delighted he was out in our yard as he discovered each egg, I was reminded that children can find magic in the simplest of things and sometimes we, as parents, don’t need to go to such great lengths to try to create magic for them. They’ll find it everywhere, even in the simple.