In the days leading up to Easter Sunday, my husband and I started laying the groundwork for the special day when you wake up and the Easter Bunny has come to the house and left chocolate eggs for special children to find.Our son loves any holiday in which strangers come to your house and leave presents.Our daughter loves chocolate. They both are fans of Easter weekend.
So, like any good parents, we couldn't remember if "the Easter Bunny" left the chocolates out Saturday night, or if "the Easter Bunny" set the alarm and laid the special treats out in the wee hours on Sunday morning.You see, we have a large dog with a sweet tooth.Kylie, our large, black chowlab cross, has been known to carefully unwrap a box of individually-wrapped chocolates left under the Christmas tree, bite the chocolates carefully in half through the packaging and then stash the bonbons around the house for snacking on at a later hour. Chocolate is bad for dogs and, as such, we try to puppy-proof the chocolate holidays.As to our dilemma, the night before or the morning of?Not being able to trust the dog, my husband and I diligently set our alarms for 5 a.m. and we hoped that we would have enough time for "the Easter Bunny" to hide all of the eggs.
We didn't.
At 5:20 a.m., the Kuklis household saw a mad scramble of egg-depositing, basket-hiding and child distracting.Luckily, the children didn't notice the inexpertly hidden eggs and were overjoyed at the presents and chocolates the Easter Bunny left for them.Our daughter saw the first few eggs leading out from her bedroom and was stuffing them into mouth as fast as she could, yelling, "Choch-lat, choch-lat" at the top of her lungs.
Our son, not a huge fan of chocolate but loves to find presents, ran around trying to pick up as many eggs as possible while scoping out possible hiding places for his present from The Bunny.Meanwhile, the dog, was also trying to get at the chocolate and we were playing a very elaborate game of keep-away until we finally threw her outside.
It was a madhouse.It lasted for 5 minutes.Presents unwrapped and chocolates being consumed as fast as humanly possible, the house was quiet again, save for the loud, lip-smacking of satisfied children and the crinkling of chocolate wrappers thrown on the floor.
It was a lovely morning - until the sugar high hit.
This year, we discovered that a toddler who has eaten too much chocolate will pretend to sleep in her crib but instead, very quietly, peel a twelve-inch section of paint off of her wall.Ripping the wall into tiny, little pieces is far more interesting than napping when you've eaten enough chocolate to go blind.
Now the wall is patched and the children are sleeping and the parents are enjoying the fruits of their children's labour - we are eating all the chocolate.
We don't even feel guilty about it.
