Easter Highlights Plus Non-Sugar Alternative Easter Goodies
This week I am on spring break so my posting schedule will be a bit relaxed as we take a rare moment to stop and smell the roses and enjoy time with family. I hope you have the opportunity to do the same.
We celebrated Easter on a practically perfect Sunday. The weather was warm and the sun was shining. It’s usually a challenge weather-wise to wear your Easter dress without a sweater but this year no sweaters were necessary!
One of the generational differences between us and our children about Easter is that they associate Easter egg hunts with plastic eggs filled with Rolos rather than hard boiled eggs. There was a great article from The Salt Lake Tribune about this recently.
When I was growing up, most egg hunts were of the hard boiled kind with the occasional L’eggs pantyhose egg filled with treats courtesy of my grandmother. Now, plastic Easter eggs are elevating to an art form. We save them each year and now have quite a collection of eggs of different sizes. Two of the additions to the collection this year were:
The Hello Kitty Easter egg someone gave out to her preschool class. (Huge kudos to the mom that found this one!)
The football (and soccer and basketball) shaped eggs we found at the dollar store. We have to add a few male-oriented eggs to “man up” the collection of pink and pastels now that my son has arrived.
For my son who is not yet eating candy, we also found the “Hide and Squeak” egg toy which he loves.
Recently, there has been a lot of medical research released about the hazards of eating too much sugar. My daughter was also reminding me of all the “candy holidays” we have: Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter. While I am in no rush to give up our candy and chocolate goodies and we will most likely never give it up entirely, the research does give me pause. Nobody wants to harm their children but giving up all candy, particularly at major holidays, would be very tough. As I was thinking about this, however, I realized that there already were a few ways that we already celebrate Easter without candy.
In our massive egg collection, we do have some “eggs” that are not for candy. For example, we have some musical instrument shaker eggs I had left over from a birthday party celebration that we tossed into our collection too. We also have a small toy carrot from a supermarket playset that made it in. The children don’t mind at all about these non-candy eggs. They enjoy the thrill of the hunt. As I think about the sugar research, I will look for opportunities for other “eggs” from things we already own. We could also revert back to hard boiled egg hunts or fill the plastic eggs with some sort of healthy treat.
As I was looking for things to fill the Easter baskets with, I decided to save up the spring and summer clothes shopping we were doing already and tuck those items into the baskets. My children loved getting clothes in their baskets. Mom and Dad got new jeans and the raincoat, shorts and tees were all well received by the kids. The baskets looked full and fun and were a great reward.
We found some cute 100-piece art sets at Michael’s on sale for less than $3 and picked those up as treats too. Another hit!
For the adult Easter basket, I like to stop in at Harbor Freight Tools for some inexpensive tool-oriented goodies. This year’s finds were a motorcycle puzzle (for about $2) and a metal stamping set (for about $5).
So, while we aren’t aiming for a sugar-free Easter per se, we have already made some small steps toward deemphasizing sugar as the core of our Easter traditions.
How were your Easter celebrations? Do you worry about too much sugar during the holidays? Please share in the comments.