Dying eggs for Easter. It’s one of those holiday traditions that sounds really special, but usually turns rotten pretty quickly. The kids are always excited about it and so am I, but I also secretly dread it a little bit. Is that bad? It’s right up there with carving pumpkins and decorating Christmas cookies. When you think back to doing such activities as a kid, they have a sort of magical nature about them. And then as an adult before you have kids, you dream about doing them with your own family someday. Sadly, for me, the reality of orchestrating these activities as a mom has lost its luster. They all sound like special opportunities to make beautiful holiday memories, but typically end with mom and dad doing all the work while the kids complain.

Let me paint a picture for you (or an egg, as it were). Here’s how it usually unfolds at our house.

1) Kids ask incessantly about WHEN we can DYE EGGS??!! And ask and ask and ask. And beg. I put it off as long as possible because I know how it’s going to go.

2) I quickly look through my Pinterest Easter page at all the glittery, gorgeous masterpiece egg decorating ideas I pinned. I realize I don’t have any of the materials needed to create a single one of them, again. Nor do I have the patience to undertake them. So I decide to just use the boring old box of dye and stickers I bought as backup.

3) I finally agree to get started and put the dye tablets in the water and vinegar. And wait and wait and wait.

4) The kids complain that it’s taking too long for the tablets to dissolve and ask repeatedly if they are ready. “Are they ready yet?” Not yet. “Can we start now?” Almost. “Why is it taking SOOOO long??” Just be PATIENT!

5) The water and dye is finally ready! I set out all the bowls of colorful water and the kids begin to fight over who gets to use which color first. They eventually each put an egg in a couple of different colors.

6) They wait about 30 seconds and want to remove the egg from the dye. I tell them the color won’t be dark yet and encourage them to leave it in longer. They keep trying to remove it from the water and then put it back in. Bright green and pink and blue dye is splashing all over the granite counter top because I didn’t plan ahead well enough to actually put out newspaper underneath it. I turn into “Mean Mommy.”

7) One child becomes impatient because they want to use the yellow, but another child is “taking too long” with the yellow.

8) Kids begin complaining that “this is BORING” and leave the room to do something else.

9) I decide to color the rest of the eggs and am secretly happy about it because I can get all creative. Fifteen minutes later the kids come back asking to color more eggs and cry because they are all gone. “But I only got to do three eggs and she got to do four!”

10) I tell myself that next year I will plan ahead and come up with some REALLY clever Easter egg decorating activity and that my kids will be so wowed by it’s awesomeness that they will LOVE every second of it and not complain.

Normally at the end of my posts I share some silver lining or some important lesson I learned about life from my experiences. But this time the lesson I learned is quite simple. In the future I plan to do all Easter egg decorating, pumpkin carving and cookie decorating in the evening so it can involve WINE for MOMMY and it will be fun for EVERYONE!

P.S. By the way, if you ever wondered if you can dye brown organic eggs, the answer is yes! This is the first time we tried it. The colors turn out quite bright and lovely.

Am I alone? Or does this sound familiar? Please tell us about your Easter Egg decorating traditions