EASTER HUNTERS

While the boys and I were at the Avalanche game yesterday, Kristen took the opportunity to get Easter goodies and put the Easter baskets together for the boys in preparation for next weekend. On the way home I called her so she could hide things from the boys, who would shortly be bursting in the door.

Today we heard some banging in the basement - resigned to the fact that the boys have long since destroyed the home, we didn't think too much of it. But when I heard Blane bumping around in the laundry room, I got a little suspicious. When I found him, he was trying to sneak the battery-powered lantern to take down to the basement. I nixed that idea and had him lead me downstairs to show me what was going on.

In the lone storage space in our basement (the tiny space beneath the stairs - which is about as tucked away in our basement as you can get) I found Tobin, waiting patiently for Blane with the lantern. There in the storage space are the Easter baskets all wrapped in colorful cellophane and waiting to be hidden for next weekend. Blane asks very innocently, "What are these daddy?" To which I replied, "I don't know, but you shouldn't be playing in here."

I went upstairs to tell Kristen, with the boys not far behind me. I apparently hadn't conveyed the point that I had not let on to the boys what those pretty packages actually were. Because Kristen then launched into the following story:

The Easter Bunny is so busy next weekend, that he dropped these off early. But since you've found them, I have to send them back now - like I did with the stockings last Christmas. Hopefully he'll be able to bring new ones for Easter weekend.

Kristen disappeared to the basement to do something with the found baskets. When she came back up I told her where I thought it would have been smarter to hide them - the closet in the basement bathroom where no one ever goes. Blane walks up a minute later and tells us, "You should have hidden them in the basement bathroom, we'd never have looked there." Yeah right. Smarty-pants.

Tobin comes up a minute after that - after going back down to look at the baskets again and finding they'd been re-hidden - and starts to complain that they're gone again. Kristen's response?

"I had to put them back in the Easter Bunny Hole to return them."

I love being a parent - I totally didn't know about the Easter Bunny Hole when I was a kid!