The Process...

Our big excitement for the afternoon was coloring eggs. I bought a dozen eggs for each kid. After cooking them (the first time), one was cracked, so we decided each of them would have 11 eggs instead of 12 (to make things fair). Lucas decided he would eat the cracked egg, so he cracked it open, only to find that the centers weren't fully cooked. Yuck. So I stuck them back in the steamer for a bit longer...hopefully that worked... if not, then we've wasted $3 of eggs... not the biggest of deals I suppose, although I hate to be wasteful.

Anyway, after steaming them all a second time, we began to prepare the coloring tablets while the eggs cooled. We had 3 boxes of tablets - each box had 6 colors. I figured with 3 dozen eggs, it might go a bit faster with more colors going at the same time. So, we decided to do one set of tablets in vinegar (to make bright colors), one set in lemon juice (to make medium colors), and one set in water (to make pastel colors). Sebastian the science kid made this observation about the way the tablets reacted in each of the 3 liquids: they 'explode like fireworks' in the vinegar, they 'fizz like fizzy bubbles' in the lemon juice, and they 'just sort of sit there and don't do anything' in the water. Funny stuff that boy is.

Once the eggs were cool, the tablets were ready, and the table was covered, we moved our show to the kitchen table and got ready to color. I thought the easiest way would be to line them up by color and by liquid base and then keep track of whose eggs were in which cups... I know that sounds a little over the top for egg coloring, but trust me, without a method to keep track, I would totally lose track, and chaos would ensue... 'no MINE was in that blue one!'... you get the point. Anyway, it worked REALLY well, and the whole thing took us only about an hour at most to color and complete 3 dozen eggs. Now we're just waiting on them to dry so they can put the stickers on.

***