This Post is Long…But You Won't Dye if You Read it All!

Hi-Ho, Emily-The-Mom here!

A nod to the great Kermit the Frog. I like him, even if my youngest refuses to see his newest flick.

“I don’t want to see it! It’s just a creepy version of the Muppets!”

“That’s the point, though…a bad guy is impersonating Kermit and they have this huge case of mistaken identity, and the last Muppet movie just had a bunch of creepy Muppet-wannabes in a band that were trying to dethrone the real Muppets and you never complained about that movie and…oh, sorry, you quit listening.”

So instead, we forced the three darlings to watch Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Ha! Take that, defiant kid!

Sorry, HUGE left turn from where my blog was planning to go today. I really wanted to share the fun pre-Easter-dying-party we held at our casa this week.

The kidlets had two days off of school and we burned one going to see the Texas Rangers play a day game. They won. The Rangers and the kids. I am shocked by how much ice cream, cotton candy and hot chocolate they can put away in such a short time. That's right-ice cream and hot chocolate. Texas weather!

So, on the second day off of school we held our dying party with some friends, while the dads went to golf. 

I know! Golf instead of tie-dying shirts and dip-dying eggs? Ludicrous!

On the docket for the day was also Peeps-Jousting. Please see this for the breakdown of this lesser-known, non-UIL-sanctioned sport. Bad luck that our microwave broke and we the new one isn't in until next week. No microwave, no Peeps-Jousting. A travesty!

I told the kids we'll Peeps-Joust next week. Trust me, I may have helped the Peeps peeps (see what I did there) make their yearly quota. We have plenty of Peeps!

On another in a seemingly never-ending stream of side notes, here is a great article I found that really delves deep into the world of the Peep. Enjoy!

The basic ingredients of our dying party are as follows: one day off of school, three moms, seven kids, pizza, eggs, dye, shirts.

I will not get into the minutiae of the tie-dying process today. If you click this link, you can go to a more detailed tie-dying post. What is important is that the kids and moms enjoyed being together, we may be replacing our carpet so there was a certain lackadaisical approach to reigning in the dye…

The younger kids scampered upstairs to rainbow-loom their fingers off as soon as they finished eating because the older kids had fully locked down the X-Box. Wasn't the X-Box one of the earlier-mentioned ingredients? No?

We, the stalwart mothers, cleaned up the food and started soaking t-shirts in soda-ash. 42 eggs boiled merrily on the sink as we soaked the shirts and contemplated life.

After the requisite 10 minutes had elapsed, we called the older kids to come do their shirts. They were very eager. We noticed that their color choices have started trending toward their sports team affiliations.

Example shirts to show styles and colors-cuz Lisa is da bomb!

My oldest child decided to go with Seattle Seahawks colors while dripping some extra black around the shirt just because “It will probably look cooler this way.”

They made quick work of their shirts, precisely pointing and shooting dye (you’d think they had done this before) and we figured out that they had yet another dye-free agenda. This time they wanted to go shoot baskets at the school. Aghast! Leave the dying-party to go have fun playing sports with your friends on a beautiful day???

Obviously we said yes. We aren’t monsters. Caveat: they had to take their siblings. Wha-wahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

The younger set came downstairs and gloved up. They were mostly fascinated with the link between doctors and rubber gloves.  And how if you were a doctor you would be rich enough to buy so many rubber gloves that you wouldn’t have to reuse them as we were reusing them. And how if you were a doctor someone else would put the gloves on for you.

The youngest child and one of the boys decided to fill a glove with water and freeze it to see what would happen. The odds were seriously in favor of them ending up with a hand-shaped icicle, but the “experiment” proceeded anyway.

We were prepared for the probability that the younger kids would need a lot of help. We were wrong. Except for their exuberant attempts to start dying before paper towels were put down, they pretty much had a handle on the process. They quickly dyed their way through the shirts and immediately asked when they could rinse them out and see the patterns.

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Tomorrow afternoon? Awwwww, man! That’s so far away.”

“Indeed.”

And, dyed and bagged, the shirts went off to mellow and the kids went off to shoot baskets and run amok. Ahhhhh, how refreshing to be able to send them out as a herd and not to have to go too! Freedom!

The eggs had finished by this point and only seven had cracked. Seriously! Seven cracked! What a beating! What a crisis! What a first-world problem!

We dyed them anyway.

We, the moms, readied the egg dying. I bought mini egg cartons on a cute little website called Shop Sweet Lulu. Adorable! Each kid could have their own. (I am not being paid by these people, I just like their site).

When they returned all sweaty from the trek, we got them settled for egg dying. This took more time than the t-shirt dying. Seriously. A few of the kids were not that concerned with the way their eggs looked. A few kids became Monet in an instant. Or egg-Nazis. Woe to the one who touched their eggs in the bowls. One child, who shall remain nameless (but not photo-less) glittered her egg completely.

After the 42 eggs were summarily dyed, collected and boxed, the party had to come to an end. Parting is such sweet sorrow. All good things must come to an end. Any other cliches?

We had a great time, got stained fingers and ended up with a lot of masterpieces. And next year, Peeps Jousting!