Easter 2012: The Year of Playing Like a Kid Again

This year, Easter was even more fun than usual.  It's been several years now since our family was blessed with its first grandchild.  But, it seems that this year, the three of them officially reached ages that make the holidays tremendously fun.  Some highlights from Easter 2012 deserve to be noted in order to demonstrate this point. 

At the start of our Easter celebration for the last several years, my mom has coordinated an Easter egg hunt for the kids.  As more grandchildren came, this effort grew larger.  I'm not sure how many eggs were hidden in the tradition's inaugural year, but I can confirm that there were more than 80 hidden this year.  Granted, we're catering to the sweet tooth needs of three kids.  But, we practically had too little real estate and hiding places for this year's challenge.  I'm fairly confident my parents will be finding Easter eggs for the next several weeks, but the kids had a blast and came up with quite the sweet loot! 

A second highlight would be that of the wiffle ball game.  I would like to say, first, that this was not wiffle ball as I would have known it.  It was some Nerf-like material bat and ball.  While I understand the impulse to protect the safety of our bat-wielding child population, I also have a deep appreciation (and affection) for the traditional wiffle plastic.  I can't even put a number to the amount of hours my brother, sister and I spent playing wiffle ball in our yard.  In any case, I believe the Easter 2012 wiffle challenge is best demonstrated in pictures:


What started off as a normal, run-of-the-mill, game of wiffle, which also included some very helpful instruction, bestowed upon the kids by myself and my brother....



...quickly dissolved into who can be most goofy?



...or who can bring on the most fierce laughter?



...or who has the best Superman pose?



...or who has the best form for rolling down the grassy hill?

 As I reflect on this year's Easter gathering, I think I've concluded it's not just for the kids after all.  They may have had the advantage over us in the egg hunt, but I'm pretty sure that the wiffle ball game and resulting shenanigans were owned by an earlier generation, reliving the fun and magic of playing like a kid.  The small difference may be that the true kids probably don't have aching backs from all of the fun...