Friday, April 06, 2007

Our Good Friday tradition

As you can see, Hershey Bar loves hard boiled eggs. I don't think he cares for the dye or the vinegar.
The only colors I use to dye my Easter eggs.

Not the best picture, but the only one of me coloring eggs as an adult.


Nick checking to see if they're dark enough. One has to soak them for a long time in order to produce dark, brilliant colors.


It's been a tradition to color our Easter eggs on Good Friday. My mother would prepare at least 3 dozen eggs for me and my brother to decorate. We used the original Paas Egg Coloring kit, 6 egg dye tablets, 1 crayon, 2 dippers, stickers and Easter egg holders. This was when I developed my "egg coloring anal-ness." Let me explain. I like my eggs to have dark, rich colors. I soak them for a long, long time using only 4 colors. Red, blue, yellow and green. I don't put stickers on or wraps around them or use the wax crayon to write on them. This slow practice would allow me to color only 8 or 10 of the 36 eggs, giving my brother the opportunity to totally "ugly-up" his eggs.

Well, I continued this tradition with my own family, Good Friday egg coloring. I would always take the day off and color eggs with my son. The last few years though I colored them by myself. Christopher refused to join me in the fun, telling me he was to old. But this year he was going to come and help me dye eggs. He works 7pm to 7am 6 of 14 days as a nurse and the plan was for him to drive down this morning with his cousin after work. I was so excited to have him here for just a little while. I miss him so, so much and was really looking forward to seeing him. In anticipation of the egg coloring occasion, I boiled 2 dozen eggs last night and had everything ready this morning because I knew he would want to go to sleep soon after his arrival.
Well, mother nature intervened and dumped 6 inches of snow in the Cleveland area with more predicted through Sunday. Needless to say, I wasn't surprised when he called at 7:45 this morning saying he was to tired to drive 2 hours (in the storm) alone because my niece had canceled on him last night. I was disappointed, but I didn't want him driving tired in a blizzard. After we said good-bye, Nick called to see if Christopher had arrived, when I told him the story he sensed the sadness in my voice and offered to help color eggs. So, I put my "happy" face on and readied the dye and commenced to coloring. The eggs came out in brilliant shades of red, blue, yellow and green (I tossed the orange and purple tablets in the trash). Nick (and Hershey) think they taste great.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter. He is risen!

2 comments:

Malott said...

That picture of H.B. reminds me so much of my Helen. That's one pretty face.

janice said...

He is a cutie.

When I saw the picture of Helen on your blog, I thought she looked like Hershey.

I just love the face of a Lab. He's got that Lab face and those short Beagle legs.