Happy Easter!

The other day, someone asked me if I had any Easter traditions in my family. I thought about it and couldn't really think of any traditions, but I did remember a childhood experience that definitely needs to be recorded for posterity.

When I was a little tiny kid, sometime the week before Easter, my dad told my brothers and I that he could lay eggs. Of course, we believed him because we were really young and we thought that we might have the coolest dad ever. Who has a dad that can lay eggs? He told us that he would work on "making" some eggs over the course of the week and that they would be ready to go by Easter. In order for this to happen though, we had to build him a nest.

Now, my dad is a big man...like 6'7" 250+ lbs big, so we had to come up with some sort of nest that would be big enough for him to be comfortable enough to lay his eggs. My mom helped us out and we ended up with a big box that we could use. Someone cut out the front of the box and we proceeded to build a nest for Dad's Easter eggs.

The next required much work from us. Each day we would plan and build this nest. We would discuss which blankets and pillows were the softest and how to place them in the box so that the nest would be comfortable and cozy. When my dad got home at night, he would come downstairs and check out the nest. He gave us all sorts of tips on how to build the nest and what he would like and what would be the best sort of nest for his eggs. The next morning, my brothers and I would talk about how to use these tips to make the nest better.

The nest building went on for several days and my dad repeatedly told us about his eggs and how they were coming along. We wondered how many eggs dad would lay. We wondered if they would be special colored Easter eggs or if they would look like chicken eggs. Would they be big eggs or small eggs? I'm pretty sure that these discussions must have been hysterically funny to hear because there were three little kids talking about the eggs their dad was going to lay.

Anyways, Easter arrived. We were very excited, probably more excited for dad to lay his eggs than for the Easter bunny to come. We asked my dad if he was ready and he told us yes, so we all ran down to the basement (I'm sure my parents were cracking up) and gathered around the nest. My dad climbed into the nest and started making the funniest chicken noises. If you know my dad, you can probably imagine this. If you don't, imagine the most absurd cartoon chicken noises you've ever heard. He was clucking and moving around in the nest and he kept telling us how hard it was to lay eggs.

Finally, an egg appeared in the nest. It just looked like a regular white chicken egg, but we were SO impressed. He continued to lay eggs and while I don't remember how many eggs my dad laid that Sunday morning, I do remember thinking that I had the coolest dad in the world! My dad could lay eggs!

Well, after the egg laying episode, it was time for church, so off we went. Of course, we were telling everyone we knew that our dad could lay eggs and no one believed us. How could this be? We all saw my dad lay the eggs and we knew that he could do it. We even made a nest for him. Well, we continued to believe that my dad could lay eggs for awhile and to this day I still think that while my dad doesn't lay eggs (thank goodness!) he is still the coolest dad in the world!

Hope you all have a great Easter weekend!