Easter Peeps
Jennifer Flaten

I could have finished this sooner, but my fingers kept sticking to the keys. I don’t care for stupid peeps.

Peeps, in case, you aren’t a sugar addicted fourth grader or me. No, not the fans of a WWE wrestler, either Peeps are little marshmallows shaped like chicks, hence the name peeps.

If you don’t like little chicks, there are bunnies. The bunnies are great because you can chomp their little ears off. How gruesome is that.

Peeps aren’t just for Easter. They come in trees, hearts and some other holiday themed shapes. Frankly, the peep factory is cranking out the shapes faster than I can keep up.

Apparently, our appetite for gooey holiday shaped candy is boundless. As if a marshmallow isn’t sugary enough, a fine layer of coloured sugar blankets the Peep. By the way, these are colours not found in nature.

The sugary fun just has just begun. If you are truly, truly insane you can get a Peep covered in chocolate. Yes, a giant yellow marshmallow covered in chocolate. I’ll wait while you grab the insulin.

Imminent sugar coma notwithstanding, there is something irresistible about the peeps or for that matter any candy in the Easter basket. Besides isn’t one of the Ten Commandments an urging to “eat more candy.” If not, there should be such a lordly order.

Along with the opportunity to consume, a heck of a lot of candy Easter means coloring eggs. Once again, I am pleased to announce we managed to keep the dye on the eggs and off the children.

Oh sure, laugh, but you have no idea how hard it is to avert a dying disaster. Picture three competitive siblings, eggs, dye and well, say, we're usually thisclose to a dozen plain eggs and three tie-dyed children. The kids love dying eggs, in fact, they love it so much that I wish there was some way I could sub-contract their services to the Easter bunny.

This year we dyed three dozen eggs. Yes, one entire dozen per kid, given that many eggs you would think that egg dying would take a better part of day. You’d be wrong. Even with the large quantity of eggs, we were still done in 15 minutes. This was a great improvement over last year, when we were done in 8.5 minutes.

After the egg dying, comes the egg hiding. Egg hiding, that bit of Easter fun, where parents go creeping around their yard in the dead of night hiding eggs. If that isn’t a potential meet and greet with the local constabulary I don’t know what is. You’d better hope you convince your neighbour that you were indeed hiding an egg, not peeking her bedroom window.

Now the trick is to hide the eggs where you kids, in fact, will find them, because no matter how hard you try, you will never remember where you put all 3 dozen eggs. If you hide the eggs in too difficult a location, I can guarantee that a month from now you will be playing the “guess what that smell is game”. Which when you realize it is the egg, now gone so, bad, so very, very bad, is closely followed by the “who is gonna reach into that spot and get that foul smelling egg out” game.

When that happens, do not expect me to play rock, paper and scissors with you to decide who gets to dispose of the eggs.