Every year, right before Valentine’s Day, I head to the store and I start stocking up on Easter eggs. Yes, I know this sounds a little strange. Valentine’s Day is for Valentines, chocolate hearts, and candy kisses, but I tend to skip over that one day and prepare for what amounts to the big Kahuna in my house – Easter!
It started when my kids were babies. I had three children under the age of 5 and a long, rain-soaked Vancouver winter to get through. With day after day of rainy activities and no sun in sight, I started to do indoor scavenger hunts. In the beginning I’d put a few clues all around the house with a treat or two, and they’d run around like crazy looking for them. It took all of 10 minutes, but it killed some time during the day.
One night, not long after, I saw a big pile of Cadbury Easter Creme Eggs while shopping in the grocery store—they have the coolest new packaging. It was like a burst of spring sunshine suddenly appearing, and right there in front of the potato chips, I hatched a plan for a bigger hunt – something to involve all of our friends who were just as bored and tired of winter as we were.
Although my original idea was to host a massive hunt on Easter Sunday, the real fun happened long before spring had even sprung. I created an ‘EggVent’ Calendar and shared the idea with my friends. We used a cardboard box and numbered little windows for each day before Easter, and we used them to begin the Easter hunt countdown 30 days before. The calendars included one activity we’d do that day, from taking the dogs for a walk to having a playdate at a friend’s house, and every single day included a treat from Cadbury.
Some days my kids would open an Egg-Vent door and see a Cadbury Mini Egg, others a Cadbury Cream Egg or Fudgee-o Creme Egg. Although it seemed like such a simple idea, we had a really great time during the lead up to Easter. When Easter did come that year, a group of other Moms and I pooled our piles of treats and covered an entire park with Cadbury for the biggest Easter hunt and kick off for spring ever.
What did I learn from that Easter? Having something to look forward to really made winter pass by quickly, and before we knew it spring was here and Easter had arrived.
Although all of my kids are now over 5, I still head out to the store and start stockpiling Cadbury Easter Creme Eggs and Mini Eggs as soon as I see them. Now that they’re all in school, we don’t have to spend rainy days searching for clues, but they still love how I pop a Creme Egg in their lunch with a little note or share a bag of Mini Eggs when they are feeling down because of the weather. When Cadbury Easter treats show up in the store and at home, we all feel a little lighter knowing we have something to look forward to after a long winter.
Whether you create your own Egg-Vent Calendar and count down the days until your big Easter hunt or you just want to pop something special in your kid’s pockets to let them know it’s almost time for spring, I think Cadbury Easter Creme Eggs, Cadbury Mini Eggs, and Cadbury chocolatey Bunnies are the perfect treat.
This post was brought to you by Cadbury, however the images and opinions are my own. For more information please visit https://www.facebook.com/CadburyCremeEggCanada.
