WARNING!!!  Spoiler Alert:  If you are under the age of twelve and believe in the Easter Bunny, please stop reading this blog.  If you are an adult and still believe in the Easter Bunny, please seek some professional help…Tee-hee…just kidding…sort of!

My fondest memories of Easter are getting up early on Sunday morning in search of my Easter basket filled with treats from the Easter Bunny. Sometimes, I would look for what felt like hours, going through cupboards and looking behind couches, wondering where that sneaky Easter Bunny had hidden it this year!  And I began to notice that with each year as I got older, the hiding spot got trickier — as if the Easter Bunny was trying to challenge me. Soon, the baskets were no longer hidden under the coffee table in plain sight but completely tucked away in obscure places like behind the hot water tank in the closet or actually IN the dryer. I remember there were years that I thought I would never find my basket full of goodies. I thought, “Why is the Easter Bunny toying with me like this? Doesn’t he want me to find my basket?  Have I been bad this year?”

And then the truth finally came out…it wasn’t the Easter Bunny toying with my emotions…it was my parents!  And to my embarrassment, this realization didn’t happen until I was eleven years old!!! (I chalk it up to a very overactive imagination as well as being VERY stubborn.)

I’ll never forget that fateful morning:  I had written the Easter Bunny a note the night before Easter Sunday asking him to leave some sort of proof that he was real; something I had been doing since I was about five years old. Previously I had only wanted a letter back from Mr. Bunny but at eleven, I  was beginning to have my suspicions of his existence and couldn’t take the ridicule any longer from EVERY kid at school telling me he wasn’t real!  I received a letter back from him explaining that he was unable to supply me with any proof but wished me a Happy Easter.

Later that day, I went up to my room and pulled out all the letters I had received from my holiday friends…Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy etc.  As I was reading over a letter from Santa from the previous year, I noticed something strange…Santa’s handwriting was INDENTICAL to the Easter Bunny’s!

I studied the two letters carefully and was sure these letters were written by the same person. Dumbfounded but with a small tinge of realization, I brought these letters downstairs to ask my mother if she knew why.  The look on her face said it all and I was forced to ask her the question, “Mom, is the Easter Bunny real?” to which she replied, “I’m sorry sweetie.” This of course led to the next obvious question regarding Santa Claus which I won’t go into now because  A) this isn’t about Christmas and B) it’s still a bit too painful to remember…sniff…ahem…anyways…

So the jig was up and I now knew that it had been my parents hiding my Easter Basket in difficult places, snickering and patting themselves on the back with each passing minute the basket went unfound. By the time I was a teenager, my parents had gotten it down to an art form. To the point that my sister and I would look for about an hour, break for breakfast and then continue the search until it was eventually found (and the rule was if you found your sister’s basket, you couldn’t tell her…that would spoil all the fun said my parents.  Little did I know it was to only increase their fun in this little prank).

My parents had devised a system for hiding the Easter basket where the rule was the older we got, the more challenging the hiding spot. Basically it was broken down into these levels:

1-5 years old:  Easy – under the coffee table or on top of the TV stand.

6-10 years old: Medium – behind the couch or in the pantry

11-12 years old: Hard – in the dryer or tucked away behind towels in the linen closet

13 years old and up:  Damn Near Impossible!!! – hidden in the garage behind 10 heavy boxes or stuffed in the back of my parents’ closet on the top shelf where you had to get a step ladder from downstairs, lug it upstairs and then balance on your tippy toes to retrieve it…That is, if you ever actually found it. (Sometimes they were nice and gave us hints if it was getting close to dinner time!)

As a child, I found this system frustrating to say the least but now that I’m an adult AND a new parent I can admire that my parents only wanted to make the Easter Basket hunt fun for both the kids and for them.  I plan on continuing the family tradition and inplementing this system for my own childrens’ Easter in hopes of creating the same fond and frustrating memories I had.  I’d love hear any stories of the hardest or strangest places you’ve found your Easter Basket or maybe how you found about the Easter Bunny and when… although I’m guessing I still win the prize for “last one to know!” Tee-hee.

Coupon Tip of the Week:  Wait until after Easter Sunday and then stock up on all the great Easter decorations deals for next year as well as yummy chocolate.  Most stores will be selling them at 50-90% off!! Can’t beat that!!!