Holiday with the Hardy's

We know how to party. In fact I dare venture to say we party "Hardy". When we party there are a few things that are almost always a guarantee. One of those things is food. There will be TONS of FOOD. We usually plan on feeding 12 armies. I am not sure why. We really can't eat that much food, but we think we can. There is usually a wide variety of food too. It is hard to just pick one of two favorite dishes to make, plus what if someone doesn't like part of it? We need stuff that everyone will like. Therefore we need a TON!

Since it was Easter we of course had to dye some Eggs. Every year we have apx. 6 eggs per person. If you multiply it out that equals 78 hard boiled eggs. I don't know anyone that can eat, or use 78 hard boiled eggs before the excitement caused by colored eggs wears off. It usually only takes a day or two and the poor rejected eggs live in the fridge until the coloring on the shell becomes so unnatural that someone finally take pity on the fridge and throw them out. This year I talked my mom down to four eggs per person (my goal was 2 per person). I was excited that she even agreed to dropping the number down, but when I got home that afternoon I discovered 6 eggs per person waiting to be dyed. Old habits really do die hard. When all is said and done, after 2 bowls of extremely "eggie" potato salad and pawning off as many eggs as we could there are still 2 dozen in the fridge. Just waiting for their turn to break out of the dark enclosed spaces that surround them. Wow that is deep on so many levels.

The other thing about dying eggs is the box of dye you buy at the grocery store, or in our case at the Walmarts. It came with 14 colors. Or that is what the package said! That is excellent news for people who have 78 eggs to dye. Come to find out though 14 means 6 colors times 2 and then 2 special extra colors. So really there were only 8 colors. That is okay though, when you have 78 eggs to dye they all start looking the same after a few eggs anyways. Occasionally someone gets all crazy and pulls out rubber bands or crayons or something to makes the eggs more exciting. Oh wait that someone was me. Rubber Bands do make a cool looking dyed Easter egg.

Usually a Hardy Holiday includes some sort of Crazy Project too. This crazy project 95% of the time revolves around food and usually start with my brain. Back at Christmas it was doughnuts, for Easter we made Cream Eggs. Now I am humbly going to admit that HANDS DOWN they are better then any cream egg you can buy at the store. Go us! It was quite a fun project. My job was the cream filling so naturally I didn't follow the recipe and ended up with 3 different flavors of cream filling. Butter Cream was the biggest hit, Almond and Vanilla were both great though. Liz was in charge of the chocolate (because even with meltable I manage to burn it sometimes!)

Then to differentiate them we let Megan be in charge of drizzle, a different color for each different flavor. They turned out beautifully. Tragically there is still a whole bag of these still living in the fridge too. Luckily these will actually keep for a while and not turn unnatural colors nor will they release odors. Chocolate eggs are Heaven sent.

Tragically there is still a whole bag of these still living in the fridge too. Luckily these will actually keep for a while and not turn unnatural colors nor will they release odors. Chocolate eggs are Heaven sent.

Finally the blessed Holiday actually comes and we eat all the food that we have prepared...or we eat a third of the food we have prepared. Then we have an egg hunt. Well not really a hunt as most of the eggs are just laying on the grass so it really isn't too hard to find. You do have to be careful though, you can only pick up the eggs that have your name and color on them or you could start a brawl. Mine are light purple. My favorite egg contained a five dollar bill. Lets just say it was a great Easter season.