Easter at the Hortons

The Hortons have a wonderful Easter tradition that we are lucky to be invited to each year. They have delicious food and great company, but the thing they are best known for is Coach Horton's Easter Egg Hunt. Coach hides the eggs, and his goal is to make them so hard to find that the seekers have no shot at finding all of them. He has been doing it for 31 years (starting when his oldest daughter was 18 months) and he has a 30-1 record. The seekers beat him last year for the first time (Andrew found the last missing egg just before it was time for us to go), so this year Coach was more determined than ever to regain his title and improve upon his record.

He hid 163 eggs.

Even with about 15 seasoned ADULT seekers, we still had 8 missing by the end of the 2 hour time limit.

Here is one of his favorite places to hid eggs:

Yes, that's right, that egg is INSIDE a jar of peanut butter. He buried it inside and then smoothed over the top. Eggs are hidden inside containers of oatmeal, hollowed out loaves of bread, inside the shredded paper of the paper shredder, buried in the ice box in the freezer, and on and on. His daughters are the ones who clue us in on some of the places from the past, but really what it takes is scouring their house and opening every container, drawer, nook and cranny.

Here are some of the hunters checking the kitchen cupboards...
for the 3rd time and still finding eggs!

Andrew searching under the stove.

While Coach Uhlman searches on top of the stove:

It was a great time. I usually hunt for about 10 minutes and then sit in the kitchen and eat candy for the rest of the 1 hour 50 minutes.


This year I thought I'd bring an ADORABLE and special Easter treat. I found this recipe online http://www.bakerella.com/spring-chickens/ for spring chick cake pops that were sooooooooo cute. I gathered the necessary supplies and planned for days. After a lot of work (and a lot of Amelia whining at my feet to be picked up), I looked down in grave disappointment at my final results. They looked nothing like the beautiful pictures on the website! My chick cake pops were deformed, misshapen little things. Oh, well, they tasted good and at least now I can save myself the time, energy and disappointment and just bring a veggie tray next year.

You really should check out what they are supposed to look like here: http://www.bakerella.com/spring-chickens/

How she got them so round, smooth and adorable, I will never know!