Last year we spent the Saturday before Easter hiding eggs for Big C within the pocketed walls of Crowders Mountain, while the grown-ups got their climb on.  (And ironically looking back at that old trip report, I see that Big C is wearing the exact same Thomas the Train jammies…)  Now that Big C is a bona fide roped climber in his own right, our plan this year was to move our egg hunt higher than 5 feet off the ground, hiding his eggs within the nooks and crannies of actual climbing routes.  We’d been looking forward to it all week, so needless to say we were all pretty bummed when the weather forecast turned sour by Thursday morning. 

So we went to Plan B – taking our egg hunt to our local climbing gym, Inner Peaks.  Family nature time?  No.  But family fun time, yes!  In fact, it was the first time our family of 4 had set foot in the gym all at the same time together!  Although recent gym visits have been abruptly cut short due to Baby Z being too excited to stay asleep in the gym, this time she slept like a champ the whole time we were there!

The crag-daddy dutifully played the role of belay slave while I climbed up Big C’s favorite routes, “hiding” plastic Easter eggs inside the bigger holds as I went.  Big C clipped a bag to his harness, and up he went, gleefully snagging each egg and dropping it in his bag.  Of course we’re no where close to putting him on the sharp end (yet), but watching his body positioning as he tried to find a stance in which to take a hand off to get the egg and reach down for his bag looked remarkably like reaching down for a quickdraw and clipping in.  For an older child, an activity like that would definitely be good practice at exploring the 3-point stances necessary for lead climbing!  

Anyway, Big C thoroughly enjoyed getting the eggs, so much so that he insisted on putting them BACK into the same hidey-holes on the way down…over and over and over again.  It made my job easy enough!  

So while our grand plans for an egg hunt didn’t exactly pan out, Plan B ended up being pretty cool too!  Easter morning dawned bright and beautiful of course, but with our church service and other commitments, we were unable to make it out to some real rock.  Maybe next week!  

What creative Easter activities did your family partake in this year?  Was the weather cooperative, or did you have to opt for Plan B?