Evil Easter Bunny
The grandchildren visited last weekend. It was Easter. We bought chocolate eggs, bunnies, carrots, and even six pounds of gummy bears.
What’s Easter without an Easter Egg Hunt?
Hiding candy is fun for grandparents; finding candy is even more fun for grandchildren. But, watching it being found is best of all.
Stash on the “butter bed:”
During the hunt, they stashed “found” candy on the “butter bed.” (“Butter bed” is the name I gave our king size PosturePedic® bed. It feels like settling into firm butter when you lay down. The grandkids laughed the first few times I said it, but “butter bed” stuck. It’s a treat for them to sleep in it.)
They ran back and forth seeking, finding, giggling, and stashing.
Evil Easter Bunny:
I stood in the hall, looking into an empty room and yelled, “I see some candy you missed!” They’d come running like a stampede of hungry candy goblins. While they were distracted, I sneaked to the “butter bed,” stole candy from their stash, and re-hid it in another room.
I’d stand in the hall, again, looking into another room, and yell, “I see some candy you missed!”
What’s more fun than watching grandchildren hunt for hidden candy? Hiding it again and watching them find it a second or third time!
Confession:
They got confused when they found candy where the’d just found candy.
I couldn’t hold back any longer and finally told them I was taking their candy and re-hiding it. They looked confused for a bit, and then it hit them. They laughed and said, “Oh! Poppi.”
Leadership:
Remember goals; enjoy the journey.
How do you balance your need to achieve with enjoying the journey?
(Originally posted April 5, 2013)
Great great Post Dan!!!
Sharing what one has through stories are an awesome way to let folks know what is on ones mind.
For me actually the best choice!!
What I do is practice….you know now what’s coming
1 Happy Now
2 Vision for my Epic Future
This way see Dan I am enjoying NOW while I am on the road to an Epic Achieving Future!!!
Promise this Vishen Lahkiani is really onto something simply spectacular!!!
I am going to end poverty. Anyone want to help let me know. Will share how and what you can to to chip in.
All I need from anyone is just a little bit of curiosity!!
Cordially,
SP
EA
Grandchildren are a blast! One on my granddaughters plays peek-a-boo by covering her eyes, believing that when she can’t see me, she disappears! I love the fun innocence and rolling giggles. I think they allow us to get it (innocence) back, even if only in small doses, for me this helps the balance…
Hi Dan,
Grandkids often give us the moment of pause we need to enjoy the journey.
Even better is seeing your kids, or any young person really, leading their lives on both: enjoying the journey and balancing the achievement of goals.
My Easter gift of gratitude is for the life I have that allows me to authentically enjoy the precious leadership moments along the way.
Thanks for sharing your story. It inspires me to reflect, pause and enjoy the moment.
Happy Easter to you and yours,
Cindy Charlton
Dan, I’m glad you reposted this one. It is a fun story and us grandpas can always use some fresh ideas to spring on the grandkids. I’m thinking I’ll need to steal this one just so you know – one evil easter bunny to another.
Good afternoon ‘Poppi’
Setting and achieving goals. Pushing myself past my comfort zone to learn and master something new, that’s what satisfies my need to achieve. Finding happiness on the way comes when I succeed in lifting others up and bringing them along. “What’s a celebration with no-one to share it with”? Just don’t ask me to share my Peanut Butter Meltaways,, NOBUNNY GETS MY MELTAWAYS, NOBUNNY!!!!!!!
“Happy Easter to you Dale and the Rockwell family my friend”.
Steven
Oh, I wish I’d thought of that! My daughter is 20 now, I wonder if I could talk her into looking for treats now…
Diana
i think that children teach us as much as we teach them 🙂
Ok…repost. I was thinking to myself that Dan must be going senile or maybe I am because I know I’ve read about the evil Easter bunny before!
And one day, the grandchildren will grow up and need therapy over Poppy lying to them when they were wee helpless ones. (grins)
ON to the question!
How do you balance your need to achieve with enjoying the journey?
This week? Today? I’m feeling the need to separate the expectations and need to achieve goals of others from my own in a big way. I really do hate feeling caught in that sticky invisible mess of not ever enough no matter what you’ve actually done and accomplished in life.
I’m trying to condense a novel down into a few sentences Dan so please bare with me…
I’ve been wondering about this for the past couple of days over something that has occurred and at the heart of it all, it’s NOT about right or wrong, who’s better and who’s not. Who’s arrived because none have. Yet we are already ENOUGH.
When we operate from a place of NOT being ‘enough’, then everything we do…that NEED…is driven by ‘not enough’ and it gets projected outwardly onto everyone around us whether we consciously realize it or not. Yet, when we settle in (this certainly hasn’t been a one time event for me as I still struggle with it) to already enough then that ‘drive’ to achieve is coming from a much more healthy and grounded place. That can actually serve not only ourselves but others in a more helpful way. Then everyone frantically trying to out achieve everyone else to the point no matter what people do, it’s a bottomless of never good enough. There’s no grace and love in that. That is about shame.
We’ve all had more then enough shame.
So that’s one of the goals for myself and a desire I have for others as well. To truly KNOW that we are ‘enough’ even in the paradox of simultaneously not having ‘arrived’. Meaning…we enough yet not ever ‘done’ all at the same time. When I act from the place of I am Enough, then it doesn’t matter if I’m the janitor, the baker, the candle stick maker, someone who has walked on the moon, the secretary at church, the surgeon at the hospital, or the President of the United States. When we are enough, we simply find ways to use our gifts and talents to meet needs and to do our best to help make the world just a little more brighter for everyone…even if the sphere of influence is small. If we touch even one life, it can carry on for an eternity.
So when I’m ABLE to ‘rest’ in that perspective instead of caught in the grip of ‘not enough’…I CAN enjoy the little things…even though there is still so much to do…so much that I want and need to get ‘done’.
And I still have the constant reminder that regardless of my plans, goals, and dreams….I’m not guaranteed tomorrow and so perhaps that HAS changed some things for me in how I look at things.
And as the saying goes…Man (or woman) plans….God laughs!
And sometimes I think it would do us all good to laugh at some of our lofty ‘never good enough’ plans…laugh at the silliness of it all!
: )
tomorrow we are hiding eggs…for the youngest Grandkids…I think they might hunt for eggs when they in their twenties…they have so much fun…Great story…My husband is a Poppy too!
Too good!