While most families hunt Easter eggs, at our house we started a new tradition. "Let's shoot 'em," said my husband. "YAH!" hooped and hollared our boys. They couldn't wait!
We started stashing extra eggs from our hens a few days before Easter so we would have plenty to plink.
On Easter morning the first thing out of their mouths was, "how much longer 'til we can shoot the eggs." Now this was about 5:30 am, and I know the rest of the morning must have seemed like an eternity for them. The chocolate for breakfast helped the enthusiasm, the jelly beans for their pre-church snack sent them bounding a little further on their sugar rush, and the peeps and miscellaneous candy snuck here and there had them soaring into a sweet abyss, or as I saw it walking sugar sticks of dynamite. Especially after church as we witnessed our middle son, put on his ski helmet and goggles in the back seat then proceed to play the 'air' drums on his head all the way home-yep...there was a little of a LOT too much sugar running through his veins. With so much 'fuel' inside these boys, the outlet had to be dynamic...our redneck Easter began!
Carefully placing the eggs across our dirt hill, my husband readied the scene. Safely armed with three rifles the egg splatting began. They each took turns. "KAPLOW!" went the rifles echos. Their smiles beamed with excitement with every shot they took! "All be darned if each of them hit every egg, dead on," said my husband. I smiled. "That's my boys," I thought to myself.
Then it was my turn. Still in my church skirt, I knelt down in the dirt, set the cross-hairs on my egg target and pulled the 410's trigger. The egg yoke blasted into the air, the shell burst into a zillion bits and splattered all over the dirt hill. "Ha-ha! That was awesome!" I said. What a great feeling to 'plink' an egg. Our boys shot for over an hour with their dad, learning from him, shooting a few eggs, and spending some quality 'boy time' as well as burning off some of the sugar rush pulsing through their little bodies...and so our redneck Easter tradition began.
Maybe next year you'll share in our Redneck Easter tradition at your home, or maybe you have a Redneck idea to share with me. I'm game, how 'bout you?