Easter - Celebrating after the Fact

One of the many downsides of divorce is not seeing your children on special holidays, like this past Easter.  The typical arrangement most of us have, with every other year being our year with the child(ren), means simply that we miss being with them on half of these holidays.

The upside of this is that it opens the door to discounted gifts and a creative time together to celebrate the holiday.  With Easter having already passed, but me planning to celebrate it with my children this coming weekend, I can get pretty much any Easter candy or gifts that I want at a deeply discounted rate.  That's not too bad.

The harder part is that we simply cannot do the bigger Easter events, like community or church egg hunts and such.  But with a little creativity, it can still be a fun time for you and your children.  And the fact that it will just be you and your children has the opportunity for it to be a more intimate time as well, which is always good.

I don't pretend to have the market cornered on late-Easter options, but here are some things I've done in the past and plan to do this year, or have thought to do:

• Glow in the dark eggs - these were fun.  I found some glow-sticks/straws at Hobby Lobby, curled them up and put them in the pastel colored plastic eggs along with some candy.  I had to tape the eggs shut so the coiled up glow-straw wouldn't pop them open, but other than that, that was a fun Easter egg hunt.
• Egg clue hunt - I bought each of my children a stuffed animal and will hide it.  Then I'll hide the eggs with clues inside on where to find the next egg.  At the end of the hunt, they'll find their toy.
• Indoor egg hunt - good for a rainy day.  Same as an outdoor egg hunt, but if you live in an apartment complex or an area where you worry about other children taking the eggs, this is a good alternative.  Simply hide the eggs around the house and let them search.
• Egg Dying - get some clearance egg-dying kits and dye some eggs.  The possibility that you don't know what you're doing any better than they do can make it unusually fun!
• Petting Zoos - if there is a nearby petting zoo, or you have friends with a farm, few things feel more like Easter to a little child than interacting with a baby animal.  It makes for great Easter pictures for the family, too.
• Easter Basket - at the very least, you can do this.  There should be plenty on deep discount after Easter and that are already put together.  Or you can put together your own.  You can even borrow the basket and "grass" from a friend who will have already celebrated Easter.
• With siblings (I have a son and a daughter) it can be competitive, so I usually designate one area for him and one for her, or one color for him and one for her, so they're each guaranteed the same number of eggs and there's no heated competition.

Missing the actual holiday doesn't mean you still can't celebrate with your children.  Maybe you have other divorced parent friends who have their kids the same weekend and you can do something together with them and their children.  There are many options.  You just have to be creative.  If you doubt your creative abilities, head to Hobby Lobby or some place like that which will have seasonal items and take a look around.  Seeing things often helps me come up with ideas.  It doesn't really matter what you do, as long as you do something.

Don't let the fact that you missed Easter mean you can't still celebrate with your kids. Don't let the fact that you miss any holiday or special event mean that you still can't celebrate.  The important thing is not the calendar-day that they celebrate with you, but only that they do celebrate with you.