Tricky Egg Hunt for Easter

This year, we decided Easter needed a little more effort — from everyone.

For weeks before the school holidays, I'd been sneaking onto Canva while the girls were distracted, building what I can only describe as a four-stage puzzle-hunt-treasure-hunt hybrid. The planning started with a mission: find plastic eggs that could actually open. After working through The Warehouse, Kmart, and Look Sharp, I finally tracked down a set that twisted open neatly. A few sets in six colours, two bags of small heart-shaped chocolates, and we were ready.

The girls had no idea what was coming.

Stage One: The Hunt

Easter morning, the garden was scattered with eighteen eggs — pink, yellow, green, blue, orange, purple — tucked into the hedges, under the trampoline, behind the plants. Inside each one: a tiny red heart chocolate and a strip of paper. Collect all eighteen strips, and the puzzle begins.

Stage Two: The Book Quiz

Once the pieces came together, six book quiz clues appeared. The three sisters put their heads together, debating titles, pulling books off shelves, flipping through pages. Each correct answer led them to a slip of paper tucked somewhere in the bookshelf — a chunk of a hidden sentence.

Six chunks. One sentence.

Stage Three: The Sentence

When the six pieces were arranged in the right order, a new clue appeared — a sentence pointing to somewhere in the house. They read it twice, looked at each other, and ran.

Stage Four: The Treasure

Inside the piano bench: an Easter Movie Day poster.

Popcorn basket in arms, projector on, curtains drawn — the three of them settled in to watch The Mitchells vs. the Machines. Warm, funny, and quietly about what holds a family together. A good choice for the end of an afternoon like this.

Three hours had passed. They'd been outside in the garden, racing back and forth between bookshelves, decoding clues, and arguing cheerfully about which chunk came first.

This was our second Easter in New Zealand. The first was quieter — we were still finding our feet. This one felt like we'd made it our own.

Two countries' worth of holidays are collecting in our children's memories now. A little bit of both, shaped by us, celebrated here — in this garden, in this house, on the North Shore of a country that is slowly, steadily becoming home.