Easter do over?

So, we're well past the point of being able to claim rookie status on anything to do with parenting - especially providing magical delight for our children on holidays - but I kinda want to for this Easter!

We waited way too long to dye eggs (an hour before bedtime on Easter eve), used eco-friendly dye and brown eggs with rather sad results:

and of course, our biggest mistake was having the Easter Bunny hide plastic eggs in the front yard the night before we went to bed.
In the morning, I tiptoed to the front door, opened it ever so quietly and stepped outside to see how the yard looked, dotted with colorful eggs hidden in plain sight for our little girls...
Well, my anticipatory smile vanished in an instant. Oh, the carnage! What were we thinking?! We had basically laid out a feast for the neighborhood vermin. I should have taken photos, but I was too preoccupied with getting it cleaned up before the girls woke up.

But Sadie wasn't phased - she had a ball gathering up the remaining eggs; there were plenty, thankfully. We couldn't hide the fact that some had been pilfered, though - there were remnants of stickers and candy here and there in the dirt. I successfully shooed away a few eager birds and got Andrew to stand guard. We all observed a particularly brazen black squirrel sitting smugly in our tree as he noisily cracked into a pink plastic egg to get the chocolate inside. We watched as bits of shiny pastel foil floated down from the branches to the sidewalk. A thief and a litterer. I suppose I can't really blame him, though.

Better next year, I hope!