Yesterday, Saturday, we had a Gunnell Family activity day. We had a lovely hike, that I’ll have to post pictures of later this week, followed by an afternoon of visiting, food, and this:

I don’t know when it started, but there is a fun Gunnell tradition that the siblings enjoy called the Egg Roll. It’s a hard boiled egg competition where you face off in an egg collision to see which egg is the toughest. This is determined by who has the least amount of damage after the face off and is taken VERY seriously! 😆

Decorating the eggs is half the fun, and usually where the “trash talk” starts. Complimentary trash talk, mind you. While you’ll hear proclamations of how cool their own egg is, along with words of intimidation scrawled on the sides of their eggs, you’ll also hear compliments given to favorites. I didn’t get any compliments this year. Probably because mine was the one you see on the left:

Owen was just starting to decorate his egg with some Sharpies when he dropped it and dented the top. I decided to take the damaged egg and let him start fresh. I had zero inspiration this year and only drew a crying face. What you don’t see are the drops of “blood” coming from the crack. LOL! Since Don was busy picking weeds, I took the liberty of drawing him an equally unimpressive expression on his egg.

My Mother-in-Law makes up the chart and puts numbered papers in a container. As you finish decorating your egg, you pull out a number to determine who you go up against first. Then, as you can see from the chart, who you go up against next has to do with who wins the other matches.

Here are some pictures to help you understand. (I’m hoping the pictures look okay, I still don’t have all my programs loaded back to my computer, one of them being PhotoShop. Oh, how I miss you, PhotoShop!)

Here are Owen and Brooke (cute blondie) facing off in one of the first matches.

I learned a valuable lesson this year. Be sure to fully explain the idea of the Egg Roll to your six year old after he’s spent more time than the rest of us decorating his egg that it will get smashed and ruined. Or you’ll see a face like this, along with sobs of how horrible the game is.

I told him that next year he’ll get to decorate two eggs.

Here are Janae (green top) and Brooke (cute blondie) facing off. It’s always a lot of fun to watch the kids participate and try to time the egg release to accomplish the point of the game.

Then it starts getting intense when the siblings start competing. (David and Jenna)

And you’ll hear good natured jeers when spouses go against each other. (Devin and Heather)

Please excuse my frizzy hair. We had gone on a hike early that morning and I was still sporting bed head. (Don and me)

Then suddenly something like this happens ….

A slimy surprise barfed out of one of the eggs when Kelly (spunky redhead) went against Ronda (innocent bystander). Be grateful I’m not posting the close up, it was pretty nasty. But that’s when the hysterical laughter started and was catapulted when Don started playing dirty …

There you see his egg flying over Katie’s, after he had already pulled his first dirty trick that sent Katie’s egg almost all the way to the shed after he faked her out by taking his egg quickly out of the way of the collision.

There were still giggle fits in the background when it came time for the championship face off. It was Cody vs. Perrin for the first place title.

Perrin was excited to be the Egg Roll Champion this year and got fist pick of the yummy prizes Grandma Gunnell had ready.

Seriously, what is it with this pooping candy dispensers? My boys think they are hilarious and Perrin was giddy with joy when he saw that there was one in Grandma’s prize stash.

And here are our winners of Egg Roll 2009.

David wasn’t bitter that he was beat by two Grade Schoolers, because how can you be bitter when you have this little face cheering you on?

😀