"Can I borrow half a cup of vinegar?"

We took Miss C out for her birthday dinner last night..... her choice was one of the larger Oriental restaurants on the other side of the Gulf Freeway. We ordered appetizers and soups, and brought home most of our dinners in to-go boxes. For dessert, we went to La Madeleine and picked out a calorie-laden goodie for each of us, and came back to our house.

Before we left to pick up C, I had decorated the dining room table with her birthday gifts, plus everything we needed to color Easter eggs-- which C loves to do. I set out our best china for our dessert and tea, but I also used all of my Disney cups (made to look like the teacup ride at the Disney parks). I put the egg colors in the Disney cups and had them in a circle of eight around the centerpiece on the dining room table. And the centerpiece was a pretty bowl filled with two dozen hard-boiled eggs waiting to be decked out in colors, beads, sequins and stickers.

C had brought her birthday candle to the restaurant and we had it lit in the center of the table there, then we did the same thing in our dining room. I had given her the large pillar-shaped birthday-decorated candle last week on her "real" birthday-day, but she didn't light it with her parents... she saved it for us.

After we sang Happy Birthday, and C took a good half-minute to come up with a good birthday wish before she blew out the little candle on her fruit tart, we started to color the eggs. We all noticed that the color was taking longer than we thought it would to turn the eggshells from white to bright. My husband asked me if I had read the instructions on the box. What's to read?-- You pop in the little color-tablet, add hot water, and you should have color.

My husband read the box..... and asked me if I had added a little bit of vinegar to the cups. Vinegar? Oops. I didn't have a drop of vinegar in the house, and I didn't think a bottle of thick balsamic vinegar glaze would be a good thing to use. I ran next door to V's house.... Can I borrow half a cup of vinegar? --- "Oh, you must be coloring Easter eggs!" said V.

What?! Does everyone in the world but me know that you need to add vinegar to Easter egg coloring? As soon as I added a spoon of vinegar to the cups of coloring, the smell of the vinegar in the hot water set my mind to remembering that you do indeed need the vinegar. Adding the vinegar to the hot water made the liquid bubble like a science experiment, which gave all of us a good laugh.

So this morning we have a bowl filled with colored eggs in our fridge.... pink and blue and purple, some with stripes, some with sequins and beads, and one that says "Best Friend" on it--- C made that one and gave it to me last night. It will be the last egg that we crack, without a doubt. We gave half of the eggs to C, so she could enjoy them with her mom..... and use her cute little egg slicer that I gave her... it has the head of a chick at one end and the feet of a chick at the other.

We had such a good time yesterday with that child. She is such a delight, and so very easy to please. She squealed when she saw how I had decorated the dining room table for her birthday and she loved the little place cards I had made for the three of us. She is seventeen now, and there's still a sense of fun, a sense of wonder, and I don't think she wants to let go of the "little girl-ness" that's still inside her. Which is fine. C is just C and she'll grow and mature at her own pace.

C suggested to me that we should color eggs more often. She said it was a good thing to do on rainy days, and being that she likes hard-boiled eggs anyway, it's more fun to have decorated eggs in the fridge than plain old white ones. Something tells me that I should add food coloring and vinegar to my shopping list.