Easter Egg Hunt

Well, the big news around here is that we have selected a winner!  KatC is the winner of a copy of Kristin Maschka’s book, This Is Not How I Thought It Would Be.  Both Uno and Dos pulled her name out of the drawing separately, so I think that’s a clear sign she has “winner” written all over her.

It being Easter Sunday and all, this is like the Superbowl for churches in our town.  Today during service the sanctuary was filled with many faces, some I knew, some I didn’t.  What was funniest to me was after our singing time the worship pastor said, “You may be seated,” and somewhere, a little kid yelled, “Yay!”

Hee, hee.  I got a chuckle at that.

However, I’m not sure I should be chuckling about something else.

This afternoon after I put Uno and Dos down for their rest time I was inexplicably drawn to their bags candy-filled eggs.

I rummaged through them, devouring fun-sized packets of Skittles and M&Ms.  I even a few packages of Smarties.

Then around a mouthful of sugary goodness, it hit me – was I stealing from my children?!

We don’t go trick-or-treating and I generally avoid the pint-sized candies, so this is the first time I’ve really been confronted with the ethics of eating candy not intended for adult consumption.  It begs the question:

On a scale of 1-to-10, 10 being so horrible you need to set up your pull out bed in hell and 1 being, the children came from your body and destroyed your mid-section so they have no right to their own sugar stock, how wrong is it to scavenge through the Easter baskets and eat the candy for yourself?

I mean, is this a “lesser” sin, comparable to telling your friend you haven’t noticed their 40 lbs. weight gain or does it constitute theft, an infraction of the Big 10 (what I like to call the 10 Commandments)?

Are there age boundaries for when you can take the children’s candy?  Right now they won’t even notice the lack of candy in the eggs I emptied, but will that change as they grow older, thus changing the severity of the theft?

What do you think?  What are the rules regarding candy-filled holidays?  What rights do parents have to their children’s candy stash?