I'll admit it: Easter candy is my absolute favorite candy. As soon as I see the Cadbury Mini Eggs on the store shelves, I know I'm in trouble. And then there's those delectable Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs. Easter just wouldn't be the same without those. I also happen to love jelly beans. One year I had someone bring me a Costco size tub of Jelly Bellies around Easter time. Let's just say I had to get some cavities filled after that.

When I was about 12 or 13 years old, I woke up one Easter morning to find that someone had picked through my Easter basket and eaten most of my candy. As you could imagine, I was pretty upset. I started storming through the house trying to find the culprit. I finally found my 7-year-old sister in her room with a chocolate mustache. When I asked her if she had eaten my candy, she told me in her most innocent voice that she had not eaten it. I still had my suspicions and later that day, when her conscience got the best of her, she told me the truth that she had eaten my candy. She told me she was sorry and then gave me some of her candy. We always have a good laugh about that story now, and we've used it many times to teach our own kids about the importance of telling the truth and righting our wrongs.

Although my love of Easter candy runs deep, I don't love the effects of too much sugar. And I really don't like the effects of too much sugar on my kids. I am slowly learning to limit sugar at Easter time. One way we are doing this is by using something other than candy for Easter egg hunts. Here are some non-sugar Easter egg hunt ideas.

-Put a few pieces of a puzzle inside a plastic Easter egg. Hide all of the pieces to the puzzle in several eggs. Have them go on a hunt to find the whole puzzle.

-Place small plastic animals inside the eggs. Have your children sort the animals into farm animals, jungle animals, pets, etc.

-Make clues to put inside of the eggs. The clues could lead them to a family gift or even a special family outing.

-Put alphabet letters inside of the eggs. Have them put the letters in order or match lower case with uppercase letters.

-Put some coins or dollar bills inside of the eggs. Have them count their money then take them to Dollar Tree afterwards. Have them by something for themselves and something to gift to someone else.

-Have a glow-in-the-dark Easter egg hunt with glow sticks inside.

-Make special coupons to put inside the Easter eggs. The coupons could be for things like extra TV time, an extra bedtime story, or a family game night.

-Put small finger puppets inside all of the eggs. Once all the puppets are found, create a puppet show together.

I can't wait to try some of these ideas myself! And when you are all done with your eggs, you could use the plastic eggs to make some juice popsicles. What kid doesn't love popsicles?! Happy Easter!