By Breelyn Vanleeuwen, PA-C | Founder & CEO of Daily Shade
Easter at our house is a whole thing.
We're talking bunnies, ducks, chicks, in fact I have 22 quail eggs in an incubator in my laundry room as we speak that are supposed to hatch on Easter weekend. I'm not kidding. Of course the house is decorated, the schedule is lined with crafts leading up to the weekend, fun new ways to color eggs (check our @dailyshadesunscreen Instagram for some ideas!), color-coded eggs, a basket for each kid and of course the GOLDEN EGG (money, always money).
We do our egg hunt outside. Always. There's something about watching kids tear across the backyard in their Easter outfits, completely unaware that they're hunting in direct spring sunlight for the better part of an hour, that gets me every time. Not in a worried way. Just in a I'm-a-PA-who-thinks-about-this-stuff way.
Spring sun is sneaky. The temperatures are still mild (usually but Utah is really the center of the sun this year), the breeze feels cool, and nobody feels like they're getting burned. But UV index doesn't care about air temperature. April UV levels in most of the country are already high enough to cause damage, especially on fair skin, especially between 10am and 2pm, which is exactly when most Easter egg hunts happen.
So a few years ago I started adding one thing to each Easter basket alongside the chocolate and the little toys nobody plays with after Tuesday. A bottle of Daily Shade Sunscreen. It started as a practical thing, just wanting sunscreen on my kids before we headed outside. But it's become part of our Easter morning routine now. Baskets, outfits, sunscreen, then eggs.
My kids don't even fuss about it anymore. That's the whole goal, honestly. Not making sun protection a thing. Just making it part of the thing.
Easter is one of those holidays where everyone's outside and almost nobody thinks about sunscreen. I've been that parent too. But once you start thinking about it, it's hard to stop.
Happy Easter from our family to yours. I hope your hunt is loud and messy and someone finds the golden egg.
