It’s that time of year again. I’ve boiled about a dozen eggs, the kitchen table has been commandeered and tensions are running high. Yes, it’s the traditional Easter egg competition.

I can just about cope with World Book Day costumes, but Easter egg competitions finish me off. This year there was a double whammy. Not only did all three children want to enter an egg for the school competition, but our two daughters also wanted to enter an egg in their Brownie competition. I feel like egg competitions have taken over my life for the last four days, five if you count the shopping trip for craft supplies on Saturday.

By six o’clock last night the kitchen table looked like this:

(Those champagne glasses didn’t hold champagne for the stressed mum by the way. The children had a rare, small lemonade after a hot walk home from school as a pre-crafting treat and I decided to use fancy glasses to surprise them.)

Anyway, I digress. By 6pm I hadn’t even decided what to cook for tea, let alone started to cook it. The evening was unravelling. The middle child wanted Amy Tinkler to be standing on a beam, the ninja wouldn’t dry and the felt pens were running out half way through the American flag. The children had come up with their own ideas and I was determined that they would complete the task themselves. The fire wasn’t on, the washing was still on the line and the youngest hadn’t read his reading book.

Thankfully, Daddy arrived home and was very kind about the fact that he either had to make his own tea or eat leftover noodles. He put the fire on whilst I got the washing in. We argued about the best way to lay a fire, as you tend to do when you’ve both had a tough day. We abandoned Amy Tinkler’s scenery until breakfast time. The ninja dried and his eyes stopped sliding off in the glue. In relative calm, the children went to bed.

But the story doesn’t end there. The stress and drama of Easter egg competitions doesn’t stop once they’ve been created. That’s only half of the picture. Once they’re finished, you still have to get them to school in one piece. A nerve-wracking ordeal involving lots of shrieking from the eldest. And once they’re at school, you have to deal with the crushing realisation that the wonderful creation you’ve all shed blood, sweat and tears over has some stiff competition from the amazing Pinterest creations that everyone else is bringing in.

‘I hope I win,’ said the youngest, gazing at his ninja egg with pride. ‘What if I don’t win?’

‘Hmmm,’ I replied. ‘I think you’ve all done a fantastic job.’ And I really do.