Eggs for Everyone

Easter is such a fun time for the kids...lots of treats and egg hunts. Who doesn't like searching for eggs that have treats inside of them?

One of the hunts was for the neighborhood music class. It was held at KL's house and the kids really enjoyed themselves. The little ones got a 2 minute head start and then the bigger kids joined in. Eli was really into it. He understood the concept of seeing eggs and putting them into his basket. Of course Elina had a wonderful time, too. After we got our eggs, Elina spent most of her time opening up the eggs to see what she could eat. Poor Eli had to just watch her enjoy the goodies. Then the kids played on KL's huge swingset in the backyard.
This year Lackland had its first egg hunt on base. We were excited about it (even J and M came down from Austin just to go with us), but kind of wary since it was the first year they were doing it. It would either be great or not. Man, were we sad that it wasn't great--at all. In fact, I'm sad to say it was kind of lame. Here are a few things that were wrong with this event:

• They barely had any eggs for the number of kids that were there.


• They used hard boiled eggs for this event. Are you kidding? What kid in their right mind wants a hard boiled egg?? Everyone knows that they all want the plastic eggs with the goodies on the inside!
  
• They "hid" the eggs on this patch of grass that didn't really have any hiding places.


• They didn't allow little little kids to go first. Seriously, how can Eli compete with a 7 year old?


• They didn't control the crowd. There was no "ready set go" to let us know it was time. Just a wave of kids started running so everyone started running. It was literally mass chaos. At the end of the egg hunt, there were kids crying everywhere. Most kids didn't even get one egg. Some kids had huge baskets with a single egg inside. And then you had these bigger kids who had a lot of eggs. Didn't they feel bad standing next to the crying 2 year old?? (I have to admit, though, some older kids were sweet and did end up giving out their eggs to the younger kids.)


• There was no one really "in charge." No one directing people where to go or to tell people about the schedule of events. We would just listen in on other people's conversations to figure things out.


• The food they had there was...really...lame. They just had cupcakes, chili dogs, fries, and cake. Basically, they ran out of everything. We ended up eating chili dogs sans buns. It was a sad sight.


• The whole thing started at 10am, but the Easter Bunny wasn't showing up until noon. Are you kidding?? A lot of people ended up leaving right after the scary egg hunt because there wasn't enough going on to make people want to stick around for 2 hours to see the Easter Bunny.

Anyway, it was awful. Just plain awful. Even Elina was sad about not getting an egg. B was just carrying her and she was laying her head on his shoulder. That's sadness. Luckily, she got a balloon animal (a bunny) from a clown, so that made everything better. Phew!

They ended up doing the egg hunt a second time. They didn't do anything differently, but this time around we were smarter and knew what to do. We didn't wait with the line of kids in front of the building this time. We just stood more on the side, scoped out the eggs, and carried the kids in our arms. We decided that the adults would do the running this time in order to be faster and actually get some eggs. We managed to get Eli a few eggs this time. KL's husband went so far as to run ahead of everyone, grab 4 eggs, put them in his pocket, and then slowly toss them on the ground near his children so that they could get them. Smart! Do you see what I mean though? It was cutthroat! (How sad to say that about an egg hunt.)
Well, on Easter afternoon we did 3 Easter egg hunts at our house with the kids. The first one was in our backyard. The kids did really well and found a bunch of eggs (with some help). M was nice enough to lead Eli around to find eggs. (Actually M was raised Muslim and has never celebrated Easter, so this was his first real egg hunt. Needless to say, he was thrilled!) Eli was getting really into finding eggs that every time he found one, he'd start smiling and making noises. Then we did a second hunt in the house. J hid the eggs for both the kids and adults. It actually took us a while to find the last egg...and Elina ended up finding the last one! (In our defense, the last egg was at a lower sight line, so there was no way a taller person could see it, J!)



For the last egg hunt, 3 adults put in $5 each and the 4th adult hid the egg. So M, J, and I had to look for the $15 orange-colored egg. This was actually quite fun. I think we're going to do this every year from now on. And of course, the person who never celebrated Easter before (M) found the egg, so he won the $15. I think he officially likes Easter now!
Easter was really fun and relaxing this year. We just hung out with M and J and did kid stuff at the house....decorated eggs, ate treats, and played Wii. It was an awesome time. We had a nice dinner on the deck and ate jello eggs. I even made a red velvet cake from scratch for the occasion! I decorated it like a basket with Peeps and Cadbury mini-eggs in the middle. Elina was pretty excited since she saw it in a magazine and had asked me to make it.

We also had the kids follow a jellybean/cheerios trail to find their Easter baskets. We filled Eli's basket with a play camera and some toy cars. Unfortunately, Eli's favorite Easter basket toy ended up being Elina's Tinkerbell wand. Go figure. He just kept walking around the house waving the wand and pushing the "magical sound" button.

So this was another great Easter with lots of treats and eggs. We hope you all had a wonderful Easter, too!