Egging Her on

We took Abbie to an Easter egg hunt this weekend. This was the first hunt I’d attended since I was a participant about 20 years ago. I think we arrived late that day, so I had to search hard to find anything. I found one egg, and it definitely did not contain a voucher for a new bike, or any of the extra-cool prizes that were promised. I believe it contained a sticker. Cheapskates.

Not wanting to repeat the mistakes from my childhood, I made sure we arrived early enough to stake out a good spot in front of the crowd. “We” here refers to our entire five-unit family. We left so early that we had time to stop by a couple early season garage sales. I didn’t get anything except confirmation that I will not be attending garage sales with all three kids in tow and no other adults to help keep them in line.

It was a beautiful spring morning, with the sun shining down from a cloudless blue sky. Funny thing though, it was really cold for a sunny early spring morning. I’m guessing the temperature was somewhere in the upper 30’s. Of course, I’m making that guess after having gone outside. When we dressed Abbie that morning, we looked at the bright sunshine, guessed that the weather was bound to be nice, or at least warming up quickly, and took her outside in only a jogging suit.

Oops. We only arrived about ten minutes before the hunt began, but Abbie was shivering before the starting tape lowered. I wrapped her in my jacket, but it didn’t seem to help; she just kept shaking.

About the time she threw up though, I started thinking she was more nervous than cold. She may have been on the verge of hypothermia too, but being so close to so many strangers probably triggered a fear response similar to what the Paltrow/Martin kids will feel when they realize their names are Apple and Moses.

It didn’t even help that she was surrounded by her own age group. This hunt smartly separated kids into age groups, putting Abbie into the 3 & under crowd. That way, instead of her being knocked over by overzealous children whose ages approached double-digits, she only had to contend with being knocked over by other overzealous parents.

Ellie took her around to pick up eggs. These eggs were “hidden” in the same sense that the Cubs “play baseball,” which is to say not very well.* Ellie led her to some of the brightly colored eggs resting on the ground, and she picked up two, depositing them in her basket. Ellie coaxed her into putting two more eggs into her basket, but after that she ran off the playground. I tried pulling her back onto the playground, especially since she was still six eggs short of the stated per child maximum, but she screamed and crumpled to the ground. I took the hint, and we headed back to the car, stopping in the nearby pet fish store to warm and cheer up Abbie. I believe we were the first family to leave. We also didn’t win that new bicycle.

Here are some pictures of the event:


Abbie and Ellie are off to the hunt. Notice the other kids are dressed much warmer than her.


Abbie is putting an egg in her basket. She may or may not be screaming at the moment.


Abbie is showing us what she thinks of the egg hunt.


I’m checking her eggs. It’s another sucker. I hate suckers.


This has nothing to do with the hunt, but I wanted to post it anyway. I haven’t posted enough pictures of Abbie, and this is about as cute as she gets.

* The Cubs are 4-1 right now! If they keep this up (they won’t), I won’t be able to make any more jokes like that for a while.