We arrived promptly when the event began and snagged one of the very last parking spots available. Our friends who went with us got the last spot. The field was packed with people. I think the attendance for this event far exceeded the expectations of the people who were pulling it off.
As Elijah was wearing a WHITE suit and tie combo, I wanted to get his picture with the Easter Bunny before he did any crawling about in the grass. One of our friends informed us that the egg hunt for Elijah's age group didn't start until noon. That gave us about an hour to find the bunny and take a pic.
I was cheered by this until we finally found the bunny. The line waiting to see him stretched around the track almost the entire length of a football field.
We decided that it would be best to get in line right away if we wanted a picture with Peter Cottontail at all, and that if we ran out of time the mamas could go with the babies to do the egg hunt while the men-folk stayed in line.
Well, we did run out of time. So the mamas grabbed the babies and we rushed over to the field where ages 0 - 2 were supposed to "hunt" for eggs.
I should have known just by the look of things that it would not turn out well. There was a square of grass covered with eggs about the size of a suburban front lawn and, surrounding it, a mob of parents and children. It was like a pack of wolves, or hungry crocodiles at the zoo at feeding time, just waiting for the keepers to throw in the meat. The sheer numbers of people there should have warned me. I don't profess to have a gift for spatial relationships, but if all of those people were to crowd into the area with eggs they would be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with barely room to move at all.
One of the workers walked into the field and held up three fingers. Then two. Then one.
Suddenly it was like someone had dropped blood into a shark tank. (yet another zoo analogy) The people rushed forward and the egg-patched was completely obscured by bodies of doting parents seeking prized plastic eggs for their babies and toddlers.
It was a mob, a stampede, insanity. And I have a picture to prove it! This is a shot looking right into the area where the eggs were. You can barely see the ground! Let alone any eggs!
It took my friend and I about three seconds to decide that we had better skip this whole egg-hunt thing and get back to the bunny.
It didn't take long to get to Peter Cottontail and we got our free snapshot:
Well, that hunt didn't work out so well, either. It turns out that little kids have a tendency to be greedy, and there were a LOT of little kids there.
We were able to get a few eggs from one of the staff and went to have our own egg hunt on a neighboring field. We were got some great pictures and let the little ones finally have some fun crawling in the grass.
awww...too cute!
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