Egg race

Though She-Who-Cringes-When-Her-Children-Eat-Chocolate and I are convinced Quakers, we still raise our children with some of the the traditional religious holiday baggage. Santa and the Easter Bunny visit our house.

This year, we attended our local egg hunt for the first time, and it was a little confused and chaotic for a first-time attender. I'm usually the type of person that counts (or estimates) heads at an event, but I really didn't think about it when I was there. Let's say there are 400 screaming, squirming children, held back from their prizes by caution tape. Plus adults with cameras, an unintelligible person on a bullhorn, and a man in a bunny suit that featured an open mouth and big teeth -- oh, yeah, THAT will attract the two year olds.

The "hunt" was divided by age group. Reesa was in the 1 to 3 year old field with She-Who. (See photo of both of them checking out the 1-3 year old field). I took Genevieve to the portion of the play structures allocated to the 4 to 6 year olds.

I ran into some neighborhood friends, chatted briefly and was interrupted by the unintelligible man on the bullhorn. I got my camera ready for the excitement. Finally, Mr. Unintelligible said something I could understand.

"On your mark...get set..."

BATTERY IS LOW

...oh no

"...GO!"

On our compact digital camera, the battery is low message is not a warning of things to come soon, but rather a courtesy informing you why it just shut down. In the thirty seconds it took to replace the battery, the mad dash for the plastic eggs was over. I found Genevieve after several minutes of searching. She was wandering around the maelstrom of adults and children, looking for two more eggs to fulfill the maximum of ten eggs.

"Honey, you found eight eggs! That's really good. Some children only found five or less." She didn't fully believe me, but she did seem to succumb to the reality of not finding any more eggs. When she discovered that her sister had collected "only" three eggs, she decided that she could be fine.

Reesa had three eggs because she eschewed all but pink and/or purple eggs. Walked past other colors. She seemed happy enough.