Last year I wrote about the “anxiety of the mom at the hunt” and discussed my thoughts about stacking the deck for success at my girls’ first Easter egg hunt.
It turned out that the deck was already stacked by the generous fire fighters in town. No kid at our local egg hunt could possibly go away empty-handed.
This year, Dinah and Djuna are aware of what an egg hunt is, so I had to explain that in our park hunt, there aren’t really that many eggs to find. I told them that there is candy to collect everywhere instead of having lots of hidden eggs. There are actually a few golden eggs to find, but there are only a few and most of the hundreds of kids at the hunt won’t find one.
But Djuna was very excited to find a golden egg. At the hunt, Djuna really wanted to find a golden egg, and Dinah focused on gathering candy.
At one point, we passed a family with a little just-walking toddler, and they found a golden egg in the damp grass just as we were passing. I called Dinah and Djuna over so they could at least see a golden egg. This only made Djuna more determined.
As soon as we moved away from the golden family, my friend ran over to me (Auntie Lisa a.k.a. “Sleesla;” she sweetly braved the rain to come Easter Egg hunting with us) and told me that the family had actually brought their own golden egg.
Brilliant, I thought! What a fun and innocent way to let a little one have some fun than to let them find a home-brought golden egg over and over again. Parents’ ingenuity never ceases to amaze me.
I don’t think I could have pulled this over on my kids, because they knew that people were bringing the eggs up to the fire fighters at the microphone to redeem them for big Easter baskets.
But that’s OK. We went up to the head of the city’s Volunteer Fire Fighters’ Association and asked to touch one of the golden eggs. Djuna liked that just fine. Dinah shook the Easter bunny’s hand while Djuna panicked, and once again this year, a good time was had by all.