Our Saturday Easter Activities

So, I bet you didn't know that a few of life's toughest lessons could be learned at a city sponsored Easter Egg Hunt, did you? Well, just ask my boys about it and they'll tell you how they learned about greed, selfishness, and disappointment all in about 3 minutes at Gibson Park in downtown Great Falls. The radio announced the egg hunt and I looked it up online. It was supposed to be at Gibson Park, an enormous park near downtown and they planned on putting out over 4,000 eggs. It's sounded like fun. I had visions of us going around the park and finding eggs here or there. No. Instead of my lovely vision of Easter happiness, they had all 4,00o eggs in a police taped area about the size of my back yard. I kid you not. It was just packed with people and I was in fear the whole time that I would lose sight of one of my little ones. In all our family got one egg. It was total chaos. I was shocked. Even the announcer doing the countdown said, "Don't push or worry folks. There are plenty of eggs for everyone." That would have been true had there not been so many parents who were, in my opinion, simply too cheap to run to Walmart to buy their kids some candy so they got as much as they could here. It was the parents grabbing, not the kids. One kid I saw had a huge basket FULL and was walking happily over to a tree to open them up. My kids were so sad. Henry held it together for a long time while I talked to them about what had happened but then the poor thing's eyes welled up with big crocodile tears. He even quoted the announcer saying there'd be enough for everyone. Most families walked away with nothing while a handfull took all the spoils. We had a good talk with our kids about it, about how things don't always go how you plan and that there are people out there who are greedy, and that you have to stay positive. I only saw one mom share with another family even though so many were saying aloud that they got nothing. Needless to say, we will not be attending any City sponsored egg hunts- EVER! The only good thing about is was whoever filled the one egg we did manage to get into our basket put 4 tootsie rolls in it so we all got a treat! I promised the kids I would hide eggs at home and they had a great time really having to hunt for some of them- even finding some later on in the afternoon. We also dyed eggs and they turned out just lovely. It was definitely a learning experience for all of us.