The Hunt

South Bay hosted our first ever Easter egg hunt today at the park behind our meeting facility. Last night Andy and I babysat for the Santos girls, Lily and Cailyn. So, in preparation for todays events, Andy and I took Caedmon and the girls out to a field last night and did a few trial runs on the basics of Easter egg hunting. We explained the necessity of moving quickly and not stopping to look in each of the eggs until after all of the eggs had been collected. We were grooming them to be Champion Easter Egg Hunters!

Well, today was a huge success and everyone seemed to have a great time. There was no way to count how many people were there, but definitely hundreds and hundreds...perhaps over a thousand? No idea. It was definitely a little chaotic, but that kinda added to the party atmosphere. We had balloons, face painting, bubbles, pictures with the Easter bunny, prizes, refreshments, music...and it was all FREE to the community! It was fantastic.

In addition to all of that, we prepared 10,000 Easter eggs for the kiddos. You know how many Caedmon got? None!

We divided the age groups 0-3 and 4 and up. We made it very clear that no adults were allowed to enter the older kids field, but unfortunately did not make that clear about the little kids field. So, even before Filipe said 'Go!' (he was actually yelling, "Wait, wait, don't go yet!") mobs of parents CARRYING their children ran out on the field and got overflowing baskets of eggs! I'm not bitter. I'm just saying...

The entire hunt lasted about 2 minutes and I was left standing there with two very confused little boys. (Caedmon's buddy, Gavin, didn't get any eggs either!) They seemed confused, while Gavin's mom and I felt like we were going to cry! But no worries, I knew that we had kept a box full of eggs behind the table in case some kids didn't get any. (I just never thought my kid would be the one who didn't get any! I mean, what about all that practice?!) So the kids were happy and everything worked out just fine!

Juliane, aka Vova, we three of her many grandchildren

This is Filipe's mom and Lily and Cailyn's grandma, but Caedmon claims her also!

Caedmon with Madison and Livy.

Those girls are amazing at keeping up with him! My little babysitters!

My friend, Vivian, with he sweet son Gavin.

Gavin's saying, "Hey, who took all the eggs?"

Facepainting
Caedmon got a shark...but that's not him in the pic

PRIZES!

Three of the precious ladies in my small group!

We probably had close to 80 volunteers today!

You can click on this picture to enlarge it and get a better look at the crowd.

I think this event definitely gave our church a positive image in the eyes of our community!