Easter Egg Hunt

After BA's addition to our family, we are making an extra effort to follow cultural and religious traditions. When we were in India, this meant eating plenty of good food (why, what did you think following religious traditions meant ;-)?) during various festivals. Now, in the US, we continue to mark the Indian festivals. In addition, we try to attend various American cultural events as well. Thus, it was going for the fireworks displayfor 4th of July (a bad idea in retrospect. Infant BA was startled by the loud noise and cried non-stop for the entire 15-minute display), selecting a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch for Halloween, shopping for Christmas, I mean photo with the mall Santa for Christmas and so on.

This month was the turn of the Easter Egg hunt. I got a notification that our local park had an Easter Egg hunt and we decided to go. We have never been to an egg hunt before and we had no idea what it entailed. Still, taking BA to a place filled with children seemed like something he would enjoy and so, on to the Easter Egg Hunt (EEH) it was.

The EEH was on a Saturday. It was supposed to start at 10am. S and I made mega plans to leave the house at 8.30a so that we could find parking and then be well on time for the EEH. Nice, solid plan, no?

Only hitch was, we got up only at 8am and by the time all of us were fed, watered and dressed, it was 9.30am when we left the house. We found parking fairly easily and walked at a fast pace towards the EEH area.

We could see that the area had been demarcated for kids of various age groups. We made a beeline for the under-2 area. It was 10.03am when we entered that area. We looked around and saw clusters of toddlers and parents sitting around collections of plastic eggs.

Hmm - where had they got all the eggs from? There were absolutely no eggs to be spotted on the ground other than what the other families were already holding on to. We walked around the area just to make sure. Yup - no eggs, zilch, nada.

S and I were feeling vaguely disappointed. BA on the other hand kept racing around and stopped by the various families, curiously observing them. One such family saw his empty hands, smiled and handed him a plastic egg. BA after examining it for 30 seconds handed to us and continued racing around. I opened the egg with great curiosity and saw a tiny eraser, the "gift" in it. Oooooh - this is what an egg retrieved during the egg hunt would look like.

Then another couple with a toddler girl spotted us laughing about the eggless state of the ground and said,"Yeah, the eggs were gone as soon as the whistle went off at 10am. We were just parking our bicycles and by the time we got in 'poof - no eggs'". Finally - we at least knew what had happened. We had been late!

At 10.15a, the volunteers started packing up the dividers. By 10.20 other than an occasional flapping sign, there was no sign that there had been an egg hunt. We picked our empty-but-for-one-egg bag which we had brought along in lieu of a basket for the hunt (ha ha ha) and made our way to the face painting area. From there it was back to the car. As we walked, I looked at my sport shoes, specially worn for the egg-hunting occasion. Really - what exactly did I think an egg hunt for a toddler would entail that I would need to wear sport shoes?

Still - it was a fun experience overall. If not anything else, it has taught us to never be late for an egg hunt. Good lesson to learn *before* finding no eggs on a hunt starts mattering to BA!