Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Phew! It's all over... until Sunday. Two Easter Egg hunts down and only one more to go. I spent much of Friday and Saturday baking and cleaning and decorating to make this place look Eastery and festive. I baked a bunt cake, took a fork around the frosting and then up the sides to make it look like basket weave, then filled the middle with green coconut and those speckled chocolate eggs, then stuck in a woven pipe cleaner handle to make a adorable Easter Basket cake. It got rave reviews. So, Easter basket cake, about 40 bunny cupcakes, chocolate bird nests, and a ton of other stuff made our house full of preschoolers on a sugar high. I think we've almost recovered. Sunday we had a nice turnout. We'd invited 40 kids and thankfully only 16 showed up. We hid 250 plastic eggs in our yard and gave the kids a limit so it would be fair. They had a great time! The pinata and games went over well too. The only glitch is that it started to get cold and windy, so Kirk ended up moving all the stuff I had set up nicely outside into the house and the entire gaggle of sugar high kids and parents moved indoors for painting, crafts, more games, and food. Arianna, Luci, and Elise had a great time. Elise has learned already that her basket is quite an asset. She wants it every day now just in case she might find a chocolate filled egg hiding somewhere. The parents seemed to have a good time. One of my Spanish friends came with her kids. They'd never seen the plastic eggs before - neither had our Brussels friends who came. They'd all thought at first that I was going to hide real hard-boiled eggs. Yuck. I told them that our kids, at least, would never eat that many hard-boiled eggs! Anyway... after the two hours plus, the kids with their parents headed home. Our friends from Brussels stayed for dinner which was wonderful - they are such great people. We're planning a trip to the Belgian coast with them in June.
Monday was another hunt - the one on base - and it was a sad comparison to mine. I really think that I might have a small hunt every year just because it's more fun and more fair. They roped off areas and at the sound of the whistle, the different age groups were let loose. The loot consisted of a handful of plastic eggs with little notes to redeem to the Easter bunny for bigger prizes, large chocolate bunnies, real eggs, and a ton of random candy. The sad thing was that there was no limit, so many kids walked away with baskets and bags overflowing with candy and "loot" and others, like Luci, sadly walked away with only 4 pieces. I had Elise in one area. She toddled slowly picking up a few things... I think she ended up with 8 things in her basket. I heard parents telling their kids what to get and what not to get... "just grab the chocolate!" "Go get that big bunny - over there!" "Hurry!" It was disgusting to see the greed. Kids three and under were grabbing candy right out from Elise' hands and running off to dump their supply into their parents waiting "Walmart" style bags before
running off to get more. Elise was fine. I got pictures. She was happy. And, to us, the candy doesn't matter. But then I headed over to where Luci and Arianna had hunted with their friends. Luci and Aria were the last ones still in that field, fruitlessly searching around an old gazebo for a big chocolate bunny. Aria had a basketful of candy including a large bunny and a coupon for another big prize. Luci had - 4 pieces. Four small pieces. She looked sad. "I didn't get a chocolate bunny." I assured her that the Easter bunny would make up for it. We played on the playground and did one bean bag toss game. She was ok and Arianna quickly offered to share her rabbit. I was proud of both of them. Still, I don't think we'll go next year. Our own hunts are more fun and a lot more fair. Kids will be kids, but to see parents out there encouraging greed and unfair play was really disgusting. See this? This is the giant Easter kinder-egg that Arianna got at the base Easter egg hunt... she was very sweet and voluntarily shared it with Luci, Elise, and her dad. Luci got an entire half. In another photo, they held them up to their faces like masks and the chocolate egg halves actually covered their faces!
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Life In Germany
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