Parenthood: Harrison's First Easter Egg Hunt!!

The park by our house hosted an Easter egg hunt this morning, but my camera ran out of battery after 2 pictures! We've done several more hunts in the driveway since then, so once the camera is charged again, I'll get some good photos of our mini-egg hunts and post them.

Harrison had a great time -- with Mama and Dada running interference. :) We'd find an egg tucked in a tree stump, surround it to block the big kids, then say things like "Harrison, have you looked by this tree yet?" and "Harrison, do you see a blue egg over here?" He'd get all pumped when he saw it and point with the straightest little pointer finger ever, then run to grab it. Usually forgot to bring his basket with him, so then he'd have to run back for it to put the egg in.

The eggs hidden around the park were all plastic and had candy inside (there were "real" eggs on the picnic tables to decorate after the hunt was finished -- and there was zero danger of a plastic egg being left behind, so don't worry about the litter!). The plastic eggs were usually pastel colored, but one of the eggs we found was shiny and gold -- so we celebrated that we had found the golden egg! Once the eggs had all been found, Chris and I snuck them out of Harrison's basket and re-hid them for him to find again. We had the golden egg layed out for him to find a few feet from us when we heard some moms from across the park telling their kids to "Hurry!" and "Run!" They were going for Harrison's golden egg! Chris intercepted the kids and told them that it was the baby's egg that he wanted to try to find again, and I told the moms that we were re-hiding eggs for the babies. The whole thing was a bit surreal (Did some parents really just send their kids flying across the park to pick up an egg 3 feet from a 2 year-old who's obviously looking for it? Did we really just tell some kids that they couldn't have that plastic egg?). Made a little more sense when we found out later that the metallic eggs had cash in them -- sure enough : Harrison's piggy is $1 richer! -- but we still wonder if those parents knew what they were doing when they sent their kids running to take a dollar from a toddler...

So aside from the competition (Dada admitted that he was a little worried that Mama would take some people out if they got too close to "Harrison's" eggs), we all had fun. The weather was great, and no one 's clothes were ruined by the egg dying that followed!

Harrison is napping now. When he gets up, he'll find several newly dyed eggs (dyed by Mama while he was asleep -- no need to tempt fate...) in need of stickers, hiding, finding, hiding, finding, hiding, and finding.

Oh -- one sweet story and one funny story from the egg hunt...

The sweet story : Harrison's first two eggs were right together in the roots of a tree. A little girl (standing but not yet walking, so younger than Harrison) and her parents were hovering around close to the tree, so when Harrison spotted the two eggs, we asked him if he would give one to the little girl. Her parents protested, of course, but we said, "Go ahead, Harrison, see if she would like to have it." So he walked over and handed her one. She grinned real big and turned to show her dad. Good sharing, buddy!

The funny story : Harrison got swindled by a slightly older little girl. This little girl came wandering by a ways behind her big sister, so she and Harrison inspected each other's baskets. There was some egg trading, and some candy trading, and in the end, we think that Harrison had more eggs but less candy than he did before the girl stopped to visit. :) Don't know if she knew what she was doing or not, but it didn't matter because Harrison didn't realize what was inside the foil wrappers until about 2 hours later, so he didn't feel cheated -- the eggs were still the prize at that point!

Updated with photos!