Early morning egg hunt; late afternoon nap

This morning I took the kids to the primary Easter egg hunt at the church. Phoebe, our homebody, wasn't sure she wanted to go until Alexander and Zoë told her that the eggs we'd be looking for had candy inside. As it turns out, the eggs didn't have candy inside, but Phoebe had a lot of fun, anyway. 

She probably had the most fun out of everyone, actually.

I'm not quite sure I understand the allure of Easter egg hunts as they stand today. The eggs are always just...scattered...across the lawn and the kids pick them all up in 10 second flat. There's no challenge, really, and it's not really long enough to be called an "event." It's more like a game one might play at an event. 

You don't gather a crowd simply to hit a piñata. You throw an entire fiesta.

You don't gather a crowd to pull Christmas crackers. You throw an entire Christmas party.

And I just don't think you should gather a crowd for a ten seconds of egg gathering. 

I want sack races. I want egg-on-a-spoon. I want pin-the-tail-on-the-rabbit. I want a sock hop.

Seriously, I have been dreaming of putting on an Easter-themed sock hop for years and years and despite how many primary presidencies I've served on, it's never come to fruition. I've always been told people wouldn't have fun. But, like, have you met children? They love to dance! 

The bunny hop! The chicken dance! There are other...fun...Easter songs to dance to, I'm sure. 

My friend April once got put in charge of the ward Halloween party in Durham and she threw caution to the wind and planned a good ol' fashioned Monster Mash. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and I was glad because...my Easter Sock Hop ideas had just been dashed six months before. It was (1) nice to get together to do something a little different and (2) vindicating that everyone seemed to be having fun.

It's not that Alexander and Zoë didn't have fun. I'm sure they did. It's just that they're aging out of egg hunts...or at least...egg gathers. It may have been more fun for them if they were hunting for eggs, but it really was just...walk on the lawn and pick up ten eggs. 

Which is fine! 

It's just not thrilling. 

But it was nice to get out of the house (depending on who you talk to) and have the opportunity to chat with some of the kids and parents. And Phoebe thought picking up eggs was a delightful pastime. 

Here she is over in the nursery and sunbeams section (so I only got pictures of her, not Alexander or Zoë, who were left on their own in the big kid section):

Here's Alexander showing off one of his eggs:

This year they were filled with little toys and stickers and things, so opening the eggs was very exciting.

And the kids also got a little craft to do at the end (to take home, though we did ours there). 

In my opinion (and, again, I realize no one is asking for feedback, but I'm going to go ahead and offer some anyway), the craft should be given out at the beginning as a gathering activity because here's the thing about Easter egg hunts (which I previously mentioned): they last literally ten seconds.

I've learned that you simply cannot be late to an Easter egg hunt, not even fashionably-so. You need to be early. Otherwise by the time you arrive the eggs are all gone.

Having a little gathering activity—a craft, a sing-along, duck-duck-goose—would allow families to roll in a few minutes after the stated start time and still be able to join in the lightning-speed fun of an egg hunt (rather than having to send the kids around to bum eggs off of their friends).

Don't get me wrong! I appreciate the work that went into planning this activity for the kids, and they had a fun time. And I'm a huge fan of low expectations. It's just...that we so rarely do activities that I feel that a little oomph would be nice (though I also 100% do not want to be the one behind planning these things). Next week the kids have a stake-level activity that sounds like it's been in planning for ages, so I really have no room to complain. 

Anyway, the real point of this story is our homebody Phoebe, who didn't want to go to the Easter egg hunt in the first place. Collecting eggs was a challenge for her because she didn't want to get too close to anyone out on the field. And then we got home and Daddy had the audacity to ask her if she was ready to be his shopping buddy.

"Nooooo!" she wailed. "I don't want to go [to] Costco! Please don't take me shopping! Let me stay home! I already went out today! I don't want to go [to] Costco! I want to stay home [with] Mommy! Let me stay home!"

Huge tears were cascading down her cheeks. You would have thought she was pleading for her life!

She had enough [whatever] for one trip outside of the house today, apparently, and she used it all up on the egg hunt!

And I feel that...because that's about how I socialize, too. Which I think, honestly, is why I feel so strongly about egg hunts because, like...all the energy it takes to get ready to leave the house and face people...gets used up in ten seconds and then...I'm just supposed to make conversation? I can't even! I need other activities to do in order to socialize (or other activities to not do so that I can identify other wall flowers and chat quietly with them while other people are busy doing things). 

And once the egg hunt is over it's not like I'm ready for any other human interaction for the day...I'm spent! So it seems like all the effort to leave the house and get emotionally prepared to...see people...was wasted...on ten second of egg gathering. 

I get it, Phoebe! I do! Socializing is hard!

She once explained to me that she doesn't like nursery because "there's too many kids." I made that complaint when I was her age as well; nursery was simply too chaotic for me. So I actually ended up doing two years of Sunbeams because while I couldn't compete for animal crackers or whatever toy I wanted, I was more than happy to sit on a chair for two hours. Phoebe is very similar, in that she finds the chaos of nursery overwhelming...but she probably wouldn't sit still in Sunbeams, either, so...she's a little bit different from me as well.

Anyway, she fell asleep on our afternoon walk and I managed to even get her out of her stroller without waking her too much. She wrapped her arms around my neck and fell back asleep while I was carrying her into the house, so I held her while she slept, which is something I haven't done since she dropped her afternoon nursing session (which was the same time she dropped napping altogether). It was nice to get to hold her sweetly sleeping little self.