Bogle Family Blog: Hip Hop Hooray!

On Saturday, Michael and I took Lily to our neighborhood clubhouse for our neighborhood’s annual Easter egg hunt.

Well, I assume it’s annual, but we’ve never been before due to the fact that that would have been inordinately creepy to go without a child.

So, really, what do I know? Let’s say it was “Gilder Creek Farm’s Inaugural Easter Egg Hung in honor of Lily Bogle officially being old enough to hunt for oddly-shaped “ba” [translation: balls] that contain delicious and deadly choking hazards.”

Now you know, dear readers, that I cannot just give you the pictures and be done with it. Let’s begin at the Bogle house, 2 days before “the hunt.” Lily and I are running drills*.

I hide the eggs. Lily finds them.

Like a pint-sized Inspector Gadget, she quickly finds all eggs that are hidden by air, and after several verbal and visual reminders is often able to find eggs that are hidden by air and perhaps the edge of blanket or toy mailbox door.

I think we’re ready, but we run drills with Michael on Friday night just in case.

Now let’s fast forward to Saturday morning, shortly before 10. WAY too shortly before 10. Because the Easter Egg Hunt starts at 10, and for some reason unknown to me I absolutely CANNOT seem to get anywhere with both Lily AND Michael at a particular time without the entire process of getting everyone ready and getting out of the house turning me into an absolute raving lunatic WHO CANNOT BELIEVE THAT I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING MYSELF AND DEAR LORD WHY ARE THERE SO MANY ITEMS OF ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT/LIFE-SAVING SUNHATS/PIECES OF JUNK/DRINKS, SNACKS, TOYS, DIAPERS, WIPES, CAMERA, CELL PHONE, AND KEYS THAT YOU HAVE TO BRING WITH YOU WHEN LEAVING THE HOUSE FOR MORE THAN 30 SECONDS AND WHY CAN I NOT FIND ALL OF THOSE THINGS AND HOW AM I GOING TO CARRY ALL THIS STUFF WHEN I AM REFUSING TO TAKE A PURSE OR DIAPER BAG FOR SOME REASON AND OH MY GOODNESS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHERE IS LILY’S EASTER BASKET TO CARRY THE EGGS SHE WILL FIND AT THIS VERY FUN AND RELAXING FAMILY ACTIVITY AHHHHHHHHH?!?!?!

Ahem.

Right, so after a typical morning of trying to get all of us out the door, we put Lily in her new wagon she got for her birthday and hauled tail down to the clubhouse. Fortunately, we only arrived a minute or two late. For reasons I will explain in a moment, it was therefore incredibly fortunate that the hunt itself did not start promptly at 10.

While waiting for “the hunt” to begin, the children could decorate paper bags to gather their eggs in [BREAKING NERD NEWS: I read in an article the other day that it IS okay to end a sentence with a preposition…are we okay with that now, fellow nerds? I’m cool with it if you are.]. Apparently our neighborhood association is run by people of extremely questionable intelligence, as the marker supply included a few washable markers, many more dried out markers, and some PERMANENT markers. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!?! Suffice it to say that Michael and I encouraged Lily to express herself through the delightful medium of sticker art. She sat on Michael’s lap, and industriously applied stickers to her bag (and hands) for a good 5 minutes.

Here, she appears to be applying a sticker to Michael’s finger.

Don’t question the process, people. Few can understand true genius.

I particularly liked the double and even triple-layered sticker look she went for in one place. A masterpiece.

Ooh…I forgot to show you the whole outfit. It was a little chilly, so we just made sure the outfit was festive. Here she is later that day.

But back to the morning. After decorating her bag, Lily lined up with the “1-4 year old” group of Easter Egg Hunters and Huntresses. We paraded across the community center parking to go to the playground where the little tikes were supposed to get their eggs. During our march, confusion broke out when some of the older children broke ranks, darting up mulch-covered slopes by the pool to snag the easily-found eggs intended for the “5 and up” group. The cunning pre-K set then swooped back to our crowd, and then darted out ahead to the playground as we approached.

Folks, I have seen mongooses do less damage in less time.

[That is so not true.

But they were the only egg-eating animals I could think of.

And don’t you know it, but yet another blog post has been derailed by my being a complete and utter nerd.

I had to look it up. Yes, it is “mongooses” and not “mongeese.”]

Anyway, my point is that this much-built-up and highly-anticipated Easter egg hunt was over in approximately 30 seconds.

I kid you not.

30 seconds after we began, there was not an egg in sight.

Or was there?

Upon seeing the heathens descend on the playground, Michael and I had quickly staked out two eggs under a bench, and guarded them until Lily decided she was ready to pick them up. The rest of the playground was stripped bare around us and the locust-like horde headed back to the clubhouse, but we stayed and let Lily take her sweet time in collecting her two prizes – the only evidence left in the playground that there had even been an Easter egg hunt earlier that day…er…minute.

She looked at the eggs. She looked at us. She looked at the eggs.

She patted her chest and asked for help because she didn’t feel like bending over.

(This little lady is really getting lazy with the whole “help” sign at her disposal!)

We encouraged her to try it herself, and she claimed her rightful (this, of course, is debatable) treasures.

After this OH-SO-EGGCITING 30-second “hunt,” we stuck around to swing for a while and observed members of the “5 years and up” team literally BURST INTO TEARS because they didn’t get any eggs. What a mess.

The organizers really had egg on their faces.

Zing!

So here are some shots from our swinging. They are a little soft (and sometimes downright blurry) due to a too-slow shutter. Sorry, folks.