Our anticlimactic egg hunt

Our church just moved to our permanent building in January, and so I asked the children's ministry director if they were going to have an Easter egg hunt at the church as a fun outreach event for our church's new neighbors.  She checked with the pastors, and they thought it was a good idea and could I take the lead.  Good lesson for me - to be ready to lead any events I suggest in the future!

And oh this egg hunt caused me to lose a bit of sleep, mostly because of its ambiguous number of attendees.  We put fliers in 600 backpacks of the nearby elementary school students, had our student ministry pass out fliers to neighborhood homes the week before, and had signs along the street.  We could have had 25 kids or 400 kids, and so we ordered 300 breakfast tacos, had our congregation stuff over 1,000 eggs, and prayed that people would feel loved and get to hear about our Risen Savior.  

My sweet brother and sister-in-law agreed to serve as volunteers, and because most of the volunteers from our church were bringing their kids, I was so thankful to have some helping hands that weren't also trying to corral their own children.  On the Saturday of the event, our house was up by 7:30am, and Alex and I were out the door by 8:30.  By the 10am start time, we were all gathered, the church was set up, the bubble machines were spitting out bubbles, the temporary tattoos were being applied, and the sidewalk to the church was being covered with chalk.  The main thing that was missing were the neighborhood families!  Including parents, we probably had 100 attendees, and I'd guess 85 were members of our church!

I was disappointed we didn't have a great neighborhood turnout, but the kids who attended didn't mind, since they all went home with about 30 eggs apiece!  

My poor girl was ready for her morning nap, but we snapped one photo of her first egg hunt - 

My concerns that we could have a stampede of  300 kids in the playground didn't remotely play out.  I had set up a schedule with rounds of hunts by age group, which we stuck with, though we clearly could have put everyone together -

I had asked the volunteers to wear yellow - again in case there were hundreds of participants, so we'd be easy to find.  Not necessary for the egg hunt, but necessary for a coordinating picture - 

Cas and I couldn't have done it without Alex and Coady.  Alex was non-stop helping at the church, and Coady took my place as caregiver for the kids since Cas was working the welcome table.

It was a full weekend - with the surprise party Friday night, egg hunt and Passover Saturday, and farm for Easter Sunday.  After the egg hunt, I tried to take a nap with Maya, but unfortunately she never went to bed which meant neither did I.  Alex and Coady ran to the park with Collin and Cas on their scooters and then came back for a swim.  Saturday night, following Passover, Uncle Alex and Aunt Coady got to spend the night again, and this time I snapped a quick picture of their bedtime story (Fergie got in on the action too) -