Helotes Easter Egg Hunt... well, almost.

So, Julie called us the Friday before Easter and said she and kids were headed to the Helotes Easter Egg Hunt. I quickly invited myself along and she said, "better hurry... it starts in 30 minutes." Well, I got the kids dressed up and headed out the door. When I passed our new SONIC (which I had promised I would not allow to become a habit... and now the cashier knows me by name), I had a split-second decision to make... do I have time for a soda or should I hurry to the hunt? Surely they won't start exactly at 5:00pm. That would be silly.

So, I paid for the soda and drove the mile and a half to the Helotes City Hall. As we sat at the light across from the hunt, Jack looked out the window and said, "Mommy, are those kids just practicing Easter egg hunting in that field? Yeah, I think they're practicing, right Mommy?" My heart sank. They DID start at exactly five o'clock. We parked just in time to see Julie with Alli Jean and T.J. carrying their Easter baskets. I felt terrible.

However, when I heard that the hunt took like two minutes and that they had grossly underestimated the amount of eggs so Alli got 2 and TJ only got one, I was quickly relieved that I'd have a cold drink while we hung around for pictures. Jack seemed okay with it, surprisingly, but we have not made much of a deal about egg hunts and I had warned him that we were cutting it close as it was. So, he was fine and even agreed to cheese it up for some cute photos. I love when the kids are in picture-taking mood! TJ was playing peekaboo in a lot of the pics. Too funny.

Here are Jack and Alli this year, and a pic from Easter last year. I am sad that they won't be in kindergarten together. (I am sure Julie is not sorry... she gets to enjoy another year at home with her baby!) Jack will miss seeing Alli Jean so often.

It was time for bunny pics, but Jack said he did NOT want to do it. I said, "No problem, Davis can do it by himself." To which he quickly replied, "I better do it with him so he doesn't get scared." Yeah, right.

Our first Easter bunny pics... that I can remember. Davis was tired and pretty much disinterested.

At the end, we hung around for a group pic with the bunny. We were the last families there so we let the kids play a while as the staff cleaned up. The workers began goofing around taking staff pics with the bunny, giving him noogies, etc. when, all of a sudden I see the kids just staring in the bunny's direction. I quickly see that the bunny had taken his huge head off - right there in front of our kids!

I turned Jack's head and Julie blocked Alli's as quickly as we could and we scurried them off, trying not to make too big a deal of it.

Later that night Julie called to tell me that she overheard Alli Jean describing it to Dwaine, "Daddy, we got to take our picture with the Easter Bunny... and THEN, he turned into a PEOPLE!"

That still cracks me up.