Weekending it: Easter

This past Saturday our church hosted an Easter Egg hunt for the community.  Dan is the Children's Ministry Director at our church and he worked with a group of ladies at church for the last month and a half planning this event.  I opted to help at the event but not in the planning process.

They got a bunch of eggs and prizes donated from supporters in other states and planned a ton of games.  My friend Emily was the game mastermind and she handmade so many of the activities and made the banner and all the signs.  She is a superwoman.  I didn't get any photos of any of it which super bums me out (you'll see why in a second).  They made a Facebook event and handed out flyers and got an Easter bunny costume and all kinds of activities for kids.

Now, we are a very small church (average less than 100 on Sunday) so they anticipated the event would be small.  They planned for around 100 kids but last week they got concerned by the response of people on Facebook so they scurried around to accommodate 200 kids.  There was another hunt happening in the neighborhood at the EXACT same time so I wasn't too concerned about the number.  One, because of the other event and two, because we never have huge turnout for anything and I assumed it would be the same.  It's a good thing I was so naive. 

Anyways, we got to the park in the morning and started setting things up and before the event even started at 2 pm we had people lining-up for registration.  You guys, we planned for 200 kids and Dan estimates there were at least 500.  And that is an estimate, it was likely more.  The line extended to the end of the park.  It was WILD!!!!!

The line ended-up being four times longer than what you see above ^^

I snapped the pictures above just before 2 pm and you can see a line forming.  I was on face paint duty for the event and I painted the first little cheek just after 2 pm and I did not look up from that table for the next two and a half hours.  Endless face painting.  Truly, I did not stop painting until 4:30 pm and it was the last activity to close.  I didn't even hear when the hunt started since my face paint line remained packed for the duration of the event.  There were four other face painters at my table and I estimate that we painted at minimum 50 kids each.  So that's 200 and a bunch of kids didn't stand in the line for that activity.

We live and learn and already have lots of ideas for how to do things differently next year.   One of the ladies suggested next year that we do an Easter carnival instead with twice as many games and the kids get an egg with each activity.  This way everyone gets to go home with eggs.  I like that idea.  But I'm still really proud of our little church pulling off the event with only 20-25 volunteers running an event with that many people.  Totally a fishes and loaves moment.  God helped us out for sure. 

After all that we were exhausted and collapsed on the couch for the night  We didn't end up going to bed early however since we HAD to stay up and watch the Kansas basketball game.  They lost, and with that our brackets are toast since we had them winning the whole thing.    

Sunday was Easter!!  We had a lot of visitors at the church service in the morning and my pre-k/kinder class had 13 kids which is the biggest class I have EVER had.  Fortunately I had some helpers with me so we were able to pull-off a fun class for the kids.  I really wanted to get a picture of Dan and me in our Easter attire but we were running around all day we never got the chance.

After church I whipped together some deviled eggs and Easter cupcakes for an Easter dinner with friends.

It was a truly exhausting weekend especially for Dan and me.  We are introverts and can only handle so much of being "ON" in social settings but we managed to power through.  Dan has the day off today which is really nice for him and the rest of the week we have our nights free for recuperation.

We're tired but it was a weekend worth it.