One Last Hunt....

Last Saturday morning we went to one last Easter Egg Hunt. It was at a church in our neighborhood, and the flier said the Easter Egg Hunt would be at 11, with a preschool division and a 1st Grade + division.

It had poured down rain earlier that morning, but stopped a couple of hours before the hunt. From the parking lot you had to walk around the block to the back entrance of the church. It took a while because birds are EXTREMELY distracting these days! She can honestly stare at a bird - or where a bird WAS - for a good half an hour.
On a mission to get registered for the egg hunt!
And once we walked in it all went downhill. They wanted all your personal information - so we had to wait in line about 10 minutes before we filled out their registration form. And then we were directed to the first "center" - where we were once again in a line. Have you ever stood in line with an extremely active 14 month old? Nope, because you actually can't. (Trick question.) She was all over the place, and we were just wondering when the egg hunt was! We finally got into this center - story time - and it completely bottomed out from there. "Story time" was a woman, sitting in a chair, telling the story of the prodigal son. No pics, no props, and no actual child-capturing storytelling skills. Ever told a 14 month old a story without an actual book? Um,no. All Lil wanted to do was take the other kids baskets (which is why the girl next to us was wearing hers on her head), so after about 15 minutes of "story" (that had zero correlation to the Easter Story!) I just got up in the middle and left - at which point Lilli was given a sticker showing she went to that center. Apparently, before the egg hunt could begin all the kids needed to complete all the centers - NONE of which were appropriate for toddlers or preschoolers! So we just walked out. On our way out the guy who had guided us in said something about us leaving so early (at this point we had wrangled her for about a half an hour of miserable family time) and I pretty much told him there was nothing there for toddlers and we had come for an Easter egg hunt (nicely). He agreed there was nothing for her and that we could go across the street and get some eggs for her before we left, which was really nice. So, we were able to just let her have a field day!
We'd been playing with eggs all week so when we let her out in the park she just went crazy! She knew just went to do and ran around picking them up. And we got great pics with lots of eggs and no other kids in the background.
Expert Egg Hunter!

Her running "stance" cracks me up! She gets those arms GOING! She is obviously going to be a fast runner like her momma one day!
She'd run and get an egg and then run it back to her basket. Smart girl!
We let her run around for about a half an hour and then tossed her eggs back, we didn't need them and she doesn't care! From there we went to East Park next door to enjoy the pretty day and play on the swings. A great opportunity for some family pics.
I think Brent had a great time!
She was so wiped out afterwards! She's down to one nap a day, right after lunch, for about 2 hours. She took a great nap for us and later that evening she got dolled up to go out to dinner with some of her fave pals, Adam and Julia. This is a little HavenGirl sample dress I got for a steal in Atlanta. Between all the bright colors she's always wearing, plus her leggings with the faux Converse, and the fact that she likes to wear her beads all the time I feel like I've got a mini-Cyndi Lauper with me at all times!
We had a great dinner at Rosepeppers and Lilli was a doll. I think we were there almost two hours and never heard a peep from her. She made great friends with a couple sitting near us, and we offered to send her home with them but somehow they thought we were joking?? Afterwards we went across the street to Ugly Mugs for some coffee and Lilli could run free on the patio since a poetry reading was going on inside.
A picture with Adam and Julia right before we left.
Right around 8 she started to get really tired and she looks SO sleepy in the above pic! And I guess since she was about to come down with a stomach virus she was probably starting to not feel so great but honestly she'd been so sweet all day and night I would've NEVER thought she was about to get sick! And until Brent got sick on Tuesday we thought she just ate something bad somewhere since she only got sick a couple of times.

With the exception of the virus it was a great Saturday and the Easter Egg Hunt turned out ok for us after all! (On a side note - they didn't actually even have the hunt until about 5 after 12 - an HOUR later than their flier said! I am so glad we didn't wait that out, and we won't bother with it next year.)

So glad tomorrow is Friday!!!