A wave of memories came upon me when I was walking over the hill into Festival Park.
Seeing all the kids awaiting the siren to start the Easter Egg Hunt reminded me of all the years I took my son to see the Easter Bunny and snatch up some eggs. The posturing to be in the front of the crowd, the strategy and planning, the speed at which all the eggs were collected and the joy when he opened up one of his eggs and they had a prize ticket or a coupon of some sort! These are all traditions being carried out by other families now.
On Sunday, the Hobart Jaycees put on their annual Easter Egg Hunt at Festival Park. According to Tiffany Nobles, it has "been going on so long we don’t even know when it actually started!"
This is one of the biggest events that the Jaycees put on in the community. We also have an Easter Basket being raffled off with over $600 worth of goodies in it. Almost everyone in the organization helped to stuff just under 10,000 eggs. Each egg was stuffed by hand with surprises such as candies, prize tickets, and coupons for restaurants. The Jaycees supervising the areas said, “It really didn’t take that long to fill them and the kids are really good about emptying their eggs out and putting them in the containers for us so we can reuse them again next year.”
The Easter Egg Hunt started at noon sharp with the siren being sounded by the Hobart Police Department.
Once it went off, the kids were on their way! There were four areas sectioned off by the Jaycee volunteers so all the kids could stay within their own age groups giving everyone a fair chance to gather up their Easter loot.
It took less than 40 seconds for the 4 and over group to get all the eggs cleared out and about two minutes for the toddler area.
After cracking open all their eggs, everyone headed down towards the Community Center to deposit their empty eggs into all the big bins in the hopes that they will come back next year all filled up again. Some were lucky enough to have retrieved eggs with prize tickets in them. Those with prize tickets redeemed them for such prizes as Lego Blocks, Play Dough, jump ropes, matchbox cars, chocolate bunnies etc..
Of course, what kind of Easter Egg Hunt wouldn't have an Easter Bunny??? Not this one. The Easter Bunny hopped onto the scene where he was greeted with squeals of both delight and fright! He sure did leave a lot of eggs around Festival Park for the kiddos to have fun gathering up.
Everyone who made it out had a great time including Annie Selby and her family, who just found out about the event this morning.
“We saw it on Facebook and decided to bring the girls out as long as the weather was good,” she said.
The Jaycees are a young group aged 21-40 who work together to provide positive change to the community. Meetings are the first Thursday of each month. For more info contact HobartJaycees.com. Check out other major events they sponsor such as the Jaycee Fest and the Lakefront Fest coming up later this year.