Easter Party at Step by Step

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

This afternoon, after our Tellus trip, Katie Anne had her Easter party at Step by Step. Even though she didn't go to daycare this week, we wanted her to have her party and egg hunt with her friends. She'd helped put together all our eggs last weekend to contribute, and she knew they were having a party while she was gone, so I didn't want her to miss it. She hunted eggs outside on the playground and ate a little snack with her friends. It was very crowded and crazy - there were by far the most parents at this party of all the others they've had. I think she (and most of the other kids) were a little overwhelmed by all the people packed into the room snapping pictures and making videos... they all had a bit of a "deer in the headlights" look while they were eating.

She had a good time hunting the eggs. All the other kids dashed straight out onto the playground, but Katie Anne stayed back and hunted along the edge of the building in the planting border, and she had tons of eggs all for her picking there. She wound up getting a basket crammed full of big, beautiful eggs!

Unfortunately, most of Katie Anne's must've come from the same person's contribution, because when we went through her eggs at home, she had about 15 large eggs with Fun Dip inside. Who brings Fun Dip to a one and two year old egg hunt? Mess central! Don't get me wrong - I love Fun Dip - but it was the only forbidden candy in our house growing up because it is such a mess. Plus, whomever had put those eggs together couldn't fit the whole Fun Dip package into the egg, so they'd snapped the Fun Dip sticks in half and put them in there broken! What a travesty! So, poor KA didn't get to enjoy any of the Fun Dip that she found. She did eat some of the jelly beans, fruit snacks, and marshmellows that were in her other eggs. By far, her favorite treat was from Jayden, who brought each child their own chocolate bunny - and it wasn't a little bunny, either! She calls it "the chocolate duck" because it has a tiny picture of a duck on front (standing beside the huge picture of the bunny- crazy kid)... even when I explained to her that it is a bunny, she just changed it to "the chocolate duck bunny" or " the chocolate bunny duck". She ate almost all the ears off him yesterday before I convinced her to take a chocolate-consuming break, and then she told him she was sorry! She said, "I sorry I eat your ears, chocolate duck. I sorry." I wish we had made a video after she ate all this chocolate... I know experts say they've proven that the sugar rush is a modern myth, but this kid was out of her mind, running through the living room, shaking her hands out in front of her like jazz hands, and screaming, "Woo-yah, woo-yah!" over and over.

We put fruit snacks in our eggs because there's a little girl in Katie Anne's class with a dairy allergy, and we wanted Hoolie to have something she could eat, but there were two other cool egg-stuffing ideas I saw while we were opening KA's eggs. One person put tiny little plastic animals in the eggs... Katie Anne got a zebra, antelope, and a dinosaur, which she loved after our trip to Tellus. Also, someone put two of those little growing animals in water capsules in an egg along with a small sheet of directions. So, I'm storing both of those ideas away for future use!



***Katie Anne, if you're reading this later, stop reading here because I'm about to go off on a rant, and I wanted to separate it from happy memories of Easter joy for my precious angel girl.


Side note... I had a little issue with the party. The party was supposed to start at 2:30. In the parent letter, in all the signs on each classroom door for the last two weeks, on the marquee by the front door of the building... Easter Party and Egg Hunt - Thursday, April 9 - 2:30 pm. All my precious blog-reading friends know that, if Katie Glawson Jones is a stickler for anything, it is a schedule.

At 2:25, when we're one red light away from the daycare, I get a call from my friend to hurry- that they're holding up the egg hunt for us. When we walk in at 2:27, the daycare director screams (literally) in front of all those parents and kids, "Well, look who's finally here! Nothing like being late! Get here when you can!" All the kids were lined up in the hallway with their baskets, looking destitute like we'd made them wait for two hours or something, and all the parents turned around and stared at us. Grrr... I was livid.

I looked at the clock and said, "By my watch, we're early. You said this party started at 2:30."
She said, "Well, it did, but everyone was here early and was ready."
I replied, "Look, you want us here at 2:15? Say the party starts at 2:15. You want us here at 2:00? Say the party starts at 2:00. But, if you tell me the party starts at 2:30, you can expect me here at 2:30."

Ohh, it just ruined the whole thing for me, because I hate being told I'm late when I'm not! And, I was so embarrassed that she screamed that at us in front of all those people! I'm a teacher, and I know you don't start parties early - even if you've run out of things to do to keep the kids entertained until then - because you told parents to be there at that time. I actually started my egg hunt five minutes late last week because I had two parents that weren't there at nine, and I wanted to give them a chance to arrive - both were there by 9:05. But we weren't even late!!! And I would never yell at a family who is coming into my classroom that they're late (especially when they aren't) in front of twenty other parents - I'd never yell at them, period. It just doesn't give that welcoming, family-friendly atmosphere to a school ... and it certainly doesn't inspire me to write that woman a series of checks totalling almost $7,000 of my hard-earned money this year like I did last year. Um, I was going to say that it took me several hours to get over it, but judging by my heart rate, I still don't think I'm over it. :)

Another thing - Last week, I'd asked what to bring because I wouldn't be at the school this week when the sign-up sheet was posted. I always go out of my way to bring plenty to parties, make a contribution for all the school projects, etc because I know how much trouble it is for teachers to get this stuff together. They asked me to bring plates, napkins, and small cookies. So, yesterday, I made a special trip to two stores to find cute Easter plates and napkins, then went to Kroger for small cookies. Well, they didn't even open any of them! They'd forgotten that they'd assigned me anything to bring, so someone else brought all that stuff, and they used theirs. So, we got publicly chewed out by the director, given withering looks by the parents, were made to be the party pariahs, and then brought all our supplies back home with us, unopened - unused - unappreciated. Grrr!