Ish's 1st Egg Hunt

This is the first year we decided to venture out to a public Easter Egg Hunt. We thought it best to avoid the very public very HUGE event going on at a local park today (for fear of poor Ish being trampled by older kids who take this sort of thing WAY too seriously). Instead we hit up our local Shoprite for their 8AM egg hunt event.

What you have to understand about where we live is that no one - and I mean no one - is up and at 'em on the weekends. To call this a sleepy suburb is an understatement. Which is just fine with me - I love getting out and about early so we usually get to have most stores to ourselves on the weekends - including the supermarket. 8AM was perfect timing for us. The parking lot was empty.
When we entered the store the Easter Bunny gave Ish his first treat of the day. A lollipop (that we later had to take away because Ish doesn't know how to handle them yet - he sort of drools and makes things sticky).
In exchange for the treat, Ish allowed me to take a posed shot of him with the bunny.
I was happy that Ish's monkey Easter basket made him so happy.
He made a friend today - Isabella. She took a liking to Ish and even helped him on the hunt later on.
We were directed to the 1-3 year old aisle for the hunt (the kids were separated by age which was a GREAT idea). Once he was given the go signal, he darted through the aisle as he spotted eggs.
Back and forth, back and forth. He had quite the eagle eye today.
Of course I would have preferred if the aisle we were given was not the candy/cereal aisle (I thought Ish would start hoarding all the chocolate), but I was surprised that he stayed focused on just collecting the eggs.
At the end of the hunt Ish and his new friend had overflowing baskets of eggs.
We all gathered at the front of the store for a group picture. See, 5 kids. 4 sets of parents were willing to get up early for the fun. Which made for a nice, organized, calm morning.
As an extra treat, each kid was given a large chocolate bunny to take home.
That made Ish VERY happy!
I held on to the monkey basket on the way home.
Ish was excited to get home to check out his loot!
Once we got home we grabbed his piggy bank and I put out a chocolate bowl.
As we opened each egg we separated the coins from the goodies.
And in the end we wound up with a full bowl of chocolate and about 30 cents (which Ish thinks is a million dollars!!).