The Easter Bunny is making an early appearance this holiday season in St. Jacobs, courtesy of the St. Jacobs Optimist Club’s Annual Easter Egg Hunt on March 31.
At the fun event taking place at Riverside Park, the club hides some 1,500 Easter eggs for kids of all ages to find.
“It’s a good social activity. It’s a lot of fun for the community,” said organizer Bob Wilbur. “I always think it’s kind of like that first outing in the springtime, that the people are kind of getting a chance to visit outdoors and that sort of thing. It’s fun for the whole family – kids have a ball and parents enjoy it as well.”
Scattered throughout the park, each plastic egg holds chocolate for all to find. However, some special ones have a redeemable coupon for a small toy, with a select number holding a coupon for a large prize and one special ‘golden egg’ with a grand prize.
“There are kids that come back year after year, they have got that in their mind, ‘I want the golden egg, I want the golden egg,’ so they put a lot of time and energy into finding it,” he said. “It’s fun. So the kids come out to do the Easter Egg hunt, which honestly doesn’t last very long because it’s kind of a frenzy sort of thing.”
A frenzy indeed, as Wilbur notes the hunt only lasts upwards of five minutes.
“People who show up at 10:05 a.m., they are going to be disappointed. We always laugh about it – it’s like three weeks of planning and five minutes of fun.”
Easing parents’ minds, another measure the organization takes to ensure a fun time for everyone is the separate portions of the park segregating age groups for fair play.
“Parents often ask us, ‘how does my little four-year-old compete with the ten year olds,’ sort of thing but we have the park divided up into age groups so we try to keep the little kids with the little kids and the middle kids with the middle kids and the older kids by themselves. So it’s not like the older kids are trampling the young kids. Everybody has their own little area to search in,” he explained.
The event is sponsored fully by the club, which asks just one thing of participants: “We just encourage people to bring a basket and be prepared to have some fun.”
Now in its 14th year it has become somewhat of a tradition, with even the Easter Bunny himself making a trip out to greet kids and hand out candy. Organizers encourage coming early so as not to miss out on any fun. It starts are 10 a.m. sharp, on Saturday March 31 at Riverside Park in St. Jacobs.
While the Easter Bunny will be over in St. Jacobs in the morning, he will be hopping over to Bolender Park in Elmira for 1 p.m. Courtesy of the Optimist Club of Elmira, there will be plenty of eggs to go around for their annual Easter Egg Hunt.
