Wednesday, April 22, 2015

White House Easter Egg Roll & Easter Sunday

Sounds like a fun time, right? Well think twice if you're ever offered tickets to attend. The White House extends tickets to 35,000 guests for a one day event so you can imagine what a nightmare it was to get on the White House lawn.

The event itself could be a lot more enjoyable for guests if they scaled back the number of tickets that are distributed. Each guest is given a timed ticket which grants them access to the White House lawn for a two hour period to enjoy music, various games for the kiddos including obstacle courses with featured famous athletes and of course the Easter egg roll itself. There were a lot of PBS cartoon characters in attendance that your kids could meet and take their photo with as well as story time and yoga. However, after waiting in line almost two hours in the direct sun just to get into the White House with a toddler you're a little frustrated by the time you're on the grounds.

We had tickets to enter the White House and 12:15p.m. and got in line a little before 11:30a.m. By the time we made it through security and in and out of multiple waiting areas we finally walked onto the grounds of the White House around 1:15p.m. Of course it was fairly hot that day and we had to keep Carter in the stroller since were constantly moving in different directions. Carter isn't the best at standing or sitting still so in the stroller he went! He refused to keep the sun shade down on the stroller to keep him cool and out of the sun so finally I lathered him up with sunscreen and just let him do his thing. So as you can imagine, by the time we made it in he was fit to be tied.

We eventually let Carter out of the stroller and off he went. There were hundreds of thousands of people so keeping up with a little toddler running around wasn't the easiest thing to do, especially when you're 36 weeks pregnant. We walked around the grounds for awhile and decided that we should at a least do the Easter egg roll since we waited for so long to get in. Well what do you know; once you got in you had to wait in line to do all the activities. I would say that the line for the egg roll itself was probably about an hour. Seriously? We just waited in line almost two hours to get in and now you want us to stand in line for another hour to do ONE activity. I think not.

So we decided we would just walk around instead and I was thrilled to come across Wyatt from SuperWhy making his way toward us. Carter absolutely loves SuperWhy, especially Wyatt. We watch it every morning so I thought he would be thrilled to meet him. Well boy was I wrong. Chris carried Carter up to him and he cried so hard that his entire body shook. He was terrified of Wyatt. I managed to snap one picture but Carter had his head buried in Chris' shoulder. Of course once it was over he kept saying "wanna see Wyatt." So we quickly learned that Carter isn't a fan of dressed up characters and there was really no reason to stay any longer. That was until Chris spotted Roman Harper from the Carolina Panthers. After a quick introduction I snapped a photo of the boys and then off we went to the car.

Poor Wyatt and Chris.

Want to know how Carter is beyond exhausted? He sucks his thumb and pulls on his right ear. 


I'm sure you're wondering why I ever thought this would be a good idea. Well I'm not exactly sure. I've had friends that have been in years past and their experience was pretty much the same. However, I thought to myself that not many people get the opportunity to go to this event and since I had the tickets it was worth giving it a shot. I didn't think we'd have to stand in line as long as we did and had we not, maybe we would have enjoyed ourselves a little more.

The White House didn't go a good job of clearing out earlier groups before ours came in so the later in the day you go the more people are there because they continously back-up. I don't know if there is a better way to manage the crowds but unless you get a ticket to go at 7:30a.m. in the first group I wouldn't recommend going, at least not with little ones. If you're kids are old enough to keep themselves entertained for about two hours and don't mind standing in line, then maybe it would be worth going.

At least Carter can always say that he went to the White House Easter Egg Roll and we have our family photo and commemorative egg to prove it. But never again......

2015 White House Easter Egg Roll

Fortunately Easter Sunday went a lot smoother. We went to the 10:30a.m. church service at Delray United Methodist Church. I was so excited because I thought the church was having their annual Easter egg hunt afterwards but upon our arrival I realized that I got the dates mixed up and the hunt was the weekend before. Ah, pregnancy brain at its finest. Oh well! I couldn't get over how well behaved Carter behaved during the church service. It was definitely the perfect start to our day. 





After lunch we headed home to for our own Easter egg hunt and we had our family and close friends over for lunch that afternoon. Carter loves picking up the Easter eggs and placing them in his basket. For lunch we enjoyed a Honey Baked ham, homemade deviled eggs, potato salad, green beans, pineapple casserole and sweet tea! Nothing like a good ole' southern Easter lunch. We had perfect weather and enjoyed our company for the day.






I hope everyone else had a wonderful holiday.

1 comment:

  1. So cute baby boy. I love the idea of the easter egg. Surely the kids really love it. You can see it on their faces. Really your baby boy is super cute in wearing his boys linen shirt. You are so blessed family.

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