Our family missed the chance to enter a lottery for tickets to the annual White House Easter Egg Roll this year. Maybe next year I will keep it on our calendar to try and remember to enter. The historic Easter egg roll at the White House started in 1878 under the leadership of than President Rutherford B. Hayes after the practice was banned by law in 1876 (Turf Protection Law) on Capitol grounds.

This year, on April 9, 2012, the White House anticipates over 35,000 people to attend the day after Easter egg roll event on the South Lawn. The official White House event is broken up into 5 different time slots starting at 7:45 AM and going until 5:45 PM. Breaking the groups down into approximately 7,000 people each has to be a lot more manageable not only for the South Lawn, but also for the Secret Service. Thank goodness we have big landscaping budgets to repair the South Lawn afterwards.

To be invited under any President would be grand, and I would remember the experience forever provided I did not try to pull off anything funny. You do not want to be the guy to toss your egg into the air as Secret Service Agents on the roof will be keeping an eye on your activities.

For a less stressful time (i.e. no Men in Black security agents), one can always head over to Fremont, OH (close to Cedar Point for all of you non-Ohioians) at the The Hayes Presidential Center for their annual egg roll. No lottery is necessary, but each child 3-12 years of age needs to bring 3 hard-boiled eggs to participate.

The egg roll at the Hayes Center was recently listed as one of the top ten nicest Easter egg events in the Country according to Budget Travel. Children will receive a free ticket to the Museum or Home for participating in the egg roll activities, but fortunately, children under the age of 6 are free anyways.

I had hopes of our family getting out to the Hayes Center prior to the release of this article, but our weekends have been full, and we will not be able to attend the Easter egg roll. Just writing and researching about the Hayes Center got me excited to see the place, so I have made plans to not only attend this historic landmark of Ohio and Presidential history, but also document some of the other various sites across Ohio. Stay tuned.

My Easter Egg Hunt Lesson Learned

I do have one age-old lesson that I learned this year that never seems to change. Easter Egg hunts are unfair! The idea is for kids (and in our case, we are talking about toddlers here) to have fun, not how many eggs they get to take home. Our family managed to make it out to one local Easter egg hunt this year, and I manage to learn nothing has changed over the last 30+ years.

When my sister and I were kids, I remember my parents making comments about how unfair Easter egg hunts were because each kid did not manage to get a proportional share of the eggs, if any. So as our boys ran out into the field with other 0-3 year old toddlers, they did not fully grasp the concept of picking up eggs, and had to be assisted by parents. Afterwards, I heard the same story from other parents about how unfair egg hunts are and kids should be limited on how many eggs they receive by the organizers.

There is no way for the organizers to know how many kids are going to show up to a public Easter egg hunt, nor is there a way to make it fair for all of the kids. An Easter egg hunt lasts about less than a minute, and there is no way to tell each person you are only limited to x number of eggs. An egg hunt is about having some fun and the tradition, not how many eggs you get to take home. Maybe the White House will have some executive rules in place for us next year to ensure an equal experience for each kid. 🙂

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