The Thrill is Gone

Before the great hunt right after the thrill was taken away.

Or at least it was in our house yesterday. Thrill being the actual egg hunting that went on here. I bet you thought I was talking about something else. Oh the kids were all excited when dying their eggs the night before as you may have read. However trucker took the thrill right away when the egg hunt began. You see each year till now we have filled the eggs full of candy, and always had prize eggs with money inside. Instead this year we simply bought the kids gifts cards in place of actual prize money to put into the eggs. We wanted to avoid the whining of not finding a prize, the crying about how unfair it was and all the usual stuff that happens if you don't win. So in essence trucker took the thrill away.

Why did he do this? Each year that we have filled the eggs there always ended up being at least one child who never got a prize. Now as far as I am concerned that is part of the game. Not winning is part of life and to me something that should be learned early on. You can't always win, you know? So trucker and I had sat down the night before after the kids dyed the eggs and discussed this prize portion of the hunt. It honestly didn't matter one way or another to me if their were prizes or not. I did suggest that if there were prizes to please explain before hand that if you didn't win, well hell, that's life! I mean it's not always wine and roses.

So trucker explained about NO prizes or candy in the eggs. That went over like a lead balloon to say the least. Now the thrill less hunt begins. Trucker takes the kids outside, explains the boundaries of the hidden areas and I take pictures. They ended up having a good time after all looking and searching. To me the funny part of the entire thing was that we had over 5 dozen eggs hidden. The majority were hidden in plain site and thus made them harder to find. They were not expecting them to be laying out in the open like that. I accused trucker of just being plain lazy and not putting the effort he once done into it. That too went over about like a lead balloon. They were looking high above, under things and all the while stepping on them right under their feet. It was priceless to see this. Sometimes easy is really hard.

Being that is was totally not thrilling to them anymore what with no prizes then they only wanted to hunt only one time.

So my question is: Should we have placed prizes into the eggs and subjected ourselves to the usual whining and crying? Or done as we had done and gave them equal gifts? Let me know.