The Easter Bunny comes to town

By Thomas Nelson, tnelson@charlescitypress.com

Charles City children chased each other around to find Easter eggs at the Charles City Middle School gym Saturday morning.

“We stuffed Easter eggs for two or three weeks before the event,” said Charles City Hy-Vee store Director Ryan Parker. This is the second year that Hy-Vee sponsored the Easter egg hunt, and it provided 2,000 eggs that were scattered around the gym.

The Charles City Chamber of Commerce, Frito Lay and Pepsi also helped sponsor the event.

“Usually we do it out at the park (Central Park), but this year luckily we were able to do something in the gym,” Parker said. “The weather wasn’t the greatest this year.”

The weather outside wasn’t exactly sunny and conducive to hunting for Easter eggs, with wind gust getting as high as 40 mph, according to the National Weather Service. There was also still plenty of snow left in Central Park.

“We’re really lucky to have the school open up the gym for us and let us do it out here,” Parker said. “The hiding portion wasn’t as easy this time, but it’s really about letting the kids run around and have fun and pick up eggs.”

This year the children were divided into two age groups, as opposed to four in previous years.

“Usually we try to split up the big kids and the little kids,” Parker said. “This year we were only able to do two just because of the way the gym is set up.”

The change didn’t prevent children from leaving with buckets full of eggs and candy.

Austin Lacour, 5, had a lot of fun and didn’t know how many eggs he had.

The event also featured the Easter Bunny. Children were able to line up with their parents to get their photos taken with the particularly large rabbit.

The Bunny was also at the Hy-Vee after the hunt.