Easter Bash Prep

Several months ago Dad had a great idea, one that came to reality at the beginning of April. It was called the Easter Bash.

That was November. Time passed quickly as Dad, Mom and the Vicories called various businesses and people for sponsorship. Sometimes they would give money, sometimes prizes, sometimes coupons and the like.

Mom got busy trying to buy easter eggs, but she was having some trouble. She found a huge lot, but they weren't made very well. Yes, they were cheap, but the product itself was, too. In fact, only a few colors were available, like green, yellow and maybe a couple others. Understandably, Mom kept looking.

A few days later, she was excited and told everyone what she had found. Better quality eggs for less money and in more colors! That sounded a lot better, so we ordered seven thousand.

Now for stuffing the eggs. The job would not be easy—seven thousand eggs is a lot! But Mrs. Tami came to the rescue by asking her church youth group if they would help. So one evening, we got all the eggs, candy and other goodies together at the church. We set up different colors on different tables and put candy on each of the tables. Then, when the youth came, we had them form a circle around the table and walk around it, grabbing candy and stuffing it into the eggs as they went along, and tossing the eggs into a big box at one end of the table.

At first, everyone thought it would take quite a while. But with so many people helping at the same time, we got it all done in an hour! None of us thought it would go so fast!

However, one of the biggest obstacles we came in contact with was the Pueblo Parks Department. They had us do all sorts of things before they were satisfied with what we were doing or something. They had us hire an electrical contractor to inspect all of our cords and electrical equipment. Mom spent hundreds of dollars on new extension cords, just in case. We couldn't have this go wrong!

Eventually, we did get inspected and we passed. But the Parks Department had more hoops ready for us to jump through. Dad was going to be on the radio, but Parks said we couldn't do that. So Dad had hundreds and hundreds of fliers printed out with the basic information and some of our biggest sponsors' names on it (however, Parks had us put there entire logo on it).

Once in a while Dad would have our family, the Vicories and a few other helpers patrol the Bessemer neighborhood and pass out fliers. We knocked on doors and rang bells and told people about the event until our voices started hurting. Streets seemed to be covered in our bright green fliers, and whenever I saw that I always felt good. Dad was really pushing to get this event well known. And it was happening.

We had a meeting for all the volunteers. They got together (over dinner, of course) and Dad got everybody informed about what we were doing and gave them times and dates. Then a group leader would tell their group what they would be doing. The turnout was great and we had very many people helping. We had people cooking, continuously picking up trash off the ground, watching bounce houses, helping kids cross streets safely, security and even people just walking around and finding places they could help for a while or talking to people. We even had an egg-hiding team! Oh yeah, and a photographer, which happened to be me. I was really excited to have photography as my only job. In previous events I had to do the jobs of head bounce house referee, sound man, and photographer. This was a great load off my back.

It started getting crazy. Dad was in Pueblo every day, going to a meeting, working on a project, doing some of the countless things it would take to get the event going.

Finally, Friday, April 2nd hit. The day before the big Easter Bash. The usual insider volunteers—Hubbells, Vicories, and the other few—went to the park and scoured every inch of the grass for trash and bottles and pretty much anything that shouldn't have been there. We did this for two or three hours and by the time we got done my eyes felt sore.

We went home. We would rest for a while. Then we would have to get up a three AM and get to the park to set up for the big day. Everyone was nervous. I didn't know if I could get all the pictures I needed or help all that I could. I asked Dad about it, and he asked me:

“Will you do your best?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Then that's good enough,” he told me.

And suddenly, I wasn't so nervous anymore. I knew then that with God's help, I could do this. And that was good enough for me.