Making Easter Memories

On the local radio station here they have a campaign called "Lead SA", which encourages people to make a difference to make South Africa a better place.  They feature stories of amazing things that people are doing every day.  It got me to thinking what we could do, and we ended up going to a local orphanage (where we had visited at Christmas with the Embassy) and we did an Easter egg hunt for the 75 kids that live there.

We had plastic eggs we had brought and we shipped in a few more (good old Amazon) and put the neighborhood kids to work stuffing them.  The girls spent the morning baking....

Hundreds of sugar cookies being made..

A rainbow of frosting colors...

We loaded all the eggs, cookies decorating supplies, a pile of soccer balls, fresh fruit and we headed to the orphanage.

Katie & I kept the kids busy with cookie decorating while Greg, Kelly and Charlie hid the eggs out in the yard.  The kids loved decorating their cookies, eating sprinkles, and frosting of course.

The hunt begins!

I am happy to report that the kids got the best of all of us for a few hours:

• Kelly was playing with the little kids and getting them to smile, they loved when she would lift them onto the back gate of the car, they thought it was fun to sit on the tailgate! She even picked a thorn out of one little guys foot.
• Katie was adopted by a group of girls her age, they wanted to do her hair, they even brought out their own comb (with half its teeth missing) to comb it for her.
• I was perfectly happy in a room full of kids & mess everywhere-frosting, sprinkles, after the egg hunt I held as many of the little ones as possible, they liked just sitting on my lap.  They liked playing with my hair too, with their sticky fingers!
• After hiding all the eggs, Greg handed out extra chocolate ones to kids who didn't get that many, he was nearly attacked for the rest of the eggs in the box, his sprint to get away with the box of chocolate was his warm up for a soccer game with a group of the older boys.
• Charlie was a enforcer in the little kid hunt area, he kept telling the big kids to get out and he helped some of the little kids find eggs.  He also joined in to help Dad in the soccer game.

It was hard to leave and know that there were so many kids there that just wanted some love and attention, if only for a few minutes.  I wish I had rolled in with a bus full of Moms to hold all the little ones!  

Don't you just want to give them all a snuggle?

Back of the car was the "hot spot" to sit on!  At one point there was about five more kids squeezed on the back!

We drove away happy that we brought some cheer to the kids and already planning what we could bring for them on our next visit!