BELLE FOURCHE—Every year, hundreds of brightly colored eggs are spread across the green grass for excited kids to run around and gather as many of the little plastic bulbs as they can. The event begins at 10 a.m. sharp and is over in no time, but those few minutes fill the little ones with joy.
For the past 14 years, since 2012, the Center of the Nation Business Association (CONBA) has been in charge of putting on the event. Even though the actual hunt is over fairly quick, a lot of time is put into planning and preparing for it. Stacey Raisanen, CONBA member, said, “We are super thrilled that we could continue the over 50 year tradition.”
Children are divided into different fields based on their ages: starting with ages zero to two, then three to four, five to six, seven to eight, and finally nine- and ten-year-olds. There is also a field for special needs. “The special needs field has no nuts, and it is set up for kids that may be anxious around so many people, or that can’t move as quickly,” explained Raisanen.
After all of the eggs are gathered, all of the kids and their families group together and go through and open each egg. Laughter and excitement can be heard as the kids discover what is inside each egg. When they are finished, all of the plastic eggs are deposited into empty boxes to be used again the following year.
Raisanen makes sure to hold a few extra eggs and prizes back to give to kids that maybe didn’t have great luck hunting for eggs. “If your child does not get more than five eggs, you can come see us at the van over here and we have held back some eggs—because some kids aren’t really into the whole picking up the egg thing yet—so we get it,” she announced.
And sure enough, after a few moments, a parent and her kids came over to the van, explaining that two of her boys didn’t get any eggs. “They were out there running around, but they didn’t get any—we kind of got here a little bit later,” she explained. Raisanen quickly bagged up eggs and prizes and handed them to the boys—the smiles on their faces were priceless.
“It was a big turnout! I would say there were probably at least 600 children here,” she said.
While CONBA supplies all of the candy and toys that go inside the eggs, Raisanen orders it all. She is also in charge of gathering volunteers to help stuff the eggs. Each year, over 6,000 plastic eggs have to get stuffed with goodies. Hosted at the AmericInn, filling eggs took place March 10, 12, 17, and 24.
Volunteer numbers to put together the Easter eggs were down this year. “Purple Pride came twice, 4-H helped, we had business association members help, and then members of the community came—but the volunteers were down by about half this year,” said Raisanen.
Since the egg filling began at 5:30 p.m., Raisanen made sure to have plenty of food available. “I was raised that if you are going to ask people to come during dinner hour, you gotta have something for them to eat,” she said. “It is a fun time! We had Domino’s the first night, we had nachos the second stuffing night, we had Chinese the third night, and we had fruit trays and Domino’s chicken the last night!”
The morning of the Easter Egg Hunt begins early for the CONBA members. Raisanen was out at the baseball diamonds at 7 a.m. getting things set up. Other members showed up to help out. Signs designating where each age group had to hunt and thousands of eggs had to be placed on the grass prior to the start. And after it is all done for the day, planning for the next year starts all over again!
Read the full issue of the Belle Fourche Beacon by clicking here.
