2012 White House Easter Egg Roll

We had the privilege of attending the White House Easter Egg Roll this year. The tickets are given out by lottery system, so we were lucky to win them.  It took place on the day after Easter.  And, as more luck would have it, Calder's school was closed for the day! 

First metro ride!  She loved it.

Welcome banner

We knew there would be a lot of people there...but we weren't quite prepared for this mayhem.   We shared our experience with 6,995 others.  It was very chaotic, and it took us a while to get our bearings. 

Calder found many "friends" that he was happy to have his picture taken with.

We eventually decided that we had to split up, because there were long lines for every activity and we were getting nowhere fast with our crew of 5. (Lesson learned: we shouldn't have brought Alyse along. She was not happy being restrained in the stroller or sling the whole time.)  In the end, the kids only got to do one activity each, which was really disappointing.  If we ever do this again, we'll know to get there WAY earlier and to develop a plan of attack as soon as we walk in.

Calder chose to do the obstacle course, where he met one of our favorite former Steelers player, Antwaan Randle El!

Awesome photo op!

While waiting in line for the obstacle course, we ran into Calder's best buddy from school!  Two cheesy grins.  They must be five.

While Calder, Alyse and I were at the obstacle course, Dave and Tessa waited in line at the egg roll.  We got over there just as they reached the front of the line, so I was able to snap a few pictures. 

Despite practicing the night before, she decided against actually rolling the egg.  Instead, she picked it up and carried it...then wanted to walk off with the wooden spoon!  A lady had to chase her down to retrieve it. :)

The highlight (for the adults) was the appearance of the First Family.  We had heard beforehand that they only appear at one of the time slots.  While we were waiting in line, we heard rumors that they were going to be at our time slot!

As cool as it was that they were there, I think it added to the craziness.  We couldn't get close to the story stage, cooking stage or any of the other activities they did because of a ridiculous amount of media, and of course all of the other thousands of people who were trying to catch a close look! 

I did, however, get this close to Michelle.  She was being escorted from the cooking stage in the same area where we were waiting to exit.  If I had waited about a 1/2 a second, I could have had a picture of her looking directly at me!  And, if I hadn't been fumbling with my camera, I could have shaken her hand.  Doh!

All in all, I'm glad we went.  It really was a once-in-a-lifetime type of experience...particularly because the Obama family made an appearance during our time slot.  But, we won't be entering the lottery to go again anytime soon. It was super stressful for us to keep track of the kids in that huge crowd.  And we had three extremely tired, hungry and whiny kids by the end.  Maybe we'll try again when they are much older!