SUN PRAIRIE, Wis. — There aren’t nearly as many public Easter egg hunts across Wisconsin this year. But when there’s a problem, leave it to moms to find a solution.
“Last year, when you started to see all the things being cancelled because of COVID […] it was just so sad,” said Dannelle Gay of Sun Prairie.
Her 14-year-old son used to love Easter egg hunts. The travel writer isn’t doing any traveling over this past year, and has more time on her hands. So she decided to try something new for Easter 2020.
“With the egg hunts, I thought well, this might be fun to just bring it to them.”
She started Egg Your Yard Madison, where families could order an egg hunt delivered right to their front yard. “It worked! It was fun,” she said.
Easter 2021 was going to be bigger and better. She’s been planning since at least December. She even has her Christmas tree fully decked out for Easter.
"Dollar Tree stores around the area love me,” Gay laughed. “The one over by East Towne, I cleared him out before his stuff came in. It was all of this stuff sitting on a pallet from last year, and he was like ‘yeah, I love you’. He knows me by first name basis, and I think I'm gonna get a Christmas card.”
Her living room is filled with eggs. But they’re only a small portion of what will be delivered to the families the night before Easter. Her “bunnies”, the small delivery team, have collections at their homes too.
They have 185 orders in the Madison area for Easter weekend. Families can choose between five, ten, and fifteen dozen eggs. Total, that probably amounts to almost 18,000 eggs.
“That’s a lot of eggs,” she laughed. “But that’s also a lot of fun kids who are happy.”
She and her staff have filled the eggs themselves with stickers, small toys, bouncy balls, and of course, candy.
The team will be the Easter Bunny’s helpers Saturday night, and deliver them to families’ yards.
“We’re trying to do this under the stealth of darkness,” Gay laughed. “They know who the person is, they have the phone number to text to say ‘we arrived in your yard, please don't call the cops!’”
Kids will wake up Easter morning to an egg hunt in their front yard, courtesy of the Easter Bunny’s new sidekicks.
“So many events and sports and everything have been canceled,” she said with that tinge of sadness we’ve all felt this past year to lose our sense of normalcy. “It’s the little things, and the memories that we create that makes a difference.”
People could even donate an egging to another family, so for some, it will be a total surprise.
The goal is to give children and families just a touch of magic.
“Kids don't remember that you always made sure their clothes matched, or that you got them places on time,” she said. “It's the magical moments that they look back on when they get older.”
