White House Easter Egg Roll

What a day! A few months ago we won tickets to the White House Easter Egg Roll through the online lottery. We had two adult and two kid tickets, and our wonderful Chicago friends Tom and Joanna decided that their son Alejandro shouldn't miss out. Joanna and Alejandro spent the weekend with us (Tom stayed back home with newborn Linus).

Our entrance time was 9:45 am, so at 9 am we joined the long but fast-moving ticket line of 5,000 people (a total of 30,000 people in 6 groups went through today). Then, we waited in the security line, and after a refueling of free juice and snack bars on the Ellipse we waited on another long line to enter the South Lawn. We made it in by 10:15, giving us an hour and 1/2 to enjoy the activities - and there were a ton: egg rolling, egg hunting, sports, yoga, kite making, face painting, hula hoops (Lily is turning into a hula hoop pro), storytelling . . . most of which required waiting in more long lines.

Lily wore this dress because we convinced her that President Obama likes polka dots.

At about 10:45 the Obamas showed up on the Truman Balcony. This was a surprise - we were lucky they made their appearance during our visit. Mrs. Obama spoke about the egg roll tradition, and about her get moving campaign. Then they joined the crowd on the lawn to do some egg rolling. At this point I ditched my family (Lily and Alejandro were more interested in the kites they were making) to get as close to the action as I could.

President Obama at the egg roll. I was about 4 people back and started taking photos randomly by holding my camera over my head. Most of the photos are of the back of that blue-shirted guy's head, but this one came out.

Same technique here, but I love, love, love the way this photo came out. Captures the excitement of the crowd.

I rejoined my family - at this point everyone was kind of dragging. We decided to do the egg rolling and then head out.

While we were waiting in the egg rolling line, I heard Michael say "Deb, Deb, Deb, Deb, Deb! It's the President, take a picture!" He had finished up reading stories and playing sports, and walked right by us - maybe 15 yards away, no crowd in between, back to the West Wing. I'm pretty sure he was thinking "Hey, isn't that the woman who was here last week for Marine One waving like a maniac, and who stared stupidly at me at the National Archives? Where's Secret Service?"

Two minutes later Michelle walked by, even closer, and went into the residence.

At that, we called it a day, gathered our souvenir purple wooden egg and free Peeps, found Joanna outside the gates, and death marched back to the car with two kids who had finally gone over the edge.

Post Script, 5 p.m.: We lost the &%# $@ souvenir egg! We searched everywhere in the house, and Michael even started going through the trash CSI style. Finally we hear Lily say "I found it! I forgot I put it in my toothbrush cup to keep it safe."