Alicia Lee grabs Twizzlers and stuffs them in a purple Easter egg covered with glitter.
“This is why there's glitter all over my table,” she said.
The crevices of her dining room table sparkle. Boxes filled with eggs for a hunt reach her ceiling in the living room.
“So there's like 300 in the chicken box,” Lee said, explaining that she grabs empty boxes from her job in food service in the Mountain View School District. “These bigger ones have more, like the chip boxes hold about 500… I count every egg.”
By late last week, Lee counted almost 30,000. She hopes to have 50,000 ready for Saturday. Whenever she has a minute, she works on filling eggs.
“It's a big project. I like taking on big projects, but it's all for the kids,” she said. “So it's all worth it in the end.”
Lee moved from Factoryville into her home in Lenoxville, Susquehanna County in August. By January, she was already buying candy and filling eggs for the third annual hunt she organizes.
Later this week, she and her husband will rent a U-Haul, fill it with eggs and drive the 14 miles back to Wyoming County for the hunt at Creekside Park.
She started the hunt after going to several with her now 10-year-old daughter, Jacklyn, and noticed they often ran out of eggs. She wanted to start one in her own community – one that would have plenty of eggs for everyone.
Lee receives some donations from the community, but the family covers most of the expenses. Lee and her husband, William Lee, own JABBS exterior washing company, and she volunteers to clean veterans’ headstones.
She filled 12,000 eggs the first year and about 30,000 last year. Lee buys pallets of candy online, and right after Easter, she stocks up on more plastic eggs. She asks families to leave the empty eggs after the hunt.
“I think last year we bought every Dollar General there was around here out. I think we had seven car loads of brand new eggs,” she said. “They were on clearance for 10 cents a bag so you couldn’t go wrong.”
As the sun rises on the day of the hunt, her family and a couple volunteers spread the eggs across the field at Creekside. The Easter Bunny makes an appearance, and so does a chicken – which is actually her husband. About 300 kids came last year.
The egg hunt begins at 11 a.m. Saturday at Creekside Park, 166-178 Creek Rd, in Clinton Twp. Volunteers will distribute bags for children to collect eggs.
“It's just a great time. It really is,” she said. “The kids really enjoy it. So I'll keep it going.”
