A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
The Easter Bunny was the star attraction at Saturday's Easter weekend Skate with the Easter Bunny event, put on by Cloquet Community Education. Close to 400 kids and older family members and others came for the free fun.
Cloquet's Kasha Miens, 5, colors an Easter page after someone colored her like an Easter Bunny Saturday. Next to her, 6-year-old Cullen Kam from Esko is really focused on getting his coloring project just right.
With the possible exception of 22-month-old Callahan Broneak, the Broneak and Kalash cousins were thrilled with their celebrity ice skate Saturday in Cloquet.
"They were excited when we told them they would get to skate with the Easter Bunny. We still believe," said April Kalash, telling how her middle son, 6-year-old Luke, even brought a dyed Easter egg to Northwoods Credit Union Arena as a gift for the Easter Bunny.
His cousin, Callahan, on the other hand, gave the tall white bunny a hard stare when his aunt took him over to say hello.
It was the second year for the free Easter weekend event put on by Cloquet Community Education, which included two hours of ice skating with the Easter Bunny and members of the Wilderness junior hockey team, plus coloring pages, crafts, face painting and even a little dancing.
On a day when the snow was still at least a foot deep at Pine Valley Park, Community Ed director Erin Bates said she thinks the switch away from an Easter egg hunt last year was a good idea. She sees the event at the hockey shelter as a more relaxing time for families.
"People came and went as they pleased," she said, estimating close to 400 people came this year. "It made for a really fun relaxing Saturday before Easter."
Mom Crimsen Hanson agreed. Her kids, Dennen, 7, and Dylan, 9, spent almost the entire two hours on the ice.
"This is an opportunity for all the community's kids to come skate," she said. "Our kids look forward to it all year and they ask about it."
It's not just the skating either, which their hockey-playing son is pretty good at. He had a blast doing the chicken dance and just hanging out with some friends who don't play hockey.
In a random survey of the crowd, Karlie Lorenz, age 8, said she had the most fun skating and doing crafts. Her friend Kennedy was excited to have her photo taken with the Easter Bunny.
As for toddler Callahan Broneak, he was all smiles after skating in the arms of his favorite idol: his dad, Joe Broneak, especially after Joe did a hockey stop, spraying tiny pieces of ice all over his big brothers.
