Norway family prepares for one of U.P.'s largest Easter Egg Hunts

The Kleikamp's garage is stocked full of goodies and that is not including the two trailers worth of surprises.

"We pass out buckets full of candy, we try giving every child a prize," said Terry Kleikamp, one of the organizers of the Norway Easter Egg Race. "We have approximately 30,000 to 40,000 eggs we put out between the age groups, there's 4,000 prizes."

Those prizes are made possible by donations and through money made from donation-based prize drawings to prepare for Norway's Easter Egg Race on March 31, an event the Kleikamps took over eight years ago.

"It's for the kids, the kids just love it," said Becky Kleikamp, an organizer for the Norway Easter Egg Race. "It's not that it's a lot of work it's just time consuming."

That work is the effort of friends and family members working almost every weekend since early January.

"Yesterday I spent six hours at the park moving snow, a neighbor helped, one of the farmers helped," said Terry. "We're finishing up probably another five, maybe 6,000 eggs this weekend so we're ready to go."

"It's that kind of stuff people don't see, behind the scenes and then this morning we started at 10:30 and we'll probably be here until 6, 7 o'clock at night," said Becky.

The hunt is divided into four different age groups and each has the chance to win grand prizes like 30 different bikes, bouncy balls and gift cards. For all the work, the Kleikamps say one little thing makes it all worth it.

(terry kleikamp)

"Seeing the smile on the kids faces when they come and win their bike there's nothing like them sitting on that bike next to grandma and grandpa or mom and dad with a smile on their face," said Terry.

The egg race is Saturday, March 31 at Marion Park in Norway at 1 p.m. The fairgrounds will be open for parking at 11 a.m. and the Kleikamps recommend getting there as early as possible, they are expecting about 4,000 kids.