On being the Easter bunny.

Over the past few weeks in my PR class, we have been planning and promoting an event called Glow in the Park: a glow-in-the-dark Easter egg hunt for high school aged kids, featuring carnival games, a blowdart arena, a DJ, and of course a massive Easter egg hunt after it got dark. As part of this event, we had to recruit sponsors, plan all the games, and work with the city to pull it off. Originally, I was part of the sponsorship team, which meant I just had to go talk to a bunch of businesses and ask for money/coupons/pizza.

One day, the city representatives came to our class with a huge box. Out of the box they pulled two things: a gorilla costume and a bunny costume. "We want you guys to be in charge of the mascots," they said. "Who wants to be on the mascot team?" asked my professor. No one volunteered. Suddenly my hand was in the air and I was on the mascot team (along with a few other hesitant classmates).

A few days later, I got a phone call. "Hey Shannon, are you on campus?" I was. "Can you come to the comm office? We need help with some promotion stuff." Sure. I showed up to find a few of my fellow PR students and a girl already dressed as a gorilla. (Why there was a gorilla involved, I still don't know.) "Will you put on the bunny costume? We just need to take a few pictures so we can promote the event on Instagram." Next thing I knew, I was walking all over campus as the Easter bunny during lunchtime: chasing the gorilla outside the student center, arm wrestling in the rotunda, and sunbathing on the quad. Kids were excited, Snapchats were flying, and my cheeks were turning more red than a pomegranate (mostly from how hot that costume was).

The second time I was recruited to wear the bunny costume was a few days later, when the mascots were set to make appearances at a few of the local businesses as a way to promote the event. This entailed another walk across campus, a car ride, and traipsing up and down Main Street as people stared. We tried on clothes, took pictures, and made a few children cry (whether from excitement or fright, it's still a toss up). An hour later I was dripping sweat and when someone gave me a bottle of water on the way back to the school, I had to ask her to open it because I couldn't hold anything with my bunny paws.

Luckily, I was not involved in the bunny's third appearance: the two high schools in Cedar City. However, the night of the event came, and guess who was the adorable mascot? You got it - yours truly.

I came prepared this time. For the heat of the fluffy costume, I wore a work out tank top and shorts. Because of how big the costume was, I tied a pillow around my stomach and brought safety pins to help hold the back together. I brought rubber bands to help hold the huge gloves on. I put my hair in a bun, pinned it back with a headband for good measure, and I was off: Shannon, the Easter Bunny for the next hour and a half.

At first, it was easy. Kids wanted to take pictures with me, moms were pumped, the pizza and bird mascots from Pizza Hut were excited (?), and everyone wanted to hug me. But then, Emily (my "handler" - they need a more demeaning term) told me I was going to be in a a dance-off with the gorilla. A what? *NSYNC started blasting from the DJ's speakers and then there I was, trying to dance in a mascot costume. If you have ever seen me dance, you know that all my moves are in my hips, which is not easy to portray when you have a pillow strapped to your tummy under rolls of fake fur. I did my best but the gorilla definitely won that competition. Talk to Colby for the video.

Next up was my trip through the blowdart arena, but this time, no one told me what to do. I was on my own in the inflatable maze, so I stole some girl's gun but considering they were blowguns (emphasis on the "blow") (lol), I couldn't do anything with it through that bunny head, so I gave it back and just took some of the darts to throw at people. However, as I already mentioned, the mittens were huge and I could barely hold the darts. When I tried to throw them, they went straight to the ground. The struggle is real, people.

I followed the gorilla over to the carnival games where he did the ring toss and I tried to swat down all the rings (due to my jealousy that the gorilla could actually hold and throw objects). I did the bottle toss through and knocked down a few bottles. I'll take my wins where I can get them.

Finally, it was time for the egg hunt. I followed Emily onto the playground where she had me sit in a swing and hold an egg as all the kids ran through to look for over 2000 eggs that we hid earlier in the day. It was dark by then and I couldn't see anything other than silhouettes and flashing lights through the mesh eyes of the costume. I felt pretty helpless: huge feet making me walk super slow and carefully, no use of my hands, and barely any sight. When the egg hunt was over we went back to the pavilion and I held up a sign for one of the high schools so they could return their empty eggs. One kid walked by and made fun of me so I chased him and tried to steal his candy (heh heh).

Then, it was all over and the bunny head finally came off. Luckily, since the whole thing was at night this time, I wasn't too hot. My debut as the Easter bunny was successful and actually way fun, despite my limited mobility.

However, the story doesn't end there. Until this Easter, I had no idea that people thought the Easter bunny was creepy. But then I saw this Buzzfeed article. Apparently, Easter bunnies all over the world are literally terrifying and more frequently cause tears of sadness in children than tears of joy. Luckily, my bunny costume was adorable... or was it? Note the comments in the following picture:

I was shocked! How could a cute and cuddly bunny be "soooo creepy?" But then another comment followed, this time from my own mother.

How rude. I refused to be brought down by the haters. I was an adorable Easter bunny and that was the end of it. (Although I did think the comments were funny.) And then, today on Instagram, I saw this:

So yeah. That's all.

Hashtag questival.

24 hours. 183 challenges. Over 300 teams. Winner gets a trip to Machu Picchu. This is what I spent this past weekend doing in a crazy event called the Cotopaxi Questival.

Basically, there's this new brand of outdoor gear named Cotopaxi (also the name of a volcano in Ecuador, so they say). For their brand launch, they created this event called the Questival. They explain it better on their website, but pretty much you make a team of two to four people (we had four: me, Colby, Gab, and Bri), check in at a location (ours was a Provo apartment complex), and then try to complete as many of the challenges as a team that you can in 24 hours, which are all worth varying amounts of points from one to 30. You had to post to social media to prove that you were doing the challenges, and all of your team's backpacks had to be pictured in each post. Challenges could be anything from hiking the Y (10 points), to eating a bug (3 points), to doing an hour of service (12 points), to "clocking" in a public place for 15 seconds (5 points). We had to Google that last one.

Upon arriving in Provo, we started out with a bang, immediately heading to a film festival at BYU for a cultural event (3 points) and to visit a museum (2 points). In the car on the way there we ate a few chocolate covered bugs, supplied by Bri, since we could eat up to three for up to nine points. I ate a cricket and it was gross. We then practically ran to the top of the Y which I definitely would not recommend. Thirteen switchbacks is twelve switchbacks too many. At the top we did some yoga and some yodeling for a few more points. Clearly Colby does not understand yoga.

From there we booked it to a Peruvian restaurant and ordered an appetizer for four more points. It was amazing and I need more Peruvian food. Unfortunately, this adventure set us back on time more than we had planned, so we rushed to the top of Provo Canyon with two longboards, a scooter, and a pair of rollerblades in tow. The challenge was to ride any human powered vehicle for 30 minutes, and we did that in style with phone flashlights and glowsticks on the Provo Canyon Trail. We even managed to warn strangers of a broken bridge (random act of kindness: 5 points) and climb to the top of an avalanche to get a picture of a waterfall (3 points).

We were planning on hiking the G in Pleasant Grove that night as well, but circumstances led to us ditching that plan and going straight to my parents' house to camp, where we started a fire without matches or lighter fluid and Colby made some pretty bomb tin foil dinners (reason number 242 to marry a chef). We set up a hammock and some sleeping bags and by the time we woke up, we had obtained about 150 points and had nine and a half hours left to go.

The first thing we did on Saturday was hike the G, also at record speeds which I double don't recommend. Seriously, that hike is straight uphill and it doesn't help at all when you have sore glutes and calves from riding a scooter for an hour. Plus, I'm pretty sure the G itself is made of recycled lawn furniture. We were all pretty happy when we finished that hike.

After the G we went to Thanksgiving Point to join a "service flash mob." This new challenge was posted on the app by Cotopaxi while we were on the hike - to spend half an hour picking up trash along the Jordan River Trail between the hours of 11:00 and 12:00, and it would earn us ten points. While in Lehi we also made a quick stop for a picture of Colby and Gab making the letter "L" with their bodies.

Next was Cotopaxi Headquarters in Cottonwood Heights. They had ski lift chairs and a bouldering wall in their office, which was pretty cool. We also got to look at some of their gear that they released on their website that day. Proceeds from every purchase go to help people in some part of the world. For example, every Cambodia water bottle sold helps provide someone in Cambodia with clean water for six months.

From there we went to hike the U. Thankfully, the U barely qualifies as an actual hike, which was good because all of our legs were screaming for rest. We hiked over to the letter in spandex to earn more points, and we were pretty pumped when we got there because it also meant we had spelled UGLY: the U in Salt Lake, the G in PG, making an L in Lehi, and the Y in Provo. A bonus of 20 whole points! (See what I mean about lawn chairs? Top right in the picture below.)

The State Capitol Building was next up on our plans, also known as the perfect place to do handstands, as well as plank and clock on top of beehives. Okay, doing it on top of the beehives wasn't a requirement but it was still cool. We saw a few teams there picketing for llama rights even though that wasn't a challenge (it was on the original released list, but then got removed for unknown reasons). Llamas are people too, obviously.

Following all this hiking and running around we were literally starving. Cotopaxi had been posting the top ten teams every two hours or so and we were not part of that list, and then after some social media stalking of the teams that were in the top ten, we determined we weren't really close to being on that list, so we decided to take a lunch break. We went to City Creek and devoured Chick-fil-a, and may or may not have stopped at Vans and H&M as well. When in Rome...

By this time it was about 3:30 pm and we had to be back to Thanksgiving Point by 6:00 so we decided to make one last stop in downtown and get a few more challenges done, starting with taking a picture in the elevator at the Salt Lake Library and donating a dollar to the Leonardo. When we came out of the museum we saw a guy planting seeds in a little planter box. Since planting a flower or tree was one of the challenges, we asked if we could help him plant a few. He was pretty pumped and proceeded to give us some seeds, let us choose where to put them, and tell us all about the yellow olendorf beets we were planting. So, if you're in downtown SLC in the next few weeks, check on my beets for me, eh?

For one of the last few challenges, we had to observe nature silently for 30 minutes. Being in the city, this wasn't easy, so we observed human nature as well. We also silently set up a slackline and did that for a while for a few points, and then made a rope swing out of it too. I ate a dandelion (horrible) and we took a picture on Trax. It was time to head to Thanksgiving Point and check back in for the end of the Questival.

When we got there, we realized there were still a few more challenges we had time to do. One was to take a picture in front of the waterfall at Thanksgiving Point Gardens. When we got there, we saw the perfect opportunity to complete the challenge to jump into a body of water with all your clothes on (10 points). We were at 290 points so it was the perfect way to end with 300! What we didn't know is that one of the best Vines ever created would emerge from it. If you haven't seen it, look it up on my Vine feed by clicking here. (You can also watch a few of our other Questival videos... Entertainment at its finest.)

We got to the finish line just before six and did one final challenge - take a selfie with a llama for 5 points - before checking in and submitting our score. Come to find out, we only got half the amount of points that the winning team got (I blame our lunch at Chick-fil-a... worth it) so we let ourselves relax and enjoy a few of the bands that Cotopaxi brought in for that night. And of course, to take a few more pictures with llamas, which are the company's mascot and symbol.

Even though we didn't even come close to winning, it was one of the most fun weekends I've had in a while and definitely the perfect way to end my college days with a bang. I would do it again in a heartbeat. Long live team #gethitched.