Another winter weekend

This weekend we left the house to go to the nursing home to visit grandma Ann and grandpa Frank, but were a bit delayed when Riley decided to wander around outside. Might as well let her explore and burn off some energy before sticking her in the car... because car rides can often look like this:

Earlier in the week... upset about being in the car.

We just had a light snowfall so it was a little surprising that Riley wanted to run around as she hasn't been that fond of snow so far, but it seems that she's coming around. She kept scooping up snow and throwing it at us and wandering around on neighbor's sidewalks. I wonder what the neighbors think of us... I never see other neighbors randomly hanging out in our yard. "Don't they have their own yard to play in?".

Not our house.

When I wrote her name in the snow it led her to asking me to write a 'B', a 'P', etc. She loves to have us write letters over and over for her. B still seems to be her favorite, but she's starting to branch out with others. By this time we were down at the park and were having a bit of a challenge convincing her we needed to go home. Solution? Grab a stick and write letters in the snow for her. With each letter move about 5 feet up until you arrive home conveniently at the letter Z.

Once we got home we jumped in the car and headed to the nursing home. She had a fun time there and discovered a few new things to play with such as the singing snowman and this flowerpot full of rocks.

You can't see it, but she was throwing pebbles around.

Later in the day my dad (grandpa Frank) stopped by as he was in the neighborhood to see a friend of his. And grandma Suzie and grandpa Michael stopped by at the same time. What a treat to have all these visitors. My dad even shared stories of when he worked at Coca Cola during the war many years ago. He explained that because of the war bottle production had stopped so they had to get used bottles back, clean them out, and refill them. He said they were extremely short on bottles when he backed his truck into a large pallet of bottles and broke them all. Lucky for him it all worked out and he said he even got a new truck out of the deal. I love hearing my dad talk about these things because most of the time he talks as if nothing important or exciting happened in the past.

Jesse asked me to destroy this picture, but it's so rare that we get a picture together as a family I couldn't help but keep it.

Grandpa Michael was a good sport playing with Riley. It was fun to see him crawling around on the ground with her. And she was loving it.

There was a family on the ice skating and sledding around. It was fun to watch and think that this may be us in the near future.

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful except for Monday when I had the day off, but Riley had daycare and Jesse had to work. I ran more errands in day than I have since before Riley was born. It was pretty exciting to get that much done in one day. I almost forgot that was possible. I spent part of the day planning for Riley's birthday party which is coming up in February. We've decided to keep the party somewhat small... some family, some friends. I hope no one is offended if they aren't invited, but we have such a huge family we needed to keep it manageable for her age. I have been debating birthday party ideas (owls, abc's...), but decided that the one consistent thing that she has been interested in is books so we are having a book party (and we can include the alphabet easily with this). The invites I made are bookmarks and have a little rhyme explaining that books are a great gift. She got so many toys for Christmas that she doesn't even know what to do with them, but she always loves her books. I can't wait for it to all come together.

And, to be honest, I can't wait to get her some new books!