Easter Weekend

Holiday celebrations are always a struggle in our household (probably like many households) because we have to figure out which side of the family to attend. Oh, it could be way worse... we could be trying to squeeze in both sides on the same day. No, thank you. We make it a point to swap every other year, although we've had a few goofs where we go two years in a row to the same family. This year we spent Easter with my family... and last year too, but since we spent the last two Thanksgivings at Jesse's family's this was our attempt to even things out. As suspected though, Jesse's mom had an Easter basket for Riley so she and Michael came over on Saturday and we went out to lunch.

Of course, the only thing she would eat at the restaurant was fries... until she saw the ketchup. Then the fries were simply a tool to get the ketchup into her mouth.

Grandma's so cute... always trying to get my little "I won't sit still or listen to directions" Riley to look at the camera. This one is pretty darn close.

Later that day we decided to fly our new kite. It was a perfectly windy day for it.

I have to admit I'm not really an Easter person. I'm not religious, I don't really like pastels... I could actually be fine without celebrating this day. I was talking with a co-worker who also isn't religious, but she makes Easter baskets for her son and granddaughter. Her granddaughter, by the way is 2 months old. I didn't really get it, and noted that Riley has never received a basket from us. She was a little shocked and it got me to thinking that I could make this into a fun holiday for the kid... which would make it a fun holiday for me. Grandma and grandpa already got her a basket so I decided to do an Easter egg hunt. My family usually does one, but my brother planned different games and I knew we'd be arriving late due to Riley's nap schedule. So off to Menard's to get some plastic eggs on Easter morning. Luckily, they had one package left and, if anything, Riley got to drive this cart around.

Once at home we decided to not fill the eggs with candy. We don't really give candy to Riley and don't want to encourage it. I decided to put some of her magnetic letters in them, and because I'm weird like this I made sure that the letters ended up spelling 'easter'. Jesse suggested we also put food in some of them so I broke up some crackers and dispersed them between the remaining eggs. She really loves crackers so it's like we were giving her candy. What awesome parents are we?

Then we headed out to the yard after daddy hid the eggs.

She had a fun time finding the eggs even if she didn't quite get what we were asking her to do at first. And while she got really excited about the crackers she was super excited about finding letters.

In the afternoon we headed over to my brother's house. The celebration started at 1:00, but Riley is usually sleeping at that time. We hoped that we could get her down for a nap early to ensure that we'd show up by 3:00 when dinner was being served. Since I was bringing salad and bread I needed to be there by that time. I knew this plan would be impossible to stick to when she slept in until 7:45 that morning. She's usually up around 6 am so I'm not sure what miracle occurred that allowed her to sleep in (wish it occurred for me too, but I was up before 6 am). After multiple attempts to get her to nap (including finding her knee stuck in the side of her crib) we finally gave up a little after 2:00. So off to my brother's house we went.

Every time baby Rocky cried Riley had to go check him out and make sure he was ok. 

Rocky has quite the moves. 

Golf. Yeah, I didn't spend much time in this room.

Riley discovered my niece's cat, CC, and proceeded to chase her around the house and outside. I'm not sure if she understood that her name was CC as I'm pretty sure she was calling her Lucy, which is one of our cat's names. 

CC ran into the trees and disappeared. This was  pretty perplexing for my kid. "Where she go? Where she go? Where she go?..."

Still lamenting the disappearance of the cat...

My mom has Alzheimer's. She's at a stage where she doesn't really talk or know who we are. She sleeps a lot, but still gets around somewhat ok. I take Riley to see her and my dad a lot at my mom's memory care facility so Riley has had plenty of experiences around people with Alzheimer's, but I'm not sure what she understands or what she thinks of grandma. This day I had her standing in front of grandma when grandma grabbed Riley's arms and held on to her pretty tight. My mom was talking, but you couldn't understand what she was saying. I was impressed with Riley as she just stood there looking at Grandma Ann. She looks a little scared here, but I think it was more curiosity... trying to figure out this new side of grandma that she hasn't really seen. 

Riley was very well behaved considering that she didn't nap, but you can see that she was tired. Apparently, everyone was tired as even Jesse is sleeping in the background here. We headed out shortly after this and dropped my parents off at my mom's nursing home. Riley was pretty upset that she couldn't go in as she loves running around that place, but we got her home, got her ready for bed, and she was pretty much out before she hit the crib.