Easter Weekend

Easter (a week and a half ago already) was another busy holiday weekend for us!  Jeff was on-call, and his company was doing a major power-down, so he missed out on a lot of it, but Renee and I had a great time.

Jeff was up working in the wee hours on Saturday morning, so when Renee and I got up at 6:30am and he was just wrapping up what he needed to do and starving after having been up for so long, we decided to go out to breakfast.

There's a great little place in Woodland called the Main St. Cafe.  The owner/chef is this gruff mountain-man/biker-dude looking guy who's a bit socially awkward, but he tries very hard to be personable and we appreciate that :D  Renee usually just stares at him though, which means she's still not quite sure about him.  Anyway, the food is great, very fresh and most importantly you don't feel like you just ate a tub of lard when you're finished eating.  And, like most places in Woodland, it's small and not very crowded, so they don't mind if Renee wanders around a bit while we're finishing up our food.

She's good in the high chair until she's done eating, then she wants down and there's not much we can do about it.  She's got all the passive aggressive moves down now: going limp, arching her back, squirming & twisting; so it's hard to keep a hold of her if she doesn't want to be held!  But, she's really good and just wanders around and enjoys all the attention she gets from strangers.  Everyone just thinks she is so cute (we totally agree, of course), so she gets lots of smiles, waves and exclamations of how cute she is!  All the attention is turning her in to quite a little ham :D

The rest of Saturday we just took it easy.  Jeff caught up on some sleep while Renee and I planted our summer vegetable garden.  She loves being outside, so she was happy as a clam and kept very busy while I worked.  She "helped" me dig some holes for the starter plants I had grown indoors, she fed the duck some spinach, she "threw" the ball for the dogs, and watched our new little chicks run around in their pen.  She also loves shaking the seed packets, they sound like a rattle, so she had fun doing that for a while.  She ended up spreading the packets all over the yard, so I was constantly searching for the one I wanted to plant next.

Here she is digging up some dirt in our raised beds:

On a total side note, since I'm writing this post so late, some of the zucchini & sunflower seeds we planted have already popped up!! 

On Sunday morning Jeff had to leave the house at 2AM!!!  So he didn't get to join us at all on Easter :(  But, Renee and I made the best of it.  After her morning bottle I gave her the Easter basket I made for her.  When I was a kid the Easter Bunny always brought us a basket of goodies and I wanted to continue the tradition with Renee.  It was so fun watching her look through the basket!

I don't let her have candy yet, so instead I filled the basket with some fun toys (Little People, no-spill bubbles, a book: "What Makes a Rainbow", and some fuzzy bunny ears to wear).  She also got some goldfish crackers as a yummy treat, even though gets those whenever anyway, she doesn't care :D

Enjoying her Goldfish crackers :D

We spent the next couple hours playing (mostly Renee), cleaning up the house a bit (mostly me) and getting ready to hit the road.  As soon as I got Renee dressed in her Easter outfit, complete with a cute little sweater I crocheted, I took a bunch of pictures.  I wanted to capture her pristine cuteness right away before she messed it all up with her toddler business!

Our first stop of the day was my Aunt Julie and Uncle Mario's house in Petaluma to see a few members of my dad's side of the family.  Renee had fun watching her second cousins, Antonio and Franco, playing with all their fun new Easter goodies.

After a few hours visiting we got on the road again and went to Novato to have dinner with my Mom's side of the family at my Auntie Lea & Uncle Dave's house.  Again, Renee had lots of fun.  My Aunt Lea's house is like a museum, she loves collecting antiques and she displays them beautifully in every possible space.  So it was a bit exhausting chasing Renee around making sure she didn't break anything!  She had a ton of fun when she realized that she could make a full circle loop around the house from the kitchen, through to the laundry room, living room, entry way and then back to the kitchen again.  And she also loved climbing up the stairs, which we don't have at our house.

SOOOO excited about the stairs!!

My aunt and uncle also have a horse barn, so I took Renee out to see the horses.  She was a little apprehensive about it.  She knows what horses are from all the picture books we have at home and she can even tell you what a horsey says, "neehhh!"  But, I don't think she realized how big they were in real life.  I just held her and she sat in my arms motionless, staring at the horses, quietly contemplating whether or not she wanted to get any closer to them.

She also got some extra Easter goodies from my mom and Aunt Lea:

The kitchen utensils weren't part of the gift :D

After dinner and dessert, we packed up and headed home.  When we're out and about I like to try to get in the car to go home around Renee's normal bedtime, usually around 7 PM, but we weren't able to leave until about 7:45.  She was having so much fun that she didn't even notice how tired she was until she was strapped into her car seat; she fell asleep as soon as we hit the road.  All that Easter fun makes for a very tired little girl :D