Easter Weekend

You know how sometimes, you have such a great weekend that you actually come into work on Monday SMILING? Feeling refreshed and happy? It’s like the high from the weekend hasn’t worn off yet. I think it’s kind of rare, because I know that a lot of times, the Monday morning workday blues actually begin setting in on Sunday night even!

But yeah. Happy. Breezy. Rested. That’s how I felt on Monday, after having such a wonderful Easter weekend. As always, it helped that the weather was FABULOUS.

Backing up… I had off from work on Friday, so I kicked off the three-day weekend at home with my girls (Michael had to work, boo). While they played, I turned over Nora and Vivienne’s closets—removing winter clothes and replacing with spring/summer—which was a huge undertaking. Last minute, I got in touch with my brother that morning and he brought Bryce over for a play date and lunch. Nora and Bryce were so cute playing together, running back and forth in our family room and laughing at each other.

After they left, I put the girls down for a nap and got a few things done around the house, but also had some time to relax. By the time they got up, the weather had warmed up enough to go OUTSIDE! We went for a walk, Michael came home, and we took some time to play in the driveway. Now that Vivienne is sitting up so well, she got her first experience with grass… which she was fascinated with! So serious!

It was so nice to be out, even if it was still a little chilly. Michael and I enjoyed beers and we threw a frozen pizza in the oven while we played and watched the girls. It was just the first of many, many evenings we will be spending out there, I’m sure!

On Saturday morning, we dyed eggs with Nora. She had a lot of fun picking the colors and telling me to write all of our names on the eggs. We managed to keep the mess at a minimum, too… just some dyed fingertips! :)

Afterward, Nora and I headed out for a play date with our neighbors at our children’s museum. Michael and Vivienne stayed home—it was just the moms and 3 year olds!

On Saturday night, we had Michael’s mom and sister come over to babysit and Michael and I headed out for date night! Dinner and beers at a local brewery. Delicious food, good beer, nice to be out and have adult conversation. And then we made a solo trip to Target on the way home (living wildly, haha!) because the Easter Bunny needed to get basket goodies. Nothing like waiting until the last possible minute.

Nora has been funny about her bedtime routine lately. She NEEDS to follow the bedtime routine. She went to bed without too much issue, allowing Grandma to read her the bedtime story… but she would NOT go to sleep until we got home and kissed her goodnight! She told my mother-in-law that she was waiting for us. What a stinker.

As with Christmas, Nora was really excited about the Easter Bunny this year. We didn’t even attempt a visit or pictures with the bunny at the mall, as past attempts indicated that we would not be successful. That theory was backed up by Nora’s reactions whenever we’ve seen random Easter Bunnies out and about. She really doesn’t want anything to do with them, and I don’t blame her. It was funny, though… Nora knew that the Easter Bunny would be coming to her house while she slept, and that he’d bring presents, but I didn’t want her to think he was on the same level as Santa Claus, so I had prepared her about this. On Saturday, as we were leaving for our date night, I heard her tell my mother-in-law, “The Easter Bunny doesn’t bring big presents like Santa. Just little things.” She had also previously asked me questions about how the Easter Bunny was going to get into our house (and was satisfied with “he’s magic”).

Easter morning, Nora was excited to go downstairs to see what the Bunny had brought them.

Nora got a board game, a sundress, headbands, and a puzzle. And literally just a tiny handful of chocolate eggs. Vivienne got Mum-Mums and some baby food pouches. She kind of got the shaft. WHATEVER, she’s too young to know the difference, LOL. I was actually a little surprised that Nora didn’t notice, but hey, she was taken care of and I’m guessing that was #1 in her book of worries. :)

We hurried through breakfast and getting ready so we could make it to Easter Mass at 8:30. We squeaked in right on time, but didn’t have seats in the pews… we were in the “overflow” room, watching Mass on closed-circuit TV! Oh well, better than nothing.

After Mass, a nasty lady in the parking lot decided to call me out for where we parked while I was strapping Nora into her car seat. It’s a long story, but we were definitely not in the wrong—we had simply followed the direction of the parking attendant when we arrived. But she was set on being a total bitch and continued to roll down her window to yell at me repeatedly. It took every ounce of self control I had not to call her a lot of inappropriate things, but instead I kept sarcastically wishing her a Happy Easter. At one point, I told her (also dripping with sarcasm), “And thank you for being such a good Christian.” I was so worked up about it that my hands were shaking as I was buckling Nora into her car seat. I couldn’t believe that this woman had gone inside, sat at Easter Mass for an hour, and then immediately came out and felt it OK to verbally attack a young mother with her husband and children (Michael was on the opposite side of the car buckling in Vivienne, so was mostly shielded from her ranting). It was one of those moments when you wonder what the hell is wrong with humanity, which was certainly not something I wanted to do when I was trying to celebrate Easter with my family, and even less while in the parking lot AT CHURCH. This lady was obviously out to ruin someone’s day, and I’ll admit it took me a few hours to really shake her off. Ugh.

At home, we got into comfier clothes and relaxed and played together for a while until it was time for Vivienne to take a nap. We let Nora skip a nap—a huge treat for her, apparently, because she couldn’t stop talking about it!—since we were going to my in-laws’ for a very early dinner and would’ve had to wake her up less than an hour into the nap anyway. Instead, we let her play outside while Michael raked some more lingering leaves and I cleaned out the van. It was so nice to be out in the sunshine!

We all got dressed up again and before heading to my in-laws’, took some Easter pics outside. My precious girls:

And our little family:

Dinner was great, we all had a lot of sugar, and overall, just enjoyed the time together. Nora got a big kick out of the bunny cake my mother-in-law and sister-in-law made:

Because we’d had dinner so early, we got home with time to spare before bedtime. So we did what anyone around here is going to do when it’s 70 degrees out in April… we went back outside!

Love these pics with my babies:

It was a happy, happy weekend. (With the exception of that miserable witch in the church parking lot. But even she couldn’t bring me down for long!) I hope everyone enjoyed their Easter as much as we did.