a beautiful weekend~

Following a dreary and rainy end of the week, we were blessed with a gorgeous weekend here in Western NC.  I spent a fair amount of time in the garden filling the new raised bed, planting bean seeds, seeding a flat of flowers, starting some cucumbers and squash (only 3, I was good) and seeding a bed of native wildflowers and grasses on the south side of the house.  Laundry was hung, walks were taken, toes were dipped in the creek, and Easter eggs were hunted.

On Saturday we took Claire to her first Easter egg hunt, a big community event at the primary school that is conveniently located at the other end of the greenway that has it's terminus just a few blocks from our home.  I wondered how she would be able to find eggs and whether they would get all smushed and gross in her basket.  And then we saw the playground where the 4 and under crowd were to do their hunting and it was clear that 1) it wouldn't be so hard for her to find them after all,

and 2) they wouldn't get all smushed because they were plastic eggs (of course they were! what was I thinking? that they were going to boil and dye 4,000 real eggs? Needless to say, this was my first big Easter egg hunt)

We handed her a basket and she took off and stood right at the gate, cutting in line and cutely swinging her basket around.  Maybe it's intuitive, the finding of the portal into the egg hunt... I don't know.

Once the time came to open the gate I scooped her up so as not to have her trampled by the coming wave of 2-3 year olds, and safely placed her on the hunting grounds.  She figured it out pretty quickly and ended up with 7 little eggs in her basket and several trips taken down the various slides.  Afterwards, Mike and I snagged the smarties and tootsie rolls out of the eggs (and the teeny tiny little erasers that I decided I'd rather not find on their way out, if you know what I mean) and watched as she explored and wandered a bit.

An Easter basket from Nana and Grandpop surprised us in the mail and contained the perfect little trio of gifts for Claire~ bubbles, hair clips, and a cute little outfit.  She loves watching bubbles.  Almost as much as she loves shaking the container.  And the hair clips?  Well, all I can say is it's about dang time I started harnessing that girl's bangs!  She looks so different with them pulled back~ so grown up, so cute.  Sigh.

That night the three of us went out to dinner.  We do that so very infrequently and I enjoyed it so very much.  We sat outside, we laughed and talked, stress from the week seemed to melt away a bit, Claire worked hard to keep the older gentleman next to us in the game of peek-a-boo that he started not knowing just what he'd gotten himself into, we ate some really delicious food, and followed it with a little playing around in the grass nearby.  (I can't help but reread that line and think how, before baby, it would have meant something else entirely...)

On Sunday afternoon Claire and I met up with her little buddy Keegan down by the creek and the mamas caught up while the little ones got their toes (or in his case, entire body) in the water, played with sticks, threw rocks into the creek and ran around.  I know, I'm probably supposed to be teaching her not to play with sticks and throw rocks, but she's my girl and well, those are just things we're gonna be doing.  Yes, I will teach her not to poke sticks into people's eyes and not to throw rocks at any living things, but seriously, sticks and rocks are way more fun than most of the crap out there, dontcha think?

'twas a beautiful Easter weekend indeed.

cheers!