Family Fun, Holidays, Scenes From the Weekend

A Photo Dump of the Rest of Easter & Raven’s B-day (aka, the last 2 weekends)

Back when I was still a regular journaler, there would be stretches of time where so much would happen in a small space of time that I felt too overwhelmed to write about it, so I would put it off…and keep putting it off and off and off, until finally, sometimes weeks or even months later, I would sit down and just dump a general summary of the main bullet points so I could move on with my life. Sure, it meant that those events might not have gotten the attention they deserved, but at least they got some attention at all in the end, so there it was.

“Don’t let the fine pursuit of perfection get in the way of the perfectly fine.”

Or something like that.

Because I saw myself go through this pattern so many times, I’ve learned to sense when it’s upon me now that I blog about my days rather than write them down on paper. While Easter and Raven’s birthday have kind of already gotten posts of their own, there were still TONS of pictures I never went through, and several details that were never mentioned.

Originally, I wanted to split each of these things into its own post (complete with some attempt at trying to make it more interesting than just a journal entry), but I’m still sick and feel like I’m coming down with something akin to bronchitis or pneumonia or some horrendous chest-heavy, cough-happy sickness, so this is all you get.

(And in the end, I learned a long time ago that since I make no money from blogging, it’s okay to do posts occasionally that really aren’t for anyone’s benefit but my own.)

Event #1: Raven’s birthday with Matt’s family.
Since my family has started doing a monthly birthday to celebrate everyone’s birthday within that month, and since we live a bit far away to expect everyone in Matt’s family to come out and celebrate, we decided to do a little party at Matt’s parents’ house the day before my family was doing the family party for all the birthdays that month. That way, Matt’s family could celebrate her birthday in some way, and we could do all the birthday festivities in the same weekend (and in roughly the same geographic location, since Matt and I grew up basically in the same city).
We had a taco bar and made sure people knew that gifts were optional, but Raven was still spoiled with several pretty new outfits, new books to add to her personal library, and some toys that she just latched onto immediately.
More than anything, we loved seeing how Raven lit up when she saw her birthday cake for the first time, and how she was confused yet clearly excited and happy when everyone started singing Happy Birthday to her.

Event #2: Family Birthday with Other April Birthdays with My Family (+ Easter Egg Hunt and Egg Dyeing)

Raven adores spending time with other kids, especially her cousins, so she was a bit beside herself that she got to skip her nap two days in a row AND play with other kids to her heart’s content.

This was her first taste of an Easter egg hunt, and I’ve got to say, I was pretty impressed with how quickly she got the hang of it—in fact, she even found all her eggs before some of  her older cousins did! (Of course, that might be because she had a bit more help from Daddy and from some of her other cousins…)

And it did not take her long at all to figure out that the eggs could open and that there was candy inside. She actually found one of the eggs before the hunt started and cracked it open all by herself, so she must have her mama’s sixth sense for chocolate lurking about…

When it came time for presents and cake, she was an old hand at it (having experienced it all just the night before), and dived right in. I absolutely love the picture of her trying to blow out the candles with her aunt and cousin.

Event #3: Easter Egg Hunt in Syracuse with Cousins

Although I knew there was a community egg hunt that was more local to us, I knew that Raven would have WAY more fun if she was around her cousins rather than just us, so we drove down to Syracuse last Saturday morning to meet my sister and her kids for the big community egg event they have down there.

Thank goodness the fields were divided by age because basically all the other fields except the one Raven was on were cleared out in about 30 seconds, but in our field (for ages 0-2), we had plenty of time to watch Raven fill up her bucket and have fun “cleaning up” the field (in fact, she was singing our “clean up” song half the time the hunt was going on).

She easily could have gotten even more eggs, but her bucket was full, and we thought it better to leave some for the kids whose buckets weren’t full yet. We even got lucky and got a ticket for a “special prize” (which turned out to be a bubble wand—perfect for Raven!), and a nice father who had been collecting eggs with his son right next to us gifted us the four special tickets his son had gotten (because they didn’t want to wait in line), so we were able to share those treats with her cousins, who hadn’t gotten any tickets of their own.

All in all, a pretty great way to spend the morning, and a fun way to spend the holiday.

I was impressed with how patiently Raven waited until the horn went off to start collecting—all in all, she waited over 20 minutes without even trying to get the eggs! It was pretty amazing.

And, at the end, we had some fun watching Raven and her cousins chase bubbles through the field. Apparently, bubble-popping never gets old.

And thus concludes my photo dump! On Friday, I’m planning to be back to my regular programming, hopefully with an update to what I’ve been reading lately (which—I’ll give you a hint—is a LOT).

See you then!