Fun Weekend

I spent the first half of my Saturday at a friend's baby shower, while Elsa went with her daddy to the Easter egg hunt on the Decatur Square. I was a bit sad to miss out on the event -- especially with last year's being so eventful, with Elsa breaking her leg later in the day and all -- but the shower was a lot of fun, and it was nice that Elsa and Jarrett could do something fun together, just the two of them.

Jarrett was not able to get many photos of Elsa taking part in the actual hunt itself, as he said once it started, all the kids took off and Elsa just stood still and turned her head to look back at Jarrett like, "What is going on, Daddy?" We tried to explain to her in the days leading up to the event that she was going to take her purple Easter basket and pick up eggs (forgot they do loose candy at this particular hunt rather than plastic eggs) and put them into the basket. And they have the hunt broken out into age groups of 0 to 2, preschool, kindergarten to first grade, etc., but it was all just still a little too overwhelming for her (not surprisingly, really). Jarrett helped her, though, and he said she was finally catching on by the end, once most of the candy was already taken. But she did get a handful into her basket, which she seemed proud of. After the hunt (which Jarrett said lasted all of about five minutes), the two of them had lunch together at the U-Joint, just up the street from our house.

On Sunday morning we played hooky from church to go celebrate one of Elsa's friend's (Christian) birthday at Thrasher Park in Norcross (a.k.a. "The Train Park"). Elsa seemed a little reserved once again, despite the fact that the celebration was kept intentionally small, with just four children total. She did have fun playing on the playground, though, and enjoyed seeing the big trains fly by, but was not so fond of how loud they were. Shelly made an incredibly cute train cake, and each child got to pick the train car they wished to eat. Elsa chose the caboose... but then ate very little of it. (She did surprise me earlier, however, by eating a decent portion of pesto pasta and roasted chicken.) My two favorite parts of the party were probably when sweet, little Christian was opening his presents and voiced his concern over where Finnan's presents were, and then when Christian and Elsa were giggling their heads off, spinning around (with the help of the mommies) on some little spinny seats they have in the park. Those little giggles are just priceless. Elsa has been talking about the party and carrying around the red balloon she was given ever since.