April Visitors: Part II, Nonna

After Grammy's April spring break visit came Nonna's, and they were considerate to me and booked their flights on the same day: Grammy departed the day Nonna arrived! So Alton and I dropped off one grandmother, headed over to Ikea to stroll around (Alton really enjoyed getting behind his stroller and pushing it through the store) and kill some time, then picked up the other grandmother! Very efficient. And we definitely packed her visit with things to do. The day after her arrival was the "Underwater Eggstravaganza" at our local community pool. I had signed Alton up for the toddler age group, and then the staff throws tons of plastic eggs into the pool and the kids get to collect them from the water. Parents included, of course, and inside the eggs were small plastic toys (tiny jars of bubbles, jumping frogs) and plastic tags that you could redeem in another room for stickers, pencil toppers, or candy. I was on swim duty, Andy took pictures, and Nonna held onto the eggs that we collected, because it had not occurred to me that Alton would need some sort of bucket to collect them in the water. Afterward they had the "Easter Bunny" in the sticker room for you to take pictures, so Alton and I got dressed and posed for the kitsch factor, even though big freaky plush rabbit suits are not really my thing (or Alton's, judging by the confusion on his face).





Okay, fun's over. When Nonna got into town Andy and I had debated about painting the kitchen, and since you've already seen that post, I guess you know we decided to do it. So as soon as we got home from the pool and for all of Nonna's visit, the kitchen was torn apart and cooking anything was a challenge. However, the Sicilian sweatshop prevailed and my mom was able to bake her traditional Sicilian Easter Ring. (The backstory, of course, is that she usually bakes one at her house to have on Easter, and bakes smaller breads to ship to her children who live farther away...except this year she didn't have time to bake one at home ahead of time for the family to eat back in Santa Maria and they really didn't let her forget it. Seriously, KC knows that his mom walks on water, and he had this very chilling Michael Corleone stillness in his face and voice when we talked to him on video chat. The fam gave Nonna exactly 1.5 days off when she arrived back home, then they made her bake bread for them the Sunday following Easter. The picture below is just so that I can rub it a little more in their faces that Oregon had "Easter bread" and they didn't. Mmmm.)

Then two days after Easter was Alton's Easter Photo Shoot, and we all know how adorable that was! Nonna was prop mistress, holding the basket or camera case or eggs as needed, and good-naturedly freezing her butt off and dodging rain drops. Despite the grey skies that I had to try not to get in the shots, it was actually a great day for these pictures because the light was bright and the flowers were in bloom. Less than a week later these fluffy white trees were almost bare!


That was also the day of Alton's re-discovery of yogurt (he had some before, but it didn't agree with his stomach at that age). Mom was eating some and he was so interested and intrigued by the taste that we stripped him to the waist, put him in his high chair and he scarfed it up!

After a day of tax-free shopping at the mall, we had a visitor come to our house! Alton and *B had so much fun playing together and during our afternoon of sun we went to the park: toddlers, Daddy, Nonna, Mama, dog, wagon, blankies. Aaaaand...scene!









We had a great visit with Nonna and her week of spring break was over much too quickly. Both she and Grammy were very kind to each babysit Alton for a little while during their trips so that Mama could attend dr's appointments, volunteer at a local consignment sale, go grocery shopping, etc. We were really glad to have them here, show off all the work that we'd done to our house since they'd last seen it and get some more work done, and have fun, fun, fun with Alton! He says that now that he's walking, they had better go into training before his next visit if they want to keep up.