Easter Festivities

We loved the beautiful weather for our 3-day weekend! Can't beat 60s-70s and sun.

Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures of our day at the beach on Friday or our day out exploring a North Raleigh park and the Duke Lemur Center on Saturday.  We did make up for it today, on Easter Sunday. We decided to check out a Catholic Mass at Duke Gardens.  Rose made lots of friends with everyone she met, the service was nice, the day was lovely, and the Gardens were beautiful.  Had we been better prepared with a lunch for all of us to enjoy, we would have spent most of the afternoon at the Gardens. It was a little crowded, but all of the flowers were in bloom.  Instead, we enjoyed the service, walked around one section of the Gardens (and took pictures), and made our way back home.

Easter Sunday Catholic Service at Duke Gardens

Our beautiful girl in her Easter dress

Enjoying the music and applauding the church choir

Making friends and loving the small puppy!

Helping to push the stroller through the gardens

Loving the bright colored fish in the pond at Duke Gardens

Three generations of Dias/Clemente/Miller women

Mommy and Daddy are infatuated with our little girl

Getting tired of taking pictures

But she'll smile for the camera one last time

Rose would rather play in the dirt

Since Rose's schedule was thrown off with the trip to Durham at nap time (and cutting it short on the way to the church service), she ended up taking a long afternoon nap (thus delaying our Easter lunch so that it turned into an early Easter dinner.  Her nap gave us a chance to cook a nice dinner of salmon with roasted brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, peppers and onions.  We also enjoyed lounging in the warm sun for most of her nap.  It was a lovely, relaxing afternoon.

Relaxing on Darwin after an eventful morning and before a long afternoon nap
Darwin doesn't seem to mind and actually looks like he might fall asleep too!

A few weeks ago, we also brought Rose to her first Easter egg hunt.  She was too young to participate last year.  I found a hunt that seemed perfect on a Facebook moms site. It focused on small prizes inside the eggs instead of candy, and broke the age groups out into crawlers, young walkers (to age 2), 2-3 year olds, and then a few older age groups.  I had heard horror stories of some of the egg hunts in the area where parents run to grab all the eggs or kids plow over each other. I definitely did not want that.  Though the weather was chilly during the hunt, it was still a pleasant experience for us all.  The weather improved as the morning passed, and we enjoyed some time on the swings and playground after Rose collected her eggs.  I was impressed that she knew exactly what to do. She walked/ran straight for some of the eggs and put them right in her basket.  Her collection included some stickers, erasers, small dinosaurs, and finger puppets.  Check out the video (which was slightly edited/shortened).

Rose's First Easter Egg Hunt

I also tried to capture Rose dancing at the Easter service in Duke Gardens. Unfortunately, every time I went to film her, she would stop dancing.  I did manage to capture her give a big sigh as she climbed the hill to give me a pine cone she found. 

Enjoying Easter Service at Duke Gardens