Strand-Lafferty Easter take 7

There are few things that can elicit the same degree of excitement in our household as talk of the annual visit from Penny for Easter. This is now the 7th(?) annual visit. It started kind of on a whim from the Strands, and it has turned into an annual event that simply cannot not happen. It is written in stone. Commandment Number 11, if you will.

Now, if anyone ever doubted that Molly was an emotional girl, which you seriously shouldn't, the visit from Penny will eliminate any of those doubts. I swear, she turns into a screaming fan girl at a One Direction concert at the thought of Penny coming to town. (Or, what her mother would've been like had she ever been taken to a NKOTB concert. Which, I wasn't. I just had to imagine what it would've been like. No bitterness here, though, folks. I did make my childhood dreams come true a few years ago when I saw NKOTB at the Sprint Center as a 30-odd-year-old woman. And, it was every bit as amazing as I thought it would be. Step by Step, ooh, baby ... But, I digress.)

Molly starts looking forward to Easter on the day after Easter the previous year. Well, OK, after she stops crying about the fact that Penny is no longer here. But, it starts getting serious after Christmas. I can't really blame her. The months between Christmas and Easter do kind of suck. What with the snow and long, dark nights. Not fun. The countdown is on immediately after we pack the stockings away. And, it doesn't stop.

I realize the excitement is almost more for the idea of Penny (not that Penny isn't awesome). But it's just the idea of this amazing, fun-filled, candy-laden weekend that really excites Molly. This year, she made decorations, cards, bunnies, crafts, and even picked up poop in the backyard so she could earn money to buy all three girls matching stuffed peeps. This build-up has been going on for a long time. Molly has been trying to count the number of times in her life that she's seen Penny. When I tried to explain to her that she's already seen Penny more times in her life than I saw Laura for the entirety of my childhood, she just didn't care. No matter how often, it's just not enough.

(Have you noticed I haven't mentioned Charlotte at all? She loves the annual Strand visit as well, but her emotions are much more rational and even-keeled. Thus, not as interesting for a blog.)

So, with all this build-up and all this excitement, the weekend was finally upon us. The Strands were supposed to leave Minnesota at 3 on Thursday and be here by around 10 Thursday night. Well, on Wednesday night, Laura sends me a message that they are expecting 14 inches of snow on Thursday morning up there. WHAT?!?!? Mother Nature, what are you doing to me? How can I possibly explain to Molly that the Easter visit might not happen due to a snowstorm in Minnesota?!?! So, I did what I'm always eager to do. Ignore that a problem exists and hope everything turned out ok. And guess what? For once in my life, that plan actually worked!

The snow stopped, the plows came, the sun shone, and the Strands were on the road. It was glorious news. Not the least for me because I didn't have to deal with a broken-hearted 8-year-old. They got here late, and Molly and Charlotte both woke up when Penny came to bed. It did take a while, but eventually they all went back to sleep.

The next morning was another tradition. Laura coming to Bar Method with me. She's coming with me the last couple years. The first year was hard, but now Laura is in amazing shape, so she was a total pro.

We, of course, had to take a picture to document the start of the weekend.

We always look for different things to do with the Strands when they're here because they are super cool, adventurous folk. And, we want to seem cooler than the suburb-living, soccer-game going folks that we are. So, this year, we decided to take them down to the KC Public Library to see the awesome building that looks like books. And, of course, to take pictures.

The girls were not as impressed with the library as I had hoped. The roof was pretty cool because they could see out around downtown KC a bit, but we didn't actually have a library card for the library, so we couldn't check out any books. They thought the old bank vault in the basement was pretty cool, but we were pretty much done with the library in a short time. We walked a short distance to a cool lunch place, then found a bakery that a friend had recommended for dessert. We got there right as they were closing, but they let us in to buy some yumminess. We then went back to the library steps to eat our delicious treats.

The girls checking out the books.

We had to pose on the book steps.

Laura and Amy on the roof of the library.

The girls in the basement with the old bank vault.

We stopped by a bakery for dessert treats, and they gave us some baguettes. So, when Laura found a moped, she just had to act the proper French lady she is at heart.

The girls eating their treats back on the library book stairs.

I, of course, just had to get a brownie with a peep on top. I only ate about half the brownie, but demolished the whole peep.

After fun downtown, we headed back out our direction and bowled a few frames at Pinstripes. We discovered that, at Pinstripes, even adults can have bumpers. Do you know what that means? I finally won a game of bowling! Score. After, Charlotte needed to take a picture on some bunnies.

Omaha? Don't mind if I do.

For my entire childhood, I lived at least a half a country away from my cousins. While I grew up in North Carolina, my three cousins were growing up in Arizona. When they moved to Virginia, we moved to Kansas. Never in the same vicinity  Never anywhere close. We saw each other maybe every couple of years.

We got along great when we saw each other, but it was pretty infrequent. Laura, Jennifer and I wrote letters to each other in the typical 5th grade girl fashion, but without things like computers and Facebook, it made it hard to stay connected.

When Laura moved to Minnesota several years ago, I could hardly believe it. We were going to be so close. Only a couple states away, and only an 8-hour drive! Plus, our girls are so close in age. In fact, the difference in ages between Molly and Penelope and Charlotte is incredibly similar to what it was between me and Laura and Jennifer growing up. It's like the three of us cousins reincarnated.

All this background to say, I'm so excited that my girls get to have a close relationship with Penelope, and I get to see Laura a lot more. We have the annual Easter visits and other visits back and forth. And, for a while now, we've been talking about the idea of meeting somewhere in the middle for a weekend trip. But, nothing really came of it. Until ...

About a month or so ago, I emailed Laura and said, "Are you still interested in doing an Omaha trip? Let's do it in October." And, despite having just returned from a road trip, she agreed.

Omaha is about a 3-hour drive for us and about a 5-hour drive for them. And, Omaha has a great zoo. That was pretty much the extent of our planning. It was a very low-key, fly by the seat of our pants trip. And, in spite of that, we had a fabulous time.

We couldn't leave until Saturday morning because we'd already committed to going on a hay ride on Friday night (blog post on that later, don't you worry!). So, we roused the girls out of bed at oh-dark-30 and hopped on the highway to Omaha. We got there before 9am, so we still had the whole day ahead of us.

We met Laura, Chris and Penny at the hotel and carpooled to the zoo. All the weather forecasts showed rain all day long. We'd been worried about this, so we packed rain coats and rain boots and were assured there was lots of stuff indoors at the zoo. Turns out, all that worry was for nothing. It ended up being a gorgeous day. A little overcast but a perfect fall day for the zoo. I was, in fact, overdressed.

The first thing we did upon arrival at the zoo. Pictures on the lions.

Checking out the orangutans. I could've watched them all day, but the girls  only watched for approximately 30 seconds and were done.

Seriously, how cute is this?

Molly watching the tiger. Geesh, I'm glad there is a giant metal cage between them. 

It's an Instagram-ish Easter!

I apologize in advance. Picasa has now added a ton of Instagram-like picture editing features. So ... I had way too much fun with the pictures from Easter this year. I promise, I will calm down with the editing in the future, but for now, you will have to suffer through my "creative" pictures.


Easter has many meanings for different people. The Easter Bunny. Jesus. Candy. Church. Egg Hunts.

Say what you will about the commercialization of holidays, in our house, it's more like the familiazation. You see, in our house, the prevailing theme of Easter is "Cousin Penelope Coming to Town!"

For the past five years, the Strand family has made the trek down from Minnesota to Kansas to spend Easter weekend with us. Laura is my cousin, and her daughter Penelope is aged exactly between Molly and Charlotte.  Molly and Charlotte have no first cousins, so I am thrilled they have a second cousin (a girl cousin, no less!) who is so close in age to keep the familial connection alive.

Laura, Chris and Penelope drove down on Thursday night, so Friday morning my girls got to wake up to the excitement of Penelope being in their house. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the school year, I had signed up to help at Molly's preschool Easter party. And, it turned out to be Friday morning. So, Molly and I said hello to Penelope then trotted off to preschool. (The party was a success, fyi, even if my genius Pinterest treat idea had been stolen the day before by Jenna's mom for her birthday treat!)

Friday afternoon the girls played and sort of took naps. Then, Laura and I bolted for a kid-free, mom's night out to have drinks and watch The Hunger Games. I'm not sure what Laura liked more, the kid-free aspect, the movie, or the leather reclining seats and wait-staff food service during the movie. We might be able to convince her to come down more often just to go to the theater and see a movie!

Saturday morning, we signed up to run in a local 5K Easter Egg Run. It was our friend Chris's first 5K, so we wanted to cheer him on, too. (A different Chris than Laura's husband, though.) Now, keep in mind that it has been in the 70s and 80s for the past month. I have been running in shorts and tank tops. Then, Saturday morning rolls around with a chance of rain and a gloomy 50 degrees. Not exactly fun "fun run" weather, but Molly was super excited about doing the kids' "Lil' Bunny Fun Run," so we all piled in the cars and drove to the race.

Walking the 5K.

Second cousins equal twice the fun

Molly is what I would describe as calendar-obsessed. Perhaps she's learning from my weather obsession. Who knows? Anyway, the following is an example of an all too common conversation in our house as of late:

• Molly: What are we doing after night-night?
• Me: Preschool
• Molly: And after another night-night?
• Me: Dance class
• Molly: And after another night-night?
• Me: Grocery shopping
• Molly: And after another night-night?
• Me: Going to Gigi and Papa's house

As you can see, this can go on for a really long time. A really, really long time. A really, really, really, really long time. We've gone for more than a month forward in time before. She doesn't seem to ever get bored of this line of questioning. The one thing that can terminate it has been reaching Easter. That has been the great end game. Molly has been so excited for Easter because her cousin (well, technically second cousin - her mom, Laura, is my cousin) Penelope was coming to visit. And, this weekend, the pinnacle finally arrived. Cousin Penelope had hit the town!

Penny