Easter gifts

Some lovely Easter gifts this week.

Grandma Lee and Grandma Joanne sent a delightful Easter box.

Smelling the Mendocino smoked sea salt.

Uncle Mike designed and constructed an improvement on commercially available "learning towers," a major improvement over the step stool.  Ava loves it, although she hasn't figured out yet how to climb into it herself.  She will, though.

Once in it, though, she exercised her latest hobbies of wiping things down and cooking.

Cleaning:

Helping chop cabbage:

 She had a blast at Summer's birthday party:

 Sharing water with Rhino:

 Backwards coat:

 Smiles:

Away!:

Diapering her toys has become an important prelude to becoming re-diapered herself:

"Hop!" is a new favorite word and activity:

Affection for the toys:

We went to see early spring blossoms at the National Arboretum on Sunday.  There was an awesome wooden xylophone there (that she played after obviously eating some awesome greens):

There was also lots of smelling of flowers:

And hiking:

And an awesome little chair cut out of a log:

Cranberry:

Neighbors' toys = novel fun objects

Thoroughly exploring the stroller:

A preview of the teenager to come?  It's cute now....

Pear, concentration:

Snacking on dill in the garden that over-wintered well under Daddy's plastic greenhouse-like row covers:

Helping Daddy with the salad:

Feeding Daddy is big fun:

Peanut butter:

Transferring X from A to B is a big deal these days:

We went to Becky and Leone's beautiful wedding in northern Vermont over the weekend.  Ava had fun with Tina and made friends on the train coming and going:

Ladybugs have taken up winter residence in the cabin where we stayed.  Fortunately, Ava loves ladybugs:

Ava helped Becky with the decorations.  This was supposed to only involve transferring rocks from bags to jars.  Ava extended this to involve several transfer steps of rocks to jars to jars to jars to table to jars.....  

Ava and Mommy visited the University of Vermont maple research field station, where Mommy did some research for her next blog post on maple.  Ava only wanted to play in the snow for a little bit.  

Ava was a frugivore at the rehearsal dinner:

Ava was pleased to make the acquaintance of babies at the reception.  Babies are very interesting to her now:

Not afraid of being alone on the dance floor:

More peanut butter on the train ride home (and a flower lei from the reception):