Easter Sunday, sleeping in for the Barba-Benson household was out of the question. Noah was up first thing and Rafael and Olivia woke up to him jumping on their bed.
"Mama... Papi..." the boy said softly when he heard Rafael grumble something groggily. "The Easter Bunny came!"
Olivia sat up in bed, but it took him a minute to accept there was no way Noah was going to let him go back to bed. Not that he was surprised either though.
Rafael yawned. "The Easter Bunny came?" Perks of picking up things all year and stashing them in a closet so their son didn't find them.
"Uh-huh!" Noah said enthusiastically. "There's a bunch of chocolate on the couch and a blue bunny stuffy!"
"That's great, Sweetie!" Olivia said, managing to sound more awake than Rafael was able to pull off at the moment. "Why don't you go get dressed? And then you can see if he hid any eggs while your dad and I get ready."
"Okay, Mama!" the boy chimed, immediately running from the room.
Once he left the room, Olivia leaned over and kissed his head. "Rise and shine, sleepyhead." She pulled the covers back, getting out of bed. "I'll go throw on some coffee for you."
"You have no idea how good coffee sounds right about now," he said as he forced himself to get out of the warm bed.
She chuckled. "I have some idea."
Once everyone was up and dressed, Noah did a little Easter egg hunt around the house and Rafael made pancakes and bacon for breakfast.
After that, it was late enough that they called a few friends and family and talked to them for a bit. It felt a little weird not going to Mass at all for Holy Week on Rafael's end, but it was what it was.
After they talked with her, they started lounging around the house. Olivia and Rafael were reading something or other and playing with Sofía while Noah played with his lego and watched some TV.
Eventually, they found out that the kitchen sink wasn't draining, so Rafael set to work on fixing that. Or trying to, anyway. He made it worse because afterwards, they had another issue as the faucet started dripping.
So, he googled how to repair it and threw on one of the sketches of a well known Cuban comedian that he more or less grew up listening to with his abuelo for some background noise while he was messing around with the plumbing.
He'd thrown on one of his favourite jokes. It was an extremely entertaining one about a Cuban who went Pennsylvania because they were tired of Miami and had a trying time once they got there. The weather, naturally, being a huge issue. It was told like a series of diary entries. The story was almost over when Olivia heard him laughing rather hard and came to see just what was going on.
She just stopped at the door and listened. The youtube video with the audio was still playing off of his phone: 'Me mudé para Miami. ¡Esto sí que es vida, coño! ¡Calor, humedad, ciclones, café cubano…! ¡Para vivir en el Pensilvania de mierda ese hay que estar loco!' (I moved to Miami. This is life, damn it! Heat, humidity, cyclones, Cuban coffee...! To live in shitty Pennsylvania you have to be crazy!)
"Álvarez Guedes?" she asked, although it was more of a statement.
The man was a foul-mouthed comedian who seemed to thrive on telling rather politically incorrect jokes.
He was the first mainstream Cuban comic to incorporate profanity into his act and his jokes were structured like short stories. They often tied in the challenges associated with being in between two cultures and two languages. The Cuban exile would often switch between Spanish and English in mid joke.
He nodded, giving her a goofy smile. He was a bit surprised she remembered the name actually, as she'd only listened to the Cuban comedian once as far as he knew. "Good memory." He adopted a way more serious expression, although it took a lot of effort not to crack up. "¡Me voy pa' Miami, coño!" (I'm going to Miami, damn it!)
She shook her head in amusement. "¡No sin mí, no lo eres!" He stuck his tongue out a bit childishly which just made her shake her head more. "You almost done in here or do you want to try and call a plumber?" (Not without me, you aren't!)
He waved the concern off. "I almost got it figured out." There was absolutely no point in paying someone for what he could do himself easily enough.
"Okay," she said with a light chuckle. "I'll leave you to it then."
The door closed behind her a moment later and Rafael went back to messing around with the plumbing, which, thankfully, didn't take too much longer to sort out.
He washed up, changed his shirt that had gotten soaked, and then found that Olivia almost had lunch ready.
He gave her a quick kiss. "Lunch smells good, Cariño."
She smiled, giving him another quick kiss before she spoke. "Chicken noodle soup, baked zucchini, and grilled cheese sandwiches."
He grinned. "Sounds perfect."
Rafael grunted as Noah chose then to come flying into the room, running into him. Noah looked up at him sheepishly. "Sorry."
He shook his head in fond exasperation. "Maybe we could try walking rather than running everywhere helter-skelter as you're wont to do?"
"I second your dad's suggestion," Olivia said as she ruffled the boy's hair. "You'd definitely have fewer accidents."
Noah just rolled his eyes. "I only wanted to tell you that I finished setting the table."
Rafael smiled down at the boy. "It's appreciated, but maybe we could be just a little calmer about it next time?"
The seven-year-old nodded, the sheepish smile still on his face. "Okay, Papi. Sorry."
"It's fine, Kiddo!" he assured the boy. "Just be more careful in the future."
Lunch passed without much fanfare and then they played a board game and went outside for a bit, passing the ball around.
Eventually, Rafael did some light disinfecting and his mother popped in to join them for dinner. They put some music on and just enjoyed each other's company. Things were rather stressful right now, and they needed the time to just focus on them. As a family. No work or the rest of everything else that was going on interfering.
