The Rest of April

April has been a very busy month, and unfortunately May will be even busier.  While I have a quick moment, due to the rain, I better post some of our April activities.

So…what happened first?

Oh yeah!  We went to my parents' over Easter to celebrate my dad’s parents’ 90th birthdays and anniversary.  The girls did an Easter egg hunt at the youth center and at grandpa and grandma’s house.  All of my siblings were back at one time or another throughout the weekend.  Here are some of the pictures:

Aunt T pushing Bentley on the swing.

Easter puppets from Aunt T and Uncle C.

Since we’ve been home, the girls have put on several puppet shows for me.  They kneel behind the couch and hold their puppets up over the top.  Bria makes up the story as they go.

The next weekend, we worked on some yard projects such as tilling up a garden spot between the shop and our fence.  It is just the size I want, small.  The grass back there didn’t grow very well, but we are hoping that the manure we added will provide enough nutrients for the vegetables.

You can also see our new sandbox in the background.  David built that earlier in the day.  We still need to paint it and fill it with sand, so for now it is sitting in the shop.

Prom was last weekend.  David and I volunteered to chaperone the after-prom party (from midnight to 4 am).  That requires some help with the girls.  David’s parents were available, so they came and stayed with the girls allowing us to sleep-in the morning after.  Prom is on Friday here, so we had a couple of days to recover even though David’s parents left on Saturday after lunch.

The girls learned how to make towel animals (like they do on cruises) from grandma.  She had taken a class on the last cruise they were on and had a book with all the instructions.

Here are the elephant and gorilla (minus his sunglasses) that were left for us one evening while we were at bible study.

This weekend, David was supposed to help one of our friends work his calves, but the rain caused them to postpone it.  We took a trip to the “city” to get groceries and run some other errands.  My youngest sister is also coming this evening because she is having a jewelry party here.  We are looking forward to having her here the whole weekend.  The girls can’t stop asking when she will get here.

These activities are only the main events of the month.  There were plenty of other normal things going on throughout the weeks that kept us running.

We will see if I even have a chance to post any updates in the coming weeks.

Not an April Fool

Today it was 90 degrees (this about the third day it has been that warm this Spring), so David and one of our friends took the jet ski out.  The water is still cold, but the warm air made up for it.

On the 1st of April it really was warm enough to be out in the water.

Things I should have posted a week ago…

Early last week the girls were playing so nicely together.  I was vacuuming and the girls went off to their room.  A few minutes after I walked past their room; I didn’t see them because they were in their closet with the door closed.  Knowing that there wasn’t much they could hurt, I left them to whatever they were doing.  A while later they came downstairs in dresses with their dolls (also in kid size dresses) and strollers.  They were playing store, and the closet in their room was the clothing store.  Bria had changed both her and Bentley’s clothes.  According to Bria, the basement was the grocery store, and when I served lunch that was the restaurant.  What a great imagination.  It was fun watching them play so well together and seeing what was going on in their imaginations.

The girls with their “new” clothes.

Friday was a really warm day.  So warm, we decided we should give the yard a little water, especially since we haven’t had much moisture this winter.  David was watering the yard, which made Bria ask if she could put on her swimsuit and run through the sprinkler.  It was definitely hot enough (upper 80’s), so the girls got their suits on and played in the water, in the middle of March!

Too bad I didn’t get their squeals on the picture as David tried to spray them.

We have had lots of fun the last week.

Warm Days

We have had some really wonderfully warm days this week, we’re talking mid-sixties to mid-seventies.  The forecast for the whole next week looks just as fantastic.  These temperatures are what I love the most.  Yes, I realize this is not ideal for farmers and ranchers, especially when there isn’t any moisture in the forecast.  That doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate and enjoy it.  After all, we can’t change it!

Monday of this week the girls played in the snow piled in the church parking lot and stomped in the water running down the gutter.

They also spent time outside on Tuesday digging in the mud.  They were seriously covered from head to toe.

Today Bria was out swinging while Bentley finishes her nap.  As soon as Bentley wakes up she will join Bria outside.

It is hard for me to believe that for a whole week in the middle of March we will have temperatures close to seventy degrees, if not over.  Crazy!

Tropical Paradise

We are now home from our vacation, which was soooo nice; I will just post a brief update about our activities.

We flew out of Minneapolis the morning of February 22nd and spent the whole day either flying or waiting in airports and arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii at 9:20 pm local time, 1:20 am central time.  Needless to say, we were exhausted and crashed in bed as soon as we got into our room.

When planning our activities, I figured a full day of travel would wear us out, so we didn’t do much our first day.  We mostly explored Waikiki Beach (which is where our hotel was), did a little driving around in the convertible in Honolulu, then went to a luau in the evening at Paradise Cove.

The view from the balcony of our hotel room.

David and I on the beach at the luau.  We learned a lot about ancient Hawaiian culture and cuisine.

The most beautiful sunset we saw was during the luau.

The next day we went to Pearl Harbor and took a city tour.  We learned a lot about the events leading up to and resulting in the attack on December 7, 1941.  We also visited several historic landmarks throughout our tour.

An anchor from the USS Arizona, weighing 10 tons.  It was huge, but in comparison to the ship, it is actually very small.

This is the National Cemetery in Punchbowl Crater (a volcano).

Day three was spent touring the southeastern portion of the island, both along the coast and through the mountain jungle.

One of hundreds of pictures of the ocean.

A view from the mountains at Pali Highway Lookout.

Our fourth day we did some hiking, a helicopter tour of the same area we had toured by bus the previous two days, and a sunset dinner cruise.  In hindsight, we should have done the helicopter tour first.  This day was quite hazy due to smoke from a volcano on another island; our view was still great, but the pictures didn’t turn out quite as well.

Diamond Head from the helicopter.  This was also the volcano crater we hiked that morning, to the tallest peak in the picture.

The ATV tour we took through the most popular movie filming area on the island was the highlight of day number five.  The ranch where everything was filmed encompasses all types of terrain as well as coast line.  We also took a jungle tour on the ranch, then drove the coast to the north shore, and continued our drive through the middle of the island and past the Dole plantation.

A picture of the jungle portion of the ranch.  The picture of the valley where the ATV tour was is on David’s phone and I haven’t had a chance to put them on the computer yet.

The Bonsai Pipeline on the north shore, the most treacherous beach on the island.  The picture doesn’t do justice to the size of the waves.

The sixth day was our final day, we spent time at several different beaches that we had visited throughout the week (I love the ocean) and drove back to the Pali Highway lookout to do some hiking that one of the locals recommended.  After a long day outside, we flew back to the mainland, about 9:40 pm (local time) and arrived back in Minneapolis at 5:00 pm the following day. 

We spent the night in the Cities and slowly made our way home later that afternoon after the weather cleared some.  We ended up staying at David’s parents that night.  Today we made it the rest of the way home.  Vacation is wonderful, but so is home.

Two Weeks Ago

We left our house two weeks ago so David could help a friend in Sioux Falls before we went on vacation.  We also spent a couple of days at David’s parents before heading out.  The girls had a great time at both grandparents, but so far I only have pictures from the first part of their trip.

Our first day at grandpa & grandma’s was spent at a children’s museum (I was there too, it was before we left).  It was so big, they only did a couple of areas; there is still more for them to explore, so they want to go back.  The largest area was the farm to market section.  Kids could pick vegetables, corn, and flowers; milk a cow and put baby pigs up to their mother; then deliver the goods to a conveyor that took them to the grocery store.  Once the items were in the store, they could go shopping at the grocery store.  This area also had items for building houses, climbing in the clouds (2-stories high), a sod house, a teepee, and a hut.  The other room that they spent the most time in had all kinds of water activities.  They could do everything except swim.

My sister also came to visit us for an afternoon at David’s parents before we left.  She doesn’t get to see the girls very often which made it a lot of fun for the kids.

They spent several more days with David’s parents where they played in the snow, visited great-grandmas, and ran various errands.  There were also other activities like dress-up and play dough, but this post is already getting quite lengthy.

After their time there, they went down to my parents where they played in the snow some more, helped serve a special lunch, played at the youth center, built forts, and I’m sure much more.  We don’t have those pictures yet since my mom quickly brought the girls back to us this afternoon.  They had to keep them for an extra day due to the weather here, which made things more complicated (as the weather can tend to do this time of year).

Crazy

David’s parents were here the end of last week to do some babysitting for us while we went out with our friend and her husband for her 30th birthday; then they continued on to the Hills for some skiing.  While they were here, they mentioned that when they came back through they would be willing to take the girls for a couple of days.  David and I will be headed that way soon, and then we'll be leaving from there for our vacation.  I wasn’t sure if that was the best idea since we would be leaving them for 8-9 days during our vacation.  After talking it over with David, and knowing that we would be with them for at least 3 days over the coming weekend, I decided it would work out all right.  Bria really wanted to go with them too. When was the decision made?  After grandpa and grandma stopped on their way through.  Talk about last minute!  That isn’t like me.  This way, I will (hopefully) feel more organized in getting things ready for our vacation.  Now I have a couple of days to straighten up the house, have it stay that way, and get everything packed without being interrupted.