One more trip to Nauvoo

We managed to squeeze in one more trip to Nauvoo and this time we met up with family!  Devin and Ashley were there with Deena and David.  We met across the street from the temple and we took turns taking care of the kids so we could all have a chance to go to the temple.

We got lots of good pioneery pictures:

This fella had a huge hole in the seat of his pants pretty much all day long.  It just seemed to appear as soon as we left the temple.  He didn't really seem to mind, though.

We loved having Nauvoo as our temple and being able to go as often as we did while we've been in Iowa has been a great blessing.  We will miss this place!

Fun Friday

One of our favorite places here in Iowa is our mall.  I know that sounds silly, but it has some cool stuff.  It has the children's museum, a carousel, an ice rink, and a pretty cool kids play area.  We usually only take advantage of the play area because everything else costs money.  But on the last Friday of the month, everything is free!  We've done this a couple times before and wanted to do it one last time.  This time we looked it up and didn't know there was a discount at the ice rink - you only pay for the skate rental!  So we decided to go all out.

 

This time there was a display from a local gymnasium and the kids had fun trying it all out.

Then Addie, Andres and I all got skates to try out the ice.

Neither of them had ever done it and it had been several years for me.  They either clung to the side or to me.  I tried to take turns and try and help them find a little balance, but they were both a little nervous.  I'm sad there isn't a good picture of me trying to skate while holding both of them up.  I found it quite awkward, and I'm sure we looked rather entertaining.  We only managed to go around once, and then Jason let me go around once by myself - it was fun.

Then to the carousel.  I'm pretty sure this is Dexter's first time on one, and he seemed to like it.

Flying kites!

We had some really beautiful days this spring.  We love being able to go outside and run around with our good neighbor friends.  It's even better when Jason is home and has time to play with us too!

I just love all these pictures of these crazy kids - they have so much fun together.  I think in most of these they're trying to catch the kite.  I also love how Hyrum is trying to catch a Buzz Lightyear kite wearing a ridiculously tight costume of the same character.

So much fun!  We are going to miss so many things about our little area in Iowa.  (Mostly the friends).

Ballet Time

These are the pictures from Addie's Ballet Recital this year.  Is she not so cute?  And that class picture is priceless.  So many good friends that we are going to miss!  Their recital was so adorable, but we of course, forgot the camera.  If we ever get to it, we'll add the pictures we took on Jason's iPad.  We did remember this year to get her some flowers after her recital, and she really liked that they were pink.  Oh, and she's a teddy bear if you couldn't tell.

Pella

 

It's a lot of pictures, I know.  Please bear with me.

 

We are procrastinators.  In every way.  Even in doing the things we want to do and have been looking forward to.  Pella is one of those things.  It's a town in Iowa, about an hour and a half away, that has an amazing tulip festival every year.  We have wanted to go every year.  Have we gone?  No.  This year we were going to do it (I mean, it is our last chance probably, right?) and I looked up the dates for the festival and wrote them on the calendar.  And then that also happened to be the only weekend Jason and I could go to Colorado to look for a place to live.  So we missed the festival.

 

But we were not deterred.  We decided to go check it out even if we were a week late.  There weren't really any crowds, so that's a plus.  Although I think that might have been due to the 20+mph winds.  All of the kids had a great time and the flowers were absolutely beautiful.  We took a lot of pictures, but that's a good thing because for some reason we only took 3 in the entire month of April.  Sad.  Anyway, this will make up for it.

We all had to try out the wooden shoes in front of the windmill.

I really don't know what Andres is doing.  It's hard to get a picture of him not looking . . . special.

You know it's windy if it can even catch what little hair this guy has.

Did not look so good that our kids were carrying around flowers, but I promise: they didn't pick them, they were on the ground already!

Andres found this shady spot under a tree and said "This looks like a nice place to take a nap".  So he did (at least pretended to).

Easter 2013

I personally think that any version of hard-boiled eggs is absolutely disgusting.  So, this is the first year that Jason has been able to convince me to color eggs for Easter.  I know it's tradition, but why go to all that trouble if they're not going to be eaten.  Anyway, the kids had a lot of fun making them and even tried them after all was said and done.

 

 

 Just a random picture of Dexter (because there are never enough).  And our little family on Easter morning.  Last one in this house.

Sledding Fun

So, I'm going to be playing a bit of catch-up.  Back at the beginning of March, Jason had some time on the weekend and the kids really wanted to go sledding. With no hill and no sled, Jason came up with a brilliant plan - they built a hill and used the lid of our recycling bin as a sled.  The kids had a great time both building the hill and sledding down it.