Hello from Minnesota!

Abbie's at kindergarten, the boys are napping (as well as Erin) and I find myself with a moment to do a little bloggin'. Mike took dental board exams this past week-end, using Erin as one of his patients, so I came out to nanny while they did dental stuff. I arrived on Thursday afternoon and we were packed and on our way to Iowa the next morning at 7:00 am. Noah is still a nursing baby so we needed to stay fairly close by while momma was having her mouth worked on. It's about a five hour drive from Minneapolis to Iowa City but with morning traffic and various stops along the way we got there around 1:30 in the afternoon. We dropped Mike off to the university to get a few preliminaries out of the way and we found the Fairfield Inn and got checked in and hauled an amazing amount of stuff (two days+three kids = about five hundred pounds of stuff) into the room. For the next couple of days, Mike and Erin went back and forth to the testing center (Erin had the afternoons off while Mike did endo, perio and what ever else-o). We took the kids swimming in the motel swimming pool (I was thinking I could do this without getting my hair wet . . . whatever), we spent an afternoon at the children's museum (so much fun), we ate lots of peanut butter and jelly and honey sanwiches, we ate out at a sports grill and watched some NCAA men's b-ball tournament games and we did a little trash talking about our various brackets. Speaking of which . . . if any of my family has NOT checked our group bracket standings recently please do so because I'm kicking your butts! Well, actually I'm tied for first place with Laura and Rachel but we're kicking all the guys' butts!

Mike and Noah watching an NCAA basketball tournament game at the motel. Really . . . Noah was watching it. He's his father's son.

Passing time at the Fairfield. It's not easy to get them all in one place at one time. I could get any number of photos of Abbie and the baby but Landon is not partial to photo shoots. It requires that he stay still for five seconds!

The next few photos are at the children's museum. Abbie is demonstrating possible future careers . . . professional rock climber, dentist/hygenist, pediatric nurse/doctor.

Landon showing off his puppeteering skills. He was actually really funny to watch. I wish I had his performance on video.

Abbie, Erin and I built this big arch out of these huge interlocking soft blocks. It took us about ten minutes. Landon knocked it down in about five seconds.

At the hotel swimming pool. These kids are true water babies. Good thing. They'll be coming to Lake Powell with us this year for the first time ever. The baby loved the water and splashed up a storm. My sinuses will never be the same.

Mike and Erin were gracious enough, on the way home from Iowa, to make a stop at the Vinton, Iowa cemetery to see if we could locate my Great Grandma Ida Emma Rosenburg Kunz's gravesite. This would be my mother's mother's mother. My grandmother Laura Byrd Kunz was raised in this little town. Main street was very quaint and I couldn't resist getting a shot of the sotrefront of The Vinton Eagle, the town's little independent newspaper. We didn't actually find great grandma's grave but we did find the gravesites of one of her sons and his wife and one of her grandson's and his wife. Abbie and Landon had a great time walking through the cemetery although Landon was saying " What's going on . . . where's the slide?" He just didn't have a frame of reference for what we were doing! Abbie loved looking at all the old headstones and she decided that we had to visit another cemetery and take paper and crayons to do headstone rubbings.
I'm talking to my mom on the phone and telling her where I am and what I'm doing. She couldn't remember exactly how to find my great-grandparents old home in Vinton or I would have taken a photo or two. Such a cute family. Noah was asleep in the van. Home again, home again . . . jiggedy, jig. We had fun but it was definitely a LONG week-end! I got the biggest kick out of this foam chair that they have for Noah. It just kind of forms around his little body and he just sits there kicking his feet! He had his red monkey and his thumb to keep him company here!

Moving back in time to other important March events . . . .

Scott's twenty-sixth birthday. He was very excited about his new socks (no, he really was excited to get new socks). He's a sock kind of guy. Scott's request for a birthday cake was a Funfetti cake with Funfetti frosting and two kinds of Baskin Robbins ice cream . . . Nutty Coconut AND Peanut Butter Chocolate. He thought this whole thing very carefully to have the cake and ice cream of his dreams. What a guy! After birthday dinner we went outside and played a game of bacci (kind of an Italian lawn bowling game). My parents got us onto this several years ago and it's one of my kids favorite games. One of the definite signs of spring around our place is to see the bacci and badminton games come out of winter storage. A birthday toast to Scott with designer root beer. Another important March tradition . . . corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day. Brent got bunches of great pictures on his Binford 2000 camera (which I don't have access to right now) but I'll post a few when I go back to Utah. This year we were joined by Grandma and Grandpa Hale (regulars at our St. Pat's feast) and Rachel's mom Reva, her sisters Sally and Molly and Molly's boyfriend Creighton. It was jolly good company and a fun evening!

A parting shot of some more sure signs of spring in my front garden.

Crocuses . . . you gotta love 'em!

Now . . . just a word about the whole comment thing. I don't need long, lavish comments or even comments about how absolutely adorable my grandchildren are (I mean that's just so obvious). I just would like to know if you were here. Something like . . . "I was here". Okay. Is anyone reading this stuff? Hello . . . is anyone out there?