Some Spring Time Stuff

It's been too long since I blogged...and this is a super busy season for me...but if April ends and I haven't blogged again it may well never happen...and that would be bad. So here goes...

During spring break we had such beautiful weather almost the entire week! One evening we walked to Edaleen (about a 20 minute walk) for ice cream. I figure the walk cancels out the ice cream and the waffle cone both. It was a beautiful night and even though we were missing Bethany (she was with friends or babysitting, probably), it was a great partial family outing. Sarah & Becca & Elise walked hand in hand almost the entire way home and talked and laughed. I loved it.

One afternoon I took Elise to a gymnastics camp in Bellingham. She had been to this location once before when she was probably 3 or 4, so it was fun for her to go again when she was a lot bigger and stronger. She climbed that rope all the way to the top!

If you're my friend on Facebook, you know that Ed took some time off during spring break and we dug out sod and laid down a concrete stone path on both sides of the house. We LOVE how it turned out and we actually had fun doing it, and I don't think Ed was expecting that!

Our good friend is building us some patio furniture out of pallets! This is the couch! We water sealed it and I'm making a cushion for it. One chair has also since arrived and we have one more coming. Love them!

A week after spring break, we added dirt in and around the stones to extend the flower beds and fill in the spaces. I'm hoping to grow some walkable ground cover to create a cottage path look.

I might blog about Sarah's track season yet...though if you're my friend on Facebook, you already know how that's going, too. :) :) :)

Tulips 2016

Now don't go getting used to me blogging every day. Those last four or five posts I did all on one day off and just scheduled them for subsequent days. However, today we did go see the tulips and today I will blog about it!!

It was NOT a beautiful day...but we didn't get wet and there were very few people, which is how I like to see the tulips. We got off the freeway at Highway 20 and headed west and turned south on Best Road. Then left on Young Road, I think. Anyway, it was a field we could see from Highway 20 and we could park for free along the road and we took ALL these pictures there!

The tulips are always so beautiful. I wish we could have seen the daffodils as I love them, too. Some tulips fields aren't ready yet, some have been topped already. We didn't pay for Roozengaarde or Tulip Town, at which I'm sure we would have seen even more beauty...but we were quite pleased with what we saw and how much we tiptoed through the tulips and the pictures we took. These are a variety of iPhone & camera pictures.

These two have had quite the special relationship lately. I think Elise is trying to soak up as much Sarah as she can and I think Sarah is realizing Elise is going to change a lot while she's away at college.

I think this photo would have made Ed's mom and Aunt Joanne smile - the kissing Dutch girl & boy.

Apparently wearing boots gives one permission to *not* be careful near mud puddles...

We drove around in the valley quite a bit and saw cool old barns, a few more tulips, beautiful landscapes, and stopped for ice cream at Snow Goose Produce. Sarah & I have been wanting ice cream from there ever since the Ragnar exchange that took place there in July...but no Ragnar runners wanted ice cream then and I sure wasn't going to be the only one in the van eating ice cream. But today, I was too cold, so only the girls got ice cream. And now, let me leave you with this parting thought of wisdom from our tulip adventure:

Be the yellow tulip in a field of red tulips.

Easter 2016

I'm so glad these two aren't too big for egg hunts yet!

So blessed to be able to see my grandma every Sunday and I know she loves it when the girls visit!

I also love the fact that we can text pictures back & forth across the miles with my family. We miss them so very much.