Check Your Caulk First.

I went to re-caulk around our kitchen sink and counter, and found some left-over caulk from 2 years ago... and it was still soft! So of course I do the job and feel good about myself. Well, two days later I was surprised to find it was still soft. So after some research I learned that caulk can not only dry out, but can lose its solidifying properties. I really enjoyed removing all this hard work to do it all again with new caulk. So check your caulk first!

Snowed In... Again

After a big melt-off last week, I thought (just for a moment) perhaps we were past the huge snow-storm stages of winter. Well, so much for daydreaming about spring. That's okay, I was starting to miss the shoveling.

The view off our front porch.

Kalahari!

Last weekend we spent a night at the Kalahari water park- our kids absolutely love this place. We actually surprised Nate when we picked him up early from school on Friday to go, so of course he was ecstatic. This place has so much to do, there's no way you could do it all in one visit. So we spent most of our time in the water park, then picked a couple of other things.

Mother and daughter... and elephant.

We love Chocolate Shoppe ice cream!

I'm not sure what draws children to sit on something that bounces around for one minute, but something about Pumba appealed to Elin, so...

At night we snuggled up and watched James and the Giant Peach.

The giant wave pool was fun and incredibly warm. I was surprised, with all the 4-story waterslides, that Nate wanted to spend most of his time in the pool. I was itching to keep going on the slides, but alas...

Nate did this like 10 times... I had to drag him away eventually.

It's hard to get good pics of the kids on waterslides. In fact, it's hard to get any good pics in a water park- it's just not the ideal place to carry a camera around.

"Cheeeeeeese!"

Nate has always been a climber, but this was his first real rock-wall experience. He liked it, but it did give him some challenges he didn't expect.

I love watching the kids try to throw a heavy ball down the lane... they become very innovative thinking of different ways to do this.

"Hmmm, I thing my next play will be..."

"Okay, Elin, it's not looking so good..."

All in all a great short-and-sweet trip... I'm sure we'll be going back again.

Enough said.

Countries Around the World

For the last four months Nathaniel has been working on a "Countries Around the World." The continent of choice this year was Asia and Nate picked Pakistan. We learned all sorts of things in the past few months. Here are some shots of the culminating evening.

Nate's Pakistan station.

The Lego men were a hit climbing K2.

Nate giving his presentation.

Nate's friend.

The entire gym was full of 60 different country stations.

One student folded origami stars to hand out. Elin loved them. My hands hurt thinking of all the folding he did.

Elin getting her passport "stamped."

Look at all the stamps!

We came in not long after we put Nate to bed and this is what we found! I think it was a good, but long day.

Recent Nate Projects

Nate has been keeping busy with some building projects that he got for Christmas, and here are some of the results...

He has a lego kit with a small motor, and instructions to build all sorts of different things. This is the one he chose first... a working crane that has managed to lift all sorts of things around the house. But he thinks he needs a stronger motor.

He has also been doing some excavating... here he is with T. Rex and Triceratops skulls that he had to excavate out of "rock". He has a blast with this kind of thing, and is pretty sure he's going to be a paleontologist when he grows up.

He and I also put together this robot which has a working motor and actually walks. This was a little tougher and required some more parental help. He then decided to paint it some cool colors.

Our cats don't like this project quite so much.

Family Christmas- Part II

And finally some pics from our visit up at Mimi's cabin. We were only able to visit for a few days, but it's always fun to stay at the cabin even for a short time. We did a night of Christmas gifts, games, playing out on the lake, hiking, and just hanging out. Good times!

Grandpa Zan reading a card with Elin.

Nate was SO excited about the Wii Star Wars, and he's done a pretty good job with it since.

Mark was in from Idaho- great to see you Mark!

And Mary was up from Purdue- great to see you, too!

April with some cool new pottery.

Elin turns into a sort of crazy goofball when she gets excited around family (Nate, too, for that matter), so here's some of her goofiness...

Aunt Mishay and Aunt Mary became very popular with Elin... all she wanted to do was hang out with them and sit in their laps.

I was very impressed with the kids... they survived a 1.5 mile hike through the forest. Great job kiddos!

There were a few snowball fights along the way...

and toward the end when legs were getting tired, they resorted to rolling down the hills. Hey, whatever works! Afterwards it was hot pizza and hot chocolate for lunch.

Zan put some deer feed on the driveway, and one morning we found 11 deer chowing down.

Aunt Mary and Mishay were big helpers decorating princess crowns with Elin...

And here are the princesses!