Surprise!

The other day when the snow starting coming down I was a bit hacked off as many of my bulbs had just started blooming. If figured I better take pictures of them now. This is what I saw.

Yesterday it was all snowy white. I figured my blooms were probably dead or dying under that white coating. But today I walked out and found an awesome surprise! We may see spring after all.

Seriously???

Really, I understand that we live in a wintery climate and all, but this is getting to be a bit ridiculous.

Oh-well, I guess if you're going to have snow, you might as well have fun in it! We all had a snowball fight before school.

Spring! Spring! Where art thou???

Elin Speaks

The easy exit to get to our house is currently closed. We have to take the back way to and from all sorts of places. Elin still hasn't quite gotten used to this. She asks from the back seat - are we close to home, where are we. You get the pictures. So yesterday after several of these questions she pipes up. "Oh I know where we are, we are almost to our red riding hood." The car is silent for a second. Nate looks over at her and says - "Elin, I think you mean neighborhood."

Hiking at Starved Rock

There is a beautiful hidden gem in central northern Illinois called Starved Rock, if you ever get the chance to visit I would highly recommend it. On our "road trip" we stopped by a nearby waterpark for the kiddos, then went hiking the next day at Starved Rock. This conserved land seems to have been missed by the glaciers that flattened the rest of the midwest, so it's full of cliffs, small canyons and waterfalls. While the kids have been hiking on flat trails before, they really liked the variety of the land and playing in the canyons.

Nate and Elin on the boardwalk on top of the huge "Starved Rock" that once held a militia fort.

Nate found this stump as a perfect place to "pose" as a statue... he thought he was pretty tricky.

"rollin' rollin' rollin'..."

Elin mystified by a creek.

Nate thought it would be cool to do balancing acts by the cliff edges... his Mother almost lost it a few times.

This is one of the canyons with a small waterfall (not much water right now).

Nate, of course, got a kick out of climbing all the big rocks.

Elin wanted to climb like her big bro, but just wasn't quite big enough to do it on her own.

If you squint hard enough, you can see me in the dark crevice of the canyon.

Our gang did a great job hiking, and actually wanted to do more if we had the time. Oh-well, more next time!

On our way to the city, we stopped by the kid's Great-Grandpa Sikich's home to say Hi. Our kids don't get to see him much, so we try to take any chance we can get. We showed them his WWII medals and went through some fun old pictures, and of course the kids had to play on his exercise equipment (he's 95 yrs old and still exercising!).

Great visit- thanks Grandpa!

Nauvoo/Carthage

Here are a few more pics of our Nauvoo/Carthage trip. The Nauvoo Temple is beautiful, and April tried to capture some shots when we happened to be there at dusk. We all had a nice stroll around the Temple, which also brought up some good conversations about the Temple with the kids.

Our next visit was to Carthage jail, where Joseph and Hyrum Smith were kept behind bars and eventually killed. Unfortunately, we didn't get to go inside the jail because the floors were being repainted. But we did get to walk around the outside and went in the visitor's center. At least it was a nice day!

Nate and Elin with Joseph and Hyrum.

The jail itself.

Trip to Nauvoo

Here are some pics from Nauvoo, IL. The kids liked this trip even more than I thought they would, which was a nice surprise. Nate's favorite places, I think, were the blacksmith and gunsmith shops (no surprise). April really liked the printing office (again, no surprise), and if I had to pick a favorite it would probably be visiting the insides of the rebuilt homes and learning of all the practical ways the Saints lived... there is so much that I take for granted and never think about.

Nate posing under a replica of the Christus statue at the visitor's center.

Elin on a lamb at the Family Living Center... very cool place where we learned how they made candles, bread, rope, fabric, and some other things.

This rope-making machine is incredibly simple... just turn the wheels!

Nate and Elin participating in the rope-making process, and they even got to keep some rope!

Here we learned how to heat and shape metal... the kids got to keep the mini horse shoe that the nice man made (and oh so excited about it!)

Outside Brigham Young's (rebuilt) home.

The gunsmith shop... where we learned how they made the barrels among other things.

The printing shop was really cool. Here you can see where they kept the capital letters (in the "upper case") and the small letters (in the "lower case").

Here's the actual press... Nate loved all the gears and especially getting to work it.

You can see how tedious a process it must have been to get all the metal letters in the right spots to print. Note the "p" and "q" standing up on the table, and imagine how easy it would be to get these mixed up or replaced in the wrong letter bin... you'd better "mind your p's and q's".

We went to the local culture hall to see these missionaries in their small musical "Rendevous in Nauvoo". It was great, and the kids actually loved it. Note Nate's head at the bottom.

The beautiful Nauvoo Temple at night... my little point-and-shoot didn't do it justice.

Spring Break???

So after another big melt-off last week, and only big piles of snow remained, here we are again on our spring break... just how we wanted to spend it! It was an icy storm- sleet and hail- so here's Elin helping me put out some salt for the walk/driveway.

I'm sure someone is enjoying springtime somewhere.

Father Night

Elin and I spent an hour together at her school with other Dads and kids. We worked on some projects together, like this color-mixing lesson. Elin was so excited to get this cowgirl hat... one of her favorite characters is Jessie from Toy Story III, and she kept yelling "yahoo! yahoo!"

Mr. Mom weekend

Since April has been out of town this weekend, it's just been us 3 kids to fend for ourselves. On Saturday we went to a birthday party for one of Elin's friends at a children's museum, so of course I took advantage of the time out and we spent the afternoon there.

Elin and friends dressing up in way-too-big dresses and fancy hats. Elin liked it for about 10 seconds.

Impressive cake!

Now in her crown and magic wand... she liked this much better.

The birthday gang.

Elin could spend hours in the water room.

Nate working hard on his artistic masterpiece.

Elin and Nate in the tree house... where were these places when I was a kid?

Nate up in the tree house look-out.

And the star of the show is...!!!!