Rest of April

April is nearly over! Way back at the beginning of the month, our friends were hopeful that we'd have great BBQ weather.  It was a beautiful day, but when we sat down with food, the clouds came out and the wind picked up! Hadley had a shirtful of mustard instantly. We spent most of the night cuddled under blankets around the fire pit, which lent itself to smores. I think these may have been their first (?!), and they LOVED them.

Also before shoulder surgery, Dad was on a business trip, and Mom braved the crowds at Chick-Fil-A for a princess/pirate night, complete with face painting. The kids waited patiently for probably half an hour to get their faces painted! The painter was very talented, and it was a shame that we had to go home and wipe it off before bed.

Hadley's imagination has been flourishing lately. She's been into fairy princesses, tea parties, cooking/delivering food, and is excited for a Barbie birthday party this summer! (Say what? We don't even have anything Barbie yet!)

She even pretended to apply some lipstick from her purse. I guess that's like me and my chapstick?

And she got invited to a tea party birthday, appropriately enough!

When the weather is nice, we do try to get outdoors. Owen has been trying out a little dirt track in the neighborhood, and Hadley has been his faithful tree-climbing companion.

I'm so thankful that these two love each other like they do.  Sure, they have their frustrated moments and fights, but I think they are each other's best friend in the end.

They have really been getting into Star Wars recently (through books only!) and one day, they came upstairs dressed in towel robes as Jedi knights. It was a pretty elaborate play scenario that lasted for a long time, and yes, that is a shark in Owen's robe. :)

Shoulder Season

The month of April has been largely consumed by a shoulder surgery on my part.  It's been rough not being able to use my dominant arm/hand for much, but we did have some help fly in from Texas.  I wasn't able to take many pictures, but I did want to say a big THANK YOU to Granna and Grandad for spending their weeks with us to keep this household running at full speed. Between school drop-offs and pick-ups, meals, and entertainment, the kids loved having visitors!

We were able to make use of a windy day to break out the micro-kites from Oma, and everyone had fun with that. I was so thankful that we had some two-handed adults to teach them the proper technique!

Grandad had to return to Texas after a week, but Granna stayed another 2 weeks to help out. She got in lots of play time with the kids, which included elaborately mapped treasure hunts, buying food and other items from Owen's store, training Max the dog (Owen is really good at not breaking character for a long time when he pretends to be Max, like hanging his head out the car window, sniffing/licking everyone excessively, and chasing on all fours!), and a traveling talent show where Hadley played the harmonica and xylophone simultaneously. A real treat for the audience's ears! I have video, if anyone is interested in that. :)

The spring weather was up and down from day to day, but we did get to take our first trip of the year to the zoo on a sunny day! Hadley was serenading us from the chicken's head and not even registering to stop for a picture. That girl loves to sing!

The zoo has several babies out in the spring, none more cute than the baby lemurs!

We also introduced Granna to Yellowstone Bear World for their "cub-palooza" on her last day here. Besides the 60-ish bears and other animals roaming around the park, they had 6 cubs all born in January. The cubs were pretty cute and roly-poly avoiding the drizzle in their cave, and we got to see them being bottle-fed.

The weather was yucky (40 and rainy), but the kids were so excited to be back there that we braved the sprinkles for a bit to check out the petting zoo and a couple of rides.

Texas Trip, Austin/New Braunfels Leg

Though we don't have family in Austin, we love to make a trip over that way whenever we can, since it was our home for nearly 14 years. This trip, we adults got to have a "date day" to ourselves, while the kids stayed with G&G at the ranch.  It was awesome!  We couldn't have asked for better weather, and it was fun to explore unencumbered to juvenile whims. We stayed south of our old stomping grounds (for simplicity and traffic's sake) and our first stop was the "new to us" boardwalk along Town Lake/Lady Bird Lake/Colorado River. It was beautiful, and actually hot enough to warrant some shaved ice on the walk back.

Our next stop was going to be a coffee shop along the river where we used to study, but the next door Hula Hut's margaritas and chips and salsa on the deck were calling our name instead. I still count this among my favorite salsas ever! And yes, we split a stuffed avocado, too.  Heaven!

Next we cut back across town to check out a new brewery, Blue Owl, with our old buddy Juan. They specialize in sour-mash brews, which were not my favorite, but the guys enjoyed them. We also went by a couple of the hot, new east side eateries (i.e. long wait lists on a Wednesday evening) and ended up at Ophelia, a cajun restaurant that was still in its soft-opening phase (i.e. so secret we were the only table). Delicious!

Our last stop before the plane home was to surprise the kids with a stay at Schlitterbahn Resort in New Braunfels. Part of the resort was open for the Easter weekend, but most of the park was shut down until summer.  Too bad! This was taken right outside our room's door; in the summer, we could have hopped right in the float zone.

We had to ride a short shuttle to the open park. It was a beautiful day for lounging in the sun in PANTS, but swimming was another story! Even for these Idaho kids. The water was supposed to be heated, but it felt like the only warm water was in the kiddie area, which was totally fine with Hadley.

Owen enjoyed it too, but he also braved some of the coasters and bigger slides with Dad. Then he'd coming running back and hunker down in the warm kiddie water. I can only imagine their reactions to this place when it's hot outside and the park is fully operational! Maybe on another trip...

The funny part was that we were heading toward the exit at the end of the day, and suddenly Owen starts acting like a junior lifeguard getting tubes out of the torrent river. He did this for so long that the rest of us just sat down and watched. That's him stacking tubes with the lifeguards in grey and blue. Too funny!

After our busy day, we headed to downtown New Braunfels to eat some authentic German food. The kids, alas, were not a fan of any of it, except someone liked the purple cabbage of all things! Guess that's his heritage deep down, after all! There was a live accordionist and vocalist playing right next to our table, and Hadley did some polka dancing off-camera for them. We walked around the cute downtown a bit and found a yummy bakery to top off the day. 

The next morning, the kids opted to take it easy rather than try to squeeze in another chilly hour at the water park.  That was fine with us. We took a lovely stroll through the closed portion, which was calm and green and quiet. We saw lots of fish, turtles and ducks, and some probable 'snow birds' gave us the last of their bread to feed to the animals in the Comal river. I miss the green, leafy trees most of all, I think!

Then it was time to head to the airport and back to Jackson/Idaho Falls. We had a long layover in Dallas-Ft Worth. The kids always got to ride at the front of the tram, which they thought was awesome!

And there was a fun art installation at our gate, which helped to pass some time.

The trip back home was pretty uneventful, but was a late night on Easter eve. Nothing wakes you up like stepping off the plane in Jackson, WY at 9pm though.  Brr! Back home to a northern "spring". At least the Easter bunny still managed to find us on time!

Texas Trip, Ranch Leg

We spent a large amount of our trip at the ranch for some good quality time with Granna and Grandad. 

There was lots of time spent on books, toys, and games together. Owen thoroughly enjoyed teaching Granna how to play Angry Birds: Star Wars on her iPad, and Hadley loved having more people to search and find with her. (She's slightly obsessed with that currently and pretty good at finding hidden objects. A few times she'd not-so patiently wait for Grandad to finish his half of the picture or help him find things to speed it along.)

Owen even played Chicken Foot dominoes with us 'til the end of the game. I was amused at his arrangements of his domino hand. He didn't like the traditional, multiple row approach; he always had a lengthy single line that didn't really promote privacy. :)

It's always nice to share the bedtime story routine with other family members. The kids still love their books, especially new ones!

I was trying to have her re-enact this picture from my childhood, but can you tell she wasn't that interested? Not quite the resemblance I'd hoped for...

And of course, we enjoyed the beautiful weather and time in the great outdoors. The kids love digging around in the sandy soil and examining bugs, sticks, etc. that they come across. Owen remembered and requested the old, rusty dump truck from last time.

If anyone was wondering, the monkey bars and swingset from my childhood are still in working order!

A surefire highlight for the kids is riding in the tractor. In the seat or the bucket? Doesn't matter!

And probably our favorite activity is a good, old-fashioned walk on the trails, which sometimes need a little clearing. We have a couple of willing volunteers for that though, so it's never a problem! Even if they have to knock down a dead tree to ford a flooded path... Ahem.

It's always relaxing to get away from the noise and crowds and just take in the sounds of nature one step at a time. Owen liked the "walking club" moniker that we called ourselves and proved to be a pretty awesome hiker. They even did one by flashlight after dark!

Hadley also joined us a few times, although her walks were usually cut pretty short because "my legs are so ti-yud." I think her cold wasn't helping with her energy either. She was napping like a champ the whole trip!

Most of the walks started off to find the cow herd. 

There were several new calves to observe, and the cows would just stare back at us.

Until someone made a sudden move their way! Moo moo!

But mostly it was just an appreciation of the bucolic setting.

With nearly 350 acres to explore, each walk was new and different. Some were on main roads, some on cleared trails, some on cattle trails, and the boys even followed some hog trails (so named because they are pretty low and narrow, probably from wild hogs). The sandy soil lends itself nicely to preserve tracks of all the comings and goings of animals. We like to speculate on which tracks belong to coyote, bobcat, raccoons, herons, mice, etc. and why/where they are going.

On one of the longest walks, we came across this pond in the far corner of the property, which Owen named Unexpected Pond. I love that name. They've had so much rain this winter, it might not have had water in it for a long while before this. Until next time, Unexpected Pond!