Big Trip, part 5--Fun at the Park!

Going to the park was a favorite activity on the days when we were babysitting.  There is a park and a school playground (two, actually) within walking distance of Matt and Cheryl's house.  And we also checked out a couple of the other Redlands parks.

These kids definitely love to swing....

....and climb....

...and slide!

One of the parks that we went to had a pond, and there were ducks on the pond. So of course when we went there we brought some stale bread to feed to the ducks. Apparently a lot of people get rid of their stale bread by feeding these ducks, because they were never very hungry. (Sadly, some of my cutest duck-feeding pictures were among the pictures that I lost.)

No, Evan isn't really stepping into the water. :)

And a few more playground pics.

A side note:  As I have been going through my pictures I've noticed that Josie is wearing the same dress on a lot of the pictures.  That does not mean that those pictures were all taken on the same day.  It does mean that this is Josie's very favorite dress!  I think that if she had her way she would wear it every day!  Unfortunately, I don't think it is going to fit her much longer--it will be a sad day for Josie when she can no longer wear it. :( 

The next post will take us to a farm!  Stay tuned!

Big Trip, part 4--Children's Museum and Dance Class

On one of Cheryl's days off from work, we took the kids to a Children's Museum in Hemet, called "Fingerprints."  We went with Jill Leonard and her 3 girls. I lost a bunch of the pictures that I took on this outing---they just sort of mysteriously disappeared. I have no idea why that happened.  But I was able to take some after that happened (and I didn't lose those) and I also got some on the tablet. 

The kids had a lot of fun---the museum is set up sort of like a little town, with a bank, grocery store, vet's office, dr's office, etc. etc.  And there are some full size vehicles, like an ambulance, that the kids can sit in. The 5 little girls kind of moved through the place together, and Evan, being the only boy, kind of explored on his own.  I spent most of my time following him around, and that is probably why most of the pictures I have are of Evan.

Evan did some major grocery shopping!

And then he did some cooking--if you look closely, maybe you can see the ice  cream cone that he's baking in the oven. 

The person in charge of the museum told us that we had to clean up after ourselves as we moved from one area to another. Evan apparently took that seriously.

Josie checked out the back of the ambulance. She and her friends spent a lot of time in there with the animals from the vet's office. 

Driving the garbage truck

Head first down the slide

 

Evan checked out the boat to make sure that it was seaworthy...

 

and then they all went for a boat ride.

 

Since Josie got a little short-changed on the pictures at the museum, I thought I'd add some pictures that I took at her dance class.  She goes to dance class every Wednesday morning, and I think we took her there every week except for one. Her class is an hour long and it is half ballet and half tap. It was so much fun to watch her dance. :)

 

 Tap dancing, as you can tell by the shoes.

Our little dancer!

The last time we took her, she was chosen "Dancer of the Day."

Isn't she just adorable in her little pink leotard?  I'm pretty sure she was the cutest one of the bunch. :)

There will be a few more posts coming.  The next one may be about our visits to the parks in Redlands, or maybe a trip to a farm. You'll just have to wait and see.

Big Trip, part 3---Sea World!!

The first week that we were in California, Matt was on Spring Break so one day we went down to San Diego and spent the day at Sea World.  I think the last time I had been at Sea World was when I went on the 5th grade field trip with Abby. Let's see, that would have been about 18 years ago.  So things had changed a bit during that time.  They had moved things around a bit, so I definitely needed to rely on the park map. But some things still looked quite familiar. One difference was in the Shamu show---no trainers in the water with the whales. Of course they still have the "splash zones" at the shows, which we managed to avoid. 

Visiting the dolphins

Another big change was in the kids' play area.  They have added some Sesame Street themed rides, which Josie and  Evan really enjoyed.  Oh, I think Cheryl and Grandpa enjoyed them, too.

There's  also a place where the kids could make music.

I think Evan's favorite thing in the play area was the bouncy house.  They had a special bouncing pad for toddlers, but he absolutely wanted no part of that one!  He wanted to go in the big bouncy house! I think that the girl in charge actually sort of bent the rules for him, because he didn't quite meet the height requirement.  So she let him keep his shoes on while she measured him, and that gave him just the edge he needed.  I think he would have been happy spending the whole day there. When his time was up, he'd get out and race right over to get back in line for another turn. Fortunately it wasn't too busy, so he got lots of turns. I didn't get any pictures of him in there, though---he moves way too fast!

We ended our day at the tide pool, which is one of my favorite places.  I love looking at all those sea creatures, especially the starfish and anemone.(or is it anemones?)

Next post---the Children's Museum in Hemet. I have to locate my pictures first, though. That was the day of the camera malfunction, so some of my pics are on the tablet and some are on the iPad.

Big Trip, part 2---California, here we are!

We arrived in California on Sunday, March 16 and went directly to the apartment complex that was going to be our home for the next month.  But when we realized how much paper work we were going to have to go through before we could move in, we opted to first take care of our top priority---seeing Josie and Evan (and Matt and Cheryl, of course!)  They had just gotten out of church so they drove over to Loma Linda and met us for lunch. Those first hugs in the parking lot of the restaurant were priceless!

After lunch we went and took care of all our paper work and got moved into our apartment.  It was a very nice apartment and was completely furnished with anything we might need, except for wi-fi, but we managed to get along without that. After getting unpacked we went over to Matt and Cheryl's house--it was about a 15 minute drive, and we became very familiar with that drive! 

Our first day in California was very hot---over 90 degrees!  So what could be better than some ice cream from Baskin Robbins?

I've decided that I'm not going to try to do my California posts in chronological order.  I had very good intentions of keeping a journal while we were there, so that I would remember what we did and when we did it. Yeah, that didn't happen.  Well, I pretty much remember what we did, but not so much when we did it.  So the next few posts will follow more of a topical approach.  And since I'm still in the process of getting all my pictures organized,  that process will probably determine the order of the posts.

Next up---Sea World!

The BIG TRIP, part 1---Iowa

Well, I did accomplish one new thing--I managed to write a blog post on the iPad and actually got it to post!  That left me feeling quite confident, so I decided to try another post, this one with pictures.  So I started another post, got to the point where I wanted to insert a picture---but alas, I could not figure out how to do that.  I know that there must be a way to do it, and it is probably very easy.  Just not easy for this old lady. :(  So I had to send my pictures from the iPad to myself by e-mail and now they are on the computer and I can go back to my old way of writing posts.

So.....on March 10 we packed the Escape and left Brookfield for almost 6 weeks. That is a long time to be away from home!  The first stop on our trip was Ankeny, Iowa.  We spent a few days there to help Rachel out with some babysitting.  She had parent-teacher conferences that week,  and with Adam in Michigan she needed some help with taking care of Jeremiah.  Of course we are always up for some time with that boy!  He still spent a couple hours every morning at his daycare so that he could participate in the pre-school activities, but the rest of the day he was ours.

On the two days that Rachel had conferences she put in very long days! So the only way that she could spend any time with Jeremiah was to have us join her at her school for dinner.  So that's what we did---she picked up dinner from McDonald's one day, and we picked up sandwiches from Subway the other day. (That was the day of the spilled tea fiasco.)

Jeremiah and his Mommy enjoying their "Suvway" meal

So many good books!

Jeremiah loves to visit his Mommy's classroom.  In addition to all the good books, there are lots of other fun things to look at and play with.  And he's just about the right size for the desks and chairs!

And here are just a few pictures of our time at home with Jeremiah. 

Doing a little yard work, now that the snow is actually gone!

Singing "Jesus Loves Me" before nap time

On Friday, the 14th, we left early in the morning and started our trip out to California.  We spent about 2 and a half days driving, with overnight stops in Amarillo, Texas and Kingman, AZ.  We got to Loma Linda, which would be our home for the next month, at about noon on Sunday. It was over 90 degrees that day! Wow! We knew we were not in Wisconsin anymore!!

More posts to come about our time in California, once I get more of my pictures organized. 

Technology frustrations

I am WAY behind on this blog, and that is mainly because of the camera issues that I had while we were on our trip in March and April. I had bought a new camera shortly before we left on our trip and was learning how to use it.  At the last minute I decided to take my old camera along as well, and I am so glad that I did!

We spent the first few days of our trip in Iowa, helping Rachel out with some babysitting because she had two evenings of conferences that week. Each of those evenings we went over to her school with Jeremiah to have dinner with her.  On one of those visits,  I managed to spill a large cup of sweetened iced tea all over my purse, which just happened to contain my new camera. The camera got pretty wet, but I dried it off and it seemed to be ok. I took a few more pictures with it that evening. But after that I was not able to even turn the camera on---it was totally useless!  I'm so glad that I had gotten it at a really good price at Target---I didn't lose too much money on it.

Once we got to CA, I continued to have some camera issues. I had my old camera with me, but the memory card from my new camera wouldn't work in it. Got a new one, but it had to be "formatted" which Matt did for me. (Because I had no idea what that meant)  So I thought my problems were solved. Oh no,  I was taking pictures on one of our outings when all of a sudden I lost all the pictures I had just taken.  Still don't know why that happened. But Matt "formatted" the memory card for me again--he thought maybe he had not done it right the first time.  And since then I haven't had any more issues.

But....now I have some pictures on the computer, and some on the iPad, and some on the tablet. I'm trying to figure out how to get at all of them so that I can put together some blog posts.  And I'm also trying to figure out how to write blog posts on the iPad and the tablet, since that's where some of my pictures are. All of this is a pretty big challenge for me. :(

So....this is the first attempt at writing a post on the iPad. I'll see if it actually works, and if it does I'll see if I can do one with pictures next time.

February

Before we head off on our March/April trip to Iowa and then California, I guess I'd better get something posted about February.  We have a February birthday in our family--Febreeary 8 is Ben's day.  One year when he was about 3 or 4, he really didn't want me to take the Christmas tree down in January.  When I asked him why he thought we should leave it up (being a live tree, it really wasn't an option!), he said, "Where will we put the presents on Febreeary 8??"  We went down to meet Ben for lunch a few days before his birthday, on a snowy day. (What other kind of day has there been this winter?)  We had a great lunch at Portillo's in Skokie. 

We made two trips to Ankeny in February, one planned and one sort of spur-of-the-moment.  The first one was unplanned---when we found out on the afternoon of the 13th that Jeremiah was running a fever and had a croupy cough. And Rachel had already taken a personal day earlier in the week because the daycare lady's son was sick.  So we threw a few things in a bag and were on the road by about 5:15.  And we got to spend Valentine's Day with our favorite almost 4-year-old boy!  We enjoyed some "quiet" activities---books, videos, etc., but as the day went on he perked up quite a bit and we moved on to other things, like legos and trucks, etc.  And Grandpa was the hero of the day for going out to buy a few things at the store, including popsicles! 

A few days later we were on the road again, this time for Jeremaih's birthday. Our plan had been to drive over on Monday, Tuesday was the BIG DAY, and then we were going to drive home on Wednesday.  Well, the weather changed those plans a bit. It was a very snowy day on Monday, so we decided to delay our trip for a day.  And then we thought we'd stay until Thursday.....but, no, the weather interfered again. There were blizzard warnings for Thursday, so we drove back home on Wednesday after Rachel got home from school.  Winter is such fun!!

So, we arrived on Jeremiah's birthday, and got there a bit before they got home from school and daycare. Of course, presents were the first priority!

A Lego construction set

And a leaf blower. This will come in handy if the snow ever melts. 

And then it was dinner at the Pizza Ranch, the birthday boy's request.

And then home for cupcakes!

A former co-worker of mine has started a cupcake business, and so I ordered some Mickey and Minnie cupcakes from her.  They were a big hit! And they were also delicious!  This girl was already baking a lot of cupcakes when she was working at KinderCare, and she would often bring in samples for us to try. Needless to say, this made her very popular! 

The day after the birthday was a very pleasant day--at least for February in Iowa. It was nice enough to be out without a heavy coat, and Jeremiah got to try out his new scooter.

And then he and Grandpa took a trip around the block---Grandpa walking and Jeremiah riding his bike.

Who would have thought that the next day there would be blizzard warnings?? That's the way our winter has been this year in the Midwest! 

One more February event was another trip down to Chicago.  On the 22nd we drove down to enjoy a "tasting" at La Lucé, the restaurant where Abby and Neil are having their reception.  We were there with Abby and Neil, Neil's parents, and two of Abby and Neil's friends.  We were treated royally---got to sample lots of delicious food, and our waiter kept our wine glasses filled! 

Next big event: driving to Iowa tomorrow to spend most of the week with Rachel and Jeremiah. Actually we probably won't see much of Rachel, because she has parent-teacher conferences on Tuesday and Thursday.  Friday morning we will start our drive to California. Hmm, the last time we did that drive we had 4 kids in a mini-van.  I'm sure we'll be reminiscing a bit as we make this drive. :)