Right now, in this moment, Everything is Perfect

I know that this won't last. In a few minutes or even just seconds someone is going to start to yell or cry, but right now is perfect.

The sun is shining, there is a lovely breeze, the wind chimes are tinkling. The children are playing happily and quietly. Corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and carrots are cooking away in the crock pot for tonight's St. Patrick's Day dinner. I've just pulled out a loaf of Lazy Irish Beer Bread from the oven. The house smells wonderful.

There are towels washing in the washer. Even the dogs are napping. Time to pull out my knitting and work on the Easter sweater I am making Irene.

Enjoy the day, everyone!

Monster Jams

Last weekend my father-in-law took Mark, Henry and Irene and their cousin to the Monster Jams show in Grand Rapids. Henry and Irene were very excited about going. Henry loves Grave Digger and couldn't wait to see him.

Mark said they had excellent seats and were four rows back. It was very loud, but my mother-in-law bought the kids the ear muff ear protection. Mark and his dad had ear plugs.

Grave Digger!

The Van Andel Arena is a bit too small to hold Monster Jams so the trucks were not able to do as many of the stunts and races. Still, the kids loved it and I think Mark had fun too.

Gavin and I spent the afternoon together at home. We went for a walk and fed the ducks. We even splurged and went to the coffee shop. Gavin had the triple espresso ;-) When we got home we watched Octonauts and he took a nap. It was nice to spend a little one on one time with my little guy and it was good for Hen and Roo to spend time with their daddy.

On Friday the kids had no school so we decided to go to the Grand Rapids public museum ( www.grmuseum.org ). The museum is just the right size for the kids to walk through and has very reasonable rates.

There are sections on Michigan including fish, animals, even parts of a Mastodon that was found in someone's backyard in Grandville. Gavin loves dinosaurs so all bones were dinosaur bones to him.

There were window scenes of animals as they would be in the wild. There were buttons the kids could push to hear what the animals sound like. Some of the bird calls were so spot on that I was looking around for birds before I remembered that they were imitations.

A lot of the museum was sectioned into smaller rooms. There was a larger section for Michigan in the Civil War. A room was made up to look like an old parlor and included many stuffed birds of all kinds.

Gavin loved these skeletons!

There was a small Egypt room, a room about immigrants, Native American tribes in Michigan and, of course, an area about the furniture business in Grand Rapids. There was an area that was made to look like an old fashioned Grand Rapids. There were volunteers working in some of the shops. At the print shop there was a man working on printing bookmarks. He makes all the bookmarks that are given out at the museum. He gave us a demonstration and bookmarks to keep.

There was an entire pharmacy that came from Northern Michigan. all the old boxes and bottles were there along with the long wood counters and the old cash register.

A firearms store that Henry and Mark had to check out.

There was even an old fire engine that came from Bay City. A volunteer was dressed as a fireman and gave us a lot of detail about how the old fire truck would work. It was pulled by horses in those days. During that time Grand Rapids had 4 of them. Of course, the city was much smaller then.

I've only given a small sample of what was at the museum. The kids had a great time. We did ride on the old carousal and the last room you pass on the way out is a doll room. All kids of dolls were featured plus dolls that could be played with.

The museum does have visiting exhibits. We did not go into any of the extra ones this time. However, the Titanic Exhibit is coming in February of 2013 and since Henry is quite interested in the Titanic we plan to go to it.