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.

Duck!

Sunday was a sun filled day. Still a bit chilly, but a perfect day to get out of the house and walk. We headed right for the Riverwalk and the boat ramp to feed the ducks. There were so many of them that we couldn't keep up! Five or six of them even got out of the water to get the bread and at one point we were surrounded by ducks.

The kids had fun tossing bits of bread and once it was gone (it didn't last long with all those ducks!) we carried on our way to downtown. On Sundays there are only a couple of stores that open, the Hallmark store and the liquor store. We stopped in the Hallmark store and looked around.

The kids did not have school on Monday so we drove to my older brother's house. He lives about an hour from us, and although he and my sister-in-law were working, my dad was home with their son, Eric. The four kids had fun playing while Mark, my dad and I chatted. The topic of conversation came around to Sam's Club. The Sam's Club in Grand Rapids is very much lacking in comparison to the Traverse City store that we are used to. The Lansing store is quite nice and my dad goes once a week with two of his friends and Eric. The store is not far from my brother's house so we all went over. I must say that the Lansing Sam's Club is much better than Grand Rapids'. The food section is much larger and we would have happily have gotten some food if we didn't have the hour drive home. Still, it was a fun little trip through the store. They were giving out a few samples as well so the kids found that amusing.

Back at my brother's the kids played a bit more and both Mark and my dad fell asleep. I finally had to wake both of them since we needed to head home.

We had a nice, sun filled weekend. Too bad it is raining now with a chance of snow later!

Cuteness

Still Going...

A new year has started. Not much new to report. The children are back in school after having way too much time off. I was worried that Henry would have a tough time adjusting back into the school schedule. So far, he is doing well. This week he decided he wants to go to school earlier so he can have the breakfast that the school provides each morning.

Yesterday, when we picked Henry up, I went through his back pack and discovered one of his school shoes missing. When there is no money to replace shoes your heart drops when you discover something like that. Thankfully, Mark went back through the school and found the shoe laying in the hallway near Henry's classroom. The problem was Henry's backpack. The zipper had broken a couple of weeks ago and we've been trying to make do. Losing the shoe brought home the realization that we were going to have to come up with some kind of solution. We went through Meijer last night and I wanted to look at backpacks to see what the prices were. I figured we could save up pop bottles and take them back (for the 10 cent deposit). Backpacks are expensive! $20 to $25 is a lot for a bag. Henry found a Star Wars one that he liked. I got a happy surprise when I checked the price tag. It was 90% off! A mere two dollars to buy the backpack Henry wanted and needed. And in Mark's wallet? Exactly 2 dollars. What an absolute shock and happy surprise!

The weather here has been beautiful. No snow and it is January! I think it is suppose to snow tomorrow :-( but today the sun is shining and it is almost 50 degrees out. I love not having snow. Of course, Mark just told me that the radio station has been reporting that we are supposed to get a lot of snow. I shushed him when he said it. Snow is my 4-letter word!

Goodbye 2011....

Hello 2012!

May 2012 be a year without fear for us all!


We did have a wonderful Christmas. A fabulous knitter and her husband made it possible and a group of knitters/crocheters banded together to help in another area. Please take a minute to check out my knitting blog and read all about it. Click here :-)