vacation

The first weekend in May, Curt had a computer geek conference to attend in St. Paul, MN. He was going to be gone for 4 days and the business was paying for a room and none of his partners were going with, so the girls and I decided to go along. I knew we were not going to be able to see Curt much or spend much time with him, but we would be able to do some fun stuff and it would be better than staying home by myself with the Hoodlums (as I like to call them). It worked out that My Mandy was able to come with also and spend part of the weekend with us and part of the weekend with her husband's brother and his family. We stayed at the Crowne Plaza (way out of our league) which is happily situated on the Mississippi River and very near many great sites. We were within walking distance of the Minnesota Children's Museum and the Minnesota Science Museum and only a short drive from Grand Avenue (shopping!) and Como Zoo. Our 4 days were quite full and fun. If you ask the girls, the best part was the hotel pool and watching Chronicles of Narnia in bed on hotel cable. If you ask Mandy and I, the worst part was no TLC, HGTV or Bravo on the hotel cable! When Mandy posts pictures, I will link to her Flickr, because she was the main photographer of the weekend, but here are a few of my shots.

Face painting the Children's Museum. Notice my really cool bag in the mirror reflection. I will post about that later today or tomorrow.
My little scientist. Her only hope for the Science Museum was that she would be able to wear a lab coat and goggles like a real scientist. Wish granted. We got to scrape cheek cells and look at them under a microscope.

Como Park Zoo/Amusement ParkOur Hotel from across the river (the dark grey building). We had an amazing view of St. Paul and the river from our 12th floor window.

Oops, Sorry!

Last post published on May 2nd? OOOOOPPPPSSS! The month of May is my favorite month in terms of new things growing and weather and such, but it is SO BUSY! My husbands helps coach track, so there are 2 track meets almost every week. I try to go to some of them and really enjoy them, but they are seriously time consuming. There is also an immense amount of gardening that I feel compelled to do. Again, something I love, but it takes up a bunch of time and energy. There are 2 little girls that want to be outside much more often and still need a lot of supervision to do that. There was a wedding shower (which I made the above quilt top for...in 3 days... yes, I am crazy), Mother's day, my brother-in-law's birthday and Emma's birthday. There was getting ready for a dear friend to live with us for the summer. All in all, just a lot of reasons to not be at the computer writing posts. But, I have been thinking on lovely things, which was the whole reason for starting this blog, so even without writing the actual posts, the blog is serving its purpose (except that you all aren't getting to share in the loveliness... sorry). In fact, I have been taking lots of pictures that I meant to share with the lovely Internet. So I shall now.

These are the crazy Mourning Doves on our porch. The babies hatched and were quite fun to watch. The girls named them Franklin and Dora (Abi names everything Dora). We named the mom Betsy and the Dad Anakin (yes, we have a Darth Vader Mourning Dove flying around somewhere).

Emma's birthday skirt made by mom. We tried some nicely posed pictures, but alas, the dancing ones were so much better.

Abi's birthday dance.

Emma's birthday cake, lovingly made by Aunt Mando and Mommy. We are having a swimming party at the Y today.

And just for giggles. My children call this the Octopus Forest. Evidently when the ferns start to unfurl, they look a little like an octopus, so we have had lots of screaming about "ahhhh, the octopus forest!!!!"

I know I promised to keep things lovely on this blog, but I also promised to be real. My dear Emma had another seizure on April 28th. She has had 1 other seizure (that we have witnessed, there may have been more that no one saw), back in September. At that time, after testing, they didn't find anything. We go back to the doctor for more testing this week. Please pray for answers. None of us want to live in fear, but when there is so much unknown, that is what ends up happening.