Easter Weekend

We hope that everyone had a great Easter weekend.  We were able to enjoy time with family.  Not as much time and family as we would  have liked, but it's hard when you have sick kids.  Margaret got a bad virus on the Friday before Easter so we had to limit her exposure to other kids.  Easter was not what we had dreamed it would have been, but we still really enjoyed it. Here are a few pictures from our weekend.

Spring Break 2010

I'll warn you right now.  This post is extremely picture heavy.  Sorry for those of you with slow downloads as this might take forever. 

For spring break this year we decided to take the girls to Boyne Mountain Resort.  Back when we originally made the plans we had hoped that there would still be plenty of snow up there and we could go skiing and do other winter sports.  However, the unseasonally warm weather took those dreams away.  We still had a great time at the indoor waterpark.  The hotel had lots of great restuarants and other activities as well.  The girls enjoyed the storytime every evening in the library with cookies and milk.  If it had not been raining we could have also went hiking there at the resort, but it rained or snowed the whole time we were there. 

This is the Boyne Mountain Lodge were we stayed.  The waterpark was attached so we didn't have to go outside.

Our room was the one on the top floor just left of the round stone wall.  The girls loved the view of the duck pond below and the mountain was right in front of us too.

This is the clock tower hotel.  Addie thought that it was really cool.  They had a pizza place in it and she loved eating there.  I think that was part of the charm for her.

The resort had an indoor/outdoor heated pool.  It was a lot of fun and Addie loved being able to swim back and forth.  She also like the two large heated "hot pools" (as she calls them) outside.  Like most kids she loved being able to swim while it snowed. 

The rest of the pictures are of the waterpark.  It's called Avolanche Bay and has a winter snow theme.  It makes sense because of it being located at a ski resort.  Addie would also like me to tell you that it is the largest indoor water park in Michigan. She loves telling people that.   We all had a great time and hope to go back again.  Hopefully the next time there will be some snow so we can have a good excuse to use that outdoor hottub!

Addie's Guitar Practice

Addie has been taking guitar lessons from a local high-schooler for about 6 months now. She's doing really well, but gets embarrassed when we ask her to play for people. She'll hardly play in front of Emily! Grandparents, aunts and uncles - no way.

This week, Emily had had enough. She told Addie that she would be practicing in front of the video camera. Little did we know how well this would work. Not only did she let us do it, but she did really well. We'll let the video speak for itself - she plays three songs from her beginner instruction book.

She's been learning chords (G, C, D7, G7) and notes (A, B, C, D, E, F, and G - high and low), and is also learning to read music at the same time. She loves taking lessons and is really doing well.

Tree Tapping Good Time

Saturday we decided to take the plunge and tap our maple trees.  Michael and I have talked about doing it since we moved here but have never actually tried it.  It was the perfect weekend to try it.  As you can tell by the photos we all enjoyed working outside. Margaret would only hand the hammer over to daddy when he needed it to tap the tap spikes into the tree. Otherwise it was all hers.  The two neighbor girls came over to help also.  All four of the girls loved having a job to do.  After we finished tapping the trees a spontanious snowball fight broke out.  The snow was melting so it was nice and wet.  Perfect for snowball making. 

So far we have been getting about 5 gallons of sap per day from our five taps.  Which converts to 1 pint per day of syrup.  The syrup tastes so good!  The girls love it.  Margaret was litterly trying to lick the table clean after she spilled some at lunch.  Both of the girls keep asking me to only make food that we can have syrup with.  It's so cute. 

 

Ski Bunny

I think that Addie has a new favorite sport. Skiiing!

 She loved watching the olumpics this winter.  Her favorite sport was the ski jump followed closely by any other ski event that looked dangerous.  She was so cute as she sat there analazing their every move.  What the skier's arms did while they moved their legs.  Every move was carefully looked at. 

Michael and I decided that it was time to take her to one of the local ski resorts.  On Sunday Michael and Addie went to Swiss Valley for their first ever ski adventure.  They had a great time learning and skiing.  The weather was perfect too.

Addie loved it so much that she didn't want to leave.  They ended up staying until closing.  Since then Addie has been talking a lot about going back and is focused on getting to the next level where she can have ski poles and ride the ski lift.  We just might have created a ski bunny!  Let's just hope for cold enough weather this weekend that we can get one more good trip in before the snow starts to melt.

Dreaming of the Beach

Some times a girls just has to be creative on how she will work in some beach time in the dead of winter.  Or maybe it was the sunshine that was so brightly reflecting off the snow that day that they could not wait until they could play in the warm sun at the beach.  Either way, the girls had a great afternoon last week playing beach in their room for a couple hours.

Here's to summer!