It's SPRING!

And a sure sign of Spring...the hammock is back up and the kids' picnic table is up and running! Bring on the warm sunshine and flip flops!

Squirlin Around....

Thinking warm thoughts...this little nut makes me smile! The temps are climbing, the snow is melting!!!

Spring Swim!

Spring means it's time to squeeze in some swimming lessons before the summer activities hit. So here we go again! Riley wasn't so sure she wanted to do lessons anymore because she is convinced she can swim fine. I told her she needs to pass level 5 (jumping off the diving board) so I know if she falls in off the dock that she knows what to do...she left the first lesson excited for next week and wishing it was the next day and not a whole week away....

Rowan...well we left off last year with him screaming every time he was in the pool and sobbing the entire lesson...it got so bad he even freaked out on a teacher the very last lesson of the session. This year...only a few tears shed, and not because of the lesson, but because his goggles wouldn't work right (His ears are lopsided, I think? It actually looks kinda odd when he wears them anyway! Plus they get too foggy to see.) Whew! No freaking out on the teacher. He said it was ok. Not too excited about this week, but we did buy a different kind of goggles to try, so maybe that will give him something to look forward to! I am solo with them this week, so I am hoping that's enough to motivate!

Yesterday...

Was a beautiful Spring day in Minnesota...hopefully not our last one...so we took advantage of it! The kids biked around the end of the block, I went for a walk with the neighbor, Josh got out for his first run of the year and we ended with dinner on the deck...on a Christmas picnic blanket. It was a great day!

More Spring Birding

The red-tail is wat my cousin's place, the rest of the robbins and waxwings were when we got home on Saturday. By dinnertime they were gone, but I counted at least 23 of them!

Spring Bird Nerd Fun

Ok, so now the swans and the snowy have flown back to their nesting grounds, but the migrating birds

are coming through! We had an invasion of birds this weekend, from red polls (which might stick around for the summer) to cedar waxwings (just passing through) to a huge flock of robins taking over the trees in our back yard. There were also lots of sparrows, black birds, crows, chickadees and one lonely Junco (winter bird) still sticking around. At the end of the night, there was a woodpecker, but he was camera shy...darn bird!

Cousin Party!

My cousin Dan and his wife Sharis had Baby #4 in January. They invited the whole crew over to meet Miss C and hang out for a few hours of fun this afternoon. The kids had an awesome time and the grown ups got to catch up! It's been a LONG time! All total, now there are 11 Great Grandkids for my Grams. 10 of them were there today! (Riley and Josh had Wild tix I forgot about when we planned this!) About 8 of the 10 can sing "Let it Go" from the movie Frozen VERY well :)