Happy Birthday Grandpa K!

Today is Casey's Dad's birthday, so we had a little celebration here tonight.  Casey is getting quite good at his cake baking and decorating skills (with some tips from his mom)...

A little help from Cassie to blow out the candles...

What do you get when you try to get a good picture of one very patient grandpa and 5 crazy kids?  A bunch of really bad pictures and a couple decent ones.  Of course they had to do a crazy picture first:

And then the "nice" ones...

Happy birthday Grandpa!  We love you!

Easter!

Today was a beautiful day to celebrate the fact that Christ is risen!  We started our day with a wonderful, praise-filled church service complete with choir, brass, strings, and the Hallelujah Chorus. 

Then we went to Casey's parents for a delicious dinner and some good family time. We scootered/walked to the park and the cousins caught up on play time since they missed each other so much while we were in Florida!

We ended our day with our annual Easter egg hunt.  Our neighbor Dore has been doing this since Esther was 3 or 4, and it has grown and changed a bit each year.  This year a bunch of the grand kids of several of our neighbors joined in the fun too!  She had the eggs hidden in 3 different yards and the kids had a great time searching for all of them.

Spring Break in Florida!

We had a great spring break at my parents' place in Florida this year.  We have visited them at Christmas, but never at spring break time.  It was a great week to be there as the weather was perfect--warm and sunny every day!

We drove this time and drove through the night both ways.  The kids did great and were awesome travelers! 

We spent our days at the pool, the beach, bike riding, playing games, and just relaxing.  It was a great week and it's always hard to adjust back to "real life."  Here are some pictures from our fun week:

Grandpa and Miriam headed out on a bike ride...

They encountered this guy partway down the block.  His shell was probably about a foot in diameter, so he was a good sized turtle!

We were in the pool every day that we were there!

On Monday afternoon Casey and I drove to Orlando to visit our friends Tom and Tricia and their boys.  Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt Karen and the kids got McDonald's and took it to the park to eat.

Of course they also went to Dairy Queen for dessert!

We spent a couple afternoons at the beach too.  The water was very nice and we had fun looking for shells and sharks' teeth and playing in the sand.

Grandpa, Casey and Peter had a boys' outing one morning.  They went and watched a bunch of old guys fly their remote control airplanes.  Peter thought it was very cool!

We had dinner at Sharky's on the Pier one night for dinner.  We walked out on the pier while we were waiting for our table.

Esther and I went on a bike ride with Grandpa one morning.  We were trying to find the alligator that lives in this pond, but we couldn't find him.  We still enjoyed our bike ride!

More beach time!

Aren't they adorable?  Aunt Karen got them to pose for this picture, but she said they were fighting most of the time while they were standing there.   :)

The boys went and explored a bit one morning...

...while the girls checked out the shops in downtown Venice and enjoyed some yummy pastries.

We saw lots of geckos!

This cute little girl learned to swim while we were there!  She went from hardly wanting to be in the pool without her life jacket on the first day, to swimming all the way across the pool by the end of the week!

We are already looking forward to our next trip to Florida!