Wish you were our neighbor...

…and we'd give you this May "basket".

Happy May Day!

Spring Break in St. Louis

This is spring break #2 in St. Louis.  The first time we were there with the Mockerts, which was great fun.  We had a good time this year, too.  Here are some photos:

Waiting for our pod to go to the top of the Arch.

Here we are at the top!

Looking down..

...and looking up.

The photographers

This photo is for scale.

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Building our own Arch at the science center.

Ah, the City Museum (not the zoo :)

Looking up seven stories--we just took the slide  the whole way down.

At the skate-less skate park.

Climbing outside (that is a fuselage behind Erin)

Can you make out Jack climbing in the middle of the photo?

Here we are at the Zoo.

The photographers.

March Skiing with the Neighbors

This post has been a long time coming…
At the beginning of March, the Ciskes and Mockerts were invited up to Rifkens' cabin in Minocqua for the weekend and a day spent skiing at Powderhorn.  Boy did we have fun!!
Kate was our most awesome nanny a few summers ago and her parents are lovely friends.
Marty was kind enough to stay behind and spend Saturday cooking while we headed north to the ski hill.

Here is the whole skiing team before we took a run together.  

Erin took a snowboarding class.  It was frustrating at times, but she stuck it out!

Jack and Kate get ready to tackle Dynamite--a very difficult hill!

Caroline and Mollie

One of the rare moments when Caroline was still--she was on the go the whole day!

Waiting in line for the lift--that's Julia, Caroline and Jack.

A selfie on the chairlift.

A tired group on the trip home.  Good thing Marty had a lovely dinner ready for us--we were hungry!

Piano Recital, April 2014

The kids had their piano recital on this lovely spring day.  This year we were lucky enough to be scheduled for our recital together with the Mockerts.  It was fun to hang out with friends and listen to the music they've been working on so diligently.
Dave and I agreed that all kids did a fabulous job and that we are very proud of all of the practicing they've done to make their pieces sound so polished.  Go team!!

Here are the pianists with their teacher, Mrs. Larget.

They each played four or five songs.  Here are their favorites:

Wausaukee winter visit photos

Well, it's been over a month and I'm finally getting around to posting the photos from our visit with my parents mid-February.  There was a ton of snow and since the kids really wanted to go ice skating, our first task was to clear an area on the pond:

Then we were able to skate a little and shovel a bit more:

Saige and Maggie even joined in the fun, even though they weren't dressed for the weather (Maggie, where is your snowboarding outfit?).

Wow, what coordination!

Lovely arabesque :)

Even Dandy braved the deep snow!

Then there was tree climbing and snowman building:

And a tea party to warm everybody up:

That night it rained and all of the rain ran under the snow to the pond.  The kids went out in the morning to skate and fell through a layer of thin ice to a few inches of water before hitting the solid ice. Later, the ice froze smooth and solid making for some really nice skating, but also some strange sights on the pond:

No amount of chipping could remove the roaster from the ice.

Jack did some snowshoeing.  He was the only one who could stay on top of the deep snow:

And then in to warm up and do some sewing crafts: