Bike riding

We spent a little time this morning biking. First we took a walk with Julian riding around our neighborhood and Kathryn and I walking. Then I just sat at the end of the driveway while they rode back and forth from one house over on one side to 2 houses over on the other side (and since I was just sitting there, of course I had to take pictures!). I kept a cautious eye out to make sure no cars snuck up on them - constantly afraid one of us would miss an upcoming car. And I lamented the fact that we don't have a safer flat place for them to ride. Worry over my kids - I wonder, does that ever go away? I guess it probably doesn't.

Diabetes alert

Could you have type 2 diabetes and not know it? This is a quick test to take to see if you are at risk (it took me about 30 seconds to answer the questions)....

Diabetes Risk Test

Hiking at Hanging Rock

Today, we took our first "family hike" day trip. Jason and I went hiking last year and fell in love with it. We have been saying ever since then that we wanted to go back. Since last week was my spring break and this week starts the kids' spring break, this was the perfect day.

We visited the Hanging Rock State Park. If you have not been, I really suggest you go; it was wonderful. I'm going to have to ask forgiveness ahead of time - I fear I'm going to be a little long-winded with this. :)

We started with the Hanging Rock trail, which is 2.4 miles round trip and is rated as moderate in difficulty. Our thought was that we could go up that trail and be finished and ready to go to one of the waterfall areas for lunch - well! - what I didn't anticipate was the kids being fascinated with EVERYTHING! Sticks, rocks, dirt, sand, trees...EVERYTHING. It was so fun to watch. We ended up taking about 90 minutes to finish the trail. And we were ready for the end when it came! It was definitely hard - especially for little Kathryn with her shorter legs. But both kids were troopers and I am very proud of them for their effort today.

Next we followed the Lower Cascades Trail which ends at an amazing waterfall. It is only 6/10ths of a mile round trip and is rated as easy (although it was not what I would call "easy"). "The Cascade Creek tumbles 120 feet through a series of falls." It was breathtaking to come down the trail, not knowing what to expect, and have the landscape open up to this...AWEsome waterfall. We spent quite a while there, taking pictures, letting the kids splash in the water, just watching the water fall. There was only one negative there - Kathryn's foot slipped crossing the water and her foot got soaked. She panicked a little and, well, freaked out. It only lasted a minute while I reassured her it was only water and we had dry socks (but not shoes) for her in the car. She does not like discomfort of any kind...I am actually VERY surprised she liked hiking as much as she did.

Then we followed the Upper Cascades Trail to another waterfall, which is 4/10ths of a mile round trip and "easy". It was very pretty, but not as majestic as the Lower Cascades. AND, we ran into a teenage couple that was...well, not wanting to be disturbed. They ended up leaving shortly after we got there. I'm not quite sure why they chose that particular spot, but I'm glad they felt the need to leave when we arrived. :) We explored a bit and took some pictures and then moved on.

Finally, we went down the Window Falls/Hidden Falls trail, which is 1.2 miles round trip. By this point, we were exhausted, but not knowing when we will go back, I really did not want to miss anything. We were pretty tired, as I said, so we actually drove from the entrance to the Upper Cascades trail to the restrooms (halfway across the parking lot) to the Window Falls trail on the other side of the parking lot. I'm not proud of it - BUT I didn't want to waste any steps, not knowing what was coming up on our last trail....and I'm glad we did, because it took everything we had to make it back to our car! We didn't spend much time at these falls, because they were much busier than the others. We took our pictures and moved on; we only saw the Window falls from a distance. It was pretty crowded and we were pretty tired, so we just decided to call it a day instead of going all the way down the trail to the falls.

I am super-excited that our kids loved hiking. This is definitely something we plan to do regularly now that we know they can keep up and enjoy it. They were in wonderful spirits all the way to the end and Julian was pretty upset when it was time to leave. Kathryn was pooped and kept telling us how tired she was. I felt so bad - I was actually physically too tired to pick her up and carry her to the car. So she "sucked it up" and just kept walking until we got to the end. So strong!

What a wonderful day for our family. We are so tired, but it was SO worth it. I can't wait until we can take another hike together!

Egg Drop

Julian's homework assignment was to create something that will keep an egg from breaking when dropped from the top of the school, so here is what he created:

1: The box

2: The styrofoam (molded around the egg)

3: Cotton balls glued to the inside of the box

4: Place styrofoam mold inside the cotton-balled box

5: Cushy foam (decorated, of course)

6: And finally, a parachute

Let's hope our little egg stays in one piece!

Evan, Julian and Kathryn

From Saturday night when Evan spent the night...Julian and Evan together:

and Kathryn doing her own thing off by herself. :)

And the winners are...

Kathryn came in 3rd (out of 6) in the Cubbies....

And Julian came in 2nd (out of 4) in the Sparks group.

Everything went really well, and it was a lot of fun. There were 5 racers we had registered that didn't come, but overall it was wonderful. And what no one will know until tomorrow when we announce our Design winners - Julian came in 1st for design and Kathryn came in 2nd. They really did have very cool cars.

Who will the winner be???

Today is our annual Awana Grand Prix at the church. We do it a little different than other churches - since we don't move forward to regional "official" Awana competitions, every clubber can compete - even Cubbies. I can't wait to see how the kids' cars do. Each year we've gotten better (and by we, of course I mean Jason) at the doing the wheels and stuff, and Julian did a great job painting his Titanic....he loves the Titanic. So, here are their cars:

And finally....

And the final update on our ever-busier family: a new aquarium! My wonderful sister gave us her 20 gallon, so we upgraded from our 10 gallon. I think this is about as big as I would want to go... Unfortunately, now our 4 fish have lots of places to hide from us, so I guess we'll have to break down and adopt some new fish (which we have been meaning to do for months now!)

Vivy

I had so many of Vivy, I decided to post them by themselves. She is easy to take great pictures of.

(FYI - keys are BAD)! (:

FINK day, March

This month, we got together to celebrate Evan's birthday - he is 6 years old now!!!!

Trip to the river

We got ready early for our monthly "FINK" day, so we decided to go by our river and throw some stones in...It was beautiful outside (just a little chilly) and the kids had lots of fun - it doesn't take much, does it???

Check THIS out!

Please excuse the "bragging"....

Can you believe that?? I got a 100%!!!!!! This may be my first 100% on a math test EVER :)