More Catch-Up

So despite my allegations in the prior post that we've been so crazy busy, we sure don't have much photographic proof of it. So instead of doing several short posts with the lots of pictures I thought I took (which I apparently dreamed), I'll instead do one post describing some of the crazy things we've been up to with just a few pictures and then do another post with whatever recent random pictures I can dig up of equally random things.

February - Grandma Wall Visit
We got a much appreciated visit from Grandma Wall the end of February. Since she has 3 of her children living in a few miles area, she did a lot of house hopping on this trip to get time with everyone. She started her trip at our house and the kids were very excited to see her, especially since we hadn't been able to successfully skype with her lately because her computer had become a large and pretty paperweight. We had lots of fun hanging out and playing the new Puerto Rico expansion (so fun!) and watching the kids compete for her attention. We had some fun dinners while she was here and had planned an outing to the zoo.
Unfortunately, when the day for the zoo arrived, the high was around 55 (yes, that's cold to us wimps) and VERY windy. We decided to go to an indoor aquarium instead, which my kiddos did NOT take well. We've since had several talks about learning to go with the flow and how we don't always get what we want. The aquarium was a lot of fun and the kids had a blast looking at all the different fish. We even got some good ideas for new additions to our own salt water tank. One of my favorite things was the sea turtle, which is normally against the rules for aquariums to have but this one was being nursed back to health, so it was really fun to see one of those in action - reminded me of our trip to Hawaii. Also, there was this one stingray that was (seriously now) playing peek-a-boo with us. I don't think anyone got a video of it but I wish we had. It was pretty hilarious.
One of the hard things about Grandma Wall's trip out here was that her dad was in the hospital and very sick, which brings us to our next trip.

March - New York/Ohio/New York trip
The last morning Karen was in town (Grandma Wall = Karen for those of you who don't remember your Wall family tree), she got a call that her dad had passed away in the night. This was not unexpected since he'd been so sick (he had lung cancer) and had been in the hospital more often than not in the past few months. So she changed her return ticket from New York and flew straight to Ohio to help her family make funeral arrangements. After some discussion over here, we thought it would be helpful for Jacob and me to make the trip out there to pay our respects and offer what support we could. After looking for plane tickets to Cleveland, it turned out the best deal for us would be to fly to New York City and hitch a ride with Jacob's father to Cleveland and back and then fly home from New York City since he was making the drive anyway. I don't know if I've ever had a trip with that much actual traveling time in it - it was a little nuts, especially being 6 months pregnant and all. But one six hour red-eye flight and one eight hour drive later, we were in Cleveland in time for the viewing with about 2 hours to spare.
It was nice to see the Cleveland side of the family again (I had only met them once before, about 4 years ago) and to be with them at this hard time. It was also nice to get the time with Jacob's dad, who we hadn't seen since Thanksgiving and weren't scheduled to see until August of this year. After the funeral the next day, we had fun getting together with most of the aunts and uncles on that side and listening to the fun stories of growing up in Cleveland. In case you were wondering, A Christmas Story (apparently) has it about right. Then on Saturday, we were back in the car for the eight hour drive back to New York, where we got to spend some more time with Jacob's parents just talking, watching basketball, and playing board games. We also got to spend Sunday with them.
One of the interesting things to me on this trip was to discover what phone talkers my kids have become. I tried to call every night, about an hour before bedtime to say hi and see how they were doing. Hazel talked my ear off!! And Speed certainly tried as well, though I could pretty much only understand "Speed", "Mama", and "Dora". It was fun to talk to them but wow, did I miss them. We hadn't left them for more than one night since last July, so we're a little of out of practice with that.

The day we left New York, we got up early and hopped on a train down to New York City (since we were flying out of JFK that afternoon). It was a pretty uneventful day. We just got some good breakfast and then walked around and shopped for a while (didn't ever end up buying anything), and then got some yummy lunch before heading to the airport. I did take a ride in my first ever taxi thanks to some obnoxious Braxton-Hicks contractions, so that's one thing I can cross off my "never did this" list.
The picture is me at Rockefeller Center and the huge crowd behind the flags is the broadcast of The Today Show for the performance of a group called One Direction. PLEASE don't zoom in on the picture - I look awful. But Jacob said he disagrees, so I posted it - just as a very small picture. :) We didn't try to go see this group and we only found out who it was later in the day watching all the signs the tween girls were carrying around, but hey, we were almost on the Today Show.
Then it was another uneventful though long flight back. The kids were VERY happy to see us, if a little crazy. This readjustment period has been the worst we've ever had coming back from any trip (in my opinion at least) but I think we're just about back to normal. Apparently they were angels for the aunts and uncles who watched them while they were gone, but I'll have to watch the replays in heaven to actually buy that based on how they acted once we were back. :)

I forgot when - Piano

I can't remember when exactly we bought our piano and I'm currently too lazy to go find the receipt to give an exact date. But one of the things we have been talking about getting for a long time is a piano. After a significant amount of discussion, we decided on an electric piano/keyboard (don't hate me if I used the wrong technical terms) for several reasons (portability, recording options, headphones, etc.). So then after some time shopping for what we thought the best deal was, we were off to the local music store to compare. We found a fantastic (again, in my opinion) deal on a piano in the range we were looking for, but the only one they had left at that store was the floor model which they couldn't sell to us. So I left this decision up to Jacob and he decided that we could drive to Scottsdale that day to pick it up instead of waiting for the store to ship it. So after a short adventure in the car, we were picking up our new piano. We've already had lots of fun with it seeing what crazy sounds we can get it to play. I haven't read the manual yet but the box said it has several thousand instruments programmed in. Yep, crazy. The kids are already showing an interest in making actual music instead of just smacking it, so that's encouraging.

So now it seems that we're finally back to the normal routine of work, church, and family activities. We've had some fun times since we've been back this week (ice cream at Coldstone, pizza and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles night, and a BBQ today) and some depressing things (oh Mizzou, why) but it looks like we've got a nice, relaxing rest of March and a (hopefully) equally relaxing April ahead of us before birthday and birth day month hits. So we'll just keeping having fun with our garden (post and pictures tomorrow maybe) and other fun things (Professor Layton for the win). I'll try to get some pictures together and posted in the next couple of days.