Disneyland

Ben got to go to Disneyland with his Student Council from school. Emily did this last year and had a blast. She wasn't in Student Council, but they let 8th grade NJHS kids go too. Ben will get to go next year too! 

I think this is such a great opportunity. If you are going to learn about business and teamwork from any company, Disney is a great one to learn from. They left on a Wednesday at 10:30 at night. Our friend took them all. The 2 girls on the right are Emily's friends. I'm sure Ben loves getting lumped in with them on carpooling, but whatever. We are all in the same neighborhood, and it takes a village to raise these kids.

Here's a picture they posted on social media. Ben wasn't sleeping on the ground so that's good. It's basically 2 nights of very little sleep. The bus isn't the most comfortable.

And here's a picture of the whole group. Ben's on the right side, 3rd one in, to the left of the kid in the navy shirt.

The got home Friday at like 6AM. They are excused from school that day, so they can go home and sleep. Ben had said he might go to school. He just wanted to see how he felt. I told him he'd be tired and he'd need sleep. As it turned out, he came home and slept until 2:00!  I guess he was pretty tired.

He had a great time though and learned a lot. He got to ride on pretty much every ride and had a blast! I'm so glad he was able to go.

Easter

Another Easter has come and gone. I keep thinking this will be the last holiday Noah will believe, but he just keeps on believing. Although, he is coming up with more questions. Emily found out in sixth grade, Ben was fifth, so I thought Noah would be fourth since the youngest always grows up quicker.

In any case, Easter is the one holiday that we host at our house. Emily helped out by filling the deviled eggs.

 

The kids dyed eggs and we watched Charlie Brown Easter Beagle the night before. I'm glad they aren't too old and cool to do stuff like this with their family.

The baskets wouldn't fit in the baskets this year.

Noah got a slime kit after about 20 failed attempts at making slime at home.

Suzy made the jelly bean cake and Nikki made the cheesecake. Talk about impressive!  I heated up a ham!  HA!

Mike is giving my Dad a phone lesson. He got a new phone and can't figure it out.

Me and my pops.

Me and my sweet Mama. I always think I look more like my Dad's side, but I think I look just like my Mom here.  I'm a chameleon.

Suzy brought a few of their neighbors. A lot are snowbirds and don't have family here. This is Ruth. She is a sassy doll.

This is her husband Don. They are working on 66 years of marriage!

This is the other neighbor Jan. She is just the sweetest person. I'm glad my Dad and Suzy have such awesome neighbors.

My Mom and little Tammy dog. That dog is spoiled!

Here's Suzy and Nikki with their amazing cakes.

Nikki looking like a cute bunny!

And that was the whole gang. It was so nice to all get together. Ruth and Jan remarked about what a loving family we have, and we do. Not many families can have ex wives and step children and the whole hodge podge that we are and all get along. We are very fortunate.

Guard Championships

Emily's guard team had a little show last week at Prescott high school. They are going to have a Spring Recital in a few weeks, so we will all go to that, but I got to go see her perform their show. I'll have to get video of it at some point.

But, here are a few pictures of their warm up and performance. I love the beams on the ceiling at this high school.

I know Emily has gotten so close with all these kids.

They had their final championships last weekend and they placed second in their division. They had a big team dinner after and they've had a great season.

But, they aren't quite done. They still have practices twice a week. Honestly, I think Em was exhausted last week. School is 35 hours a week, and she had guard practice and performances for 35 hours a week, with one of the days being 19 hours! It's like she had a 70 hour week! I'm glad they've tapered off to practice twice a week, and she can recoup a bit and do a final push on her school work.

It's been a great year for her, and I'm so proud of her and all she accomplished in guard.

Bread Obsessed

Noah had a big assembly at school a few weeks ago.  All of the 4th, 5th and 6th grade students got to learn how to make bread. Then, they all took home flour, yeast and a recipe. The assignment was to make 2 loaves of bread. One you keep. The other you return and they bring to the salvation army to feed the homeless. Sounds like a great idea!

He couldn't wait to make the bread.

We decided for our half of the dough that we would make a small loaf of bread and some cinnamon rolls.

I don't have a picture of the finished product. Probably because it went in the garbage too quickly. It was nasty. It was too dense and just blah. It wasn't anything we did in the baking process. It all worked out fine. We just didn't like the recipe. We sent the one loaf to school and that was that.

But, Noah became obsessed. He watched you tube videos and he found a bread recipe that he thought would be much better. So, the following weekend, we got to work and made a loaf of bread. He said it's on this You Tube channel called "Everyday". And then it hit me, you mean Martha Stewart Everyday? And he's like yep, some old lady. Oh my gosh, he's in love with the Martha Stewart channel.

And let me just say, Martha's recipe was on point! The bread came out fluffy and delicious. Noah was brushing butter on at the end.

We literally ate 2/3 of the loaf when it came out of the oven. It was so tasty.

So, Noah went back on the Everyday channel and found chocolate chip cookies and rolls and cinnamon roll recipes. Oh vay. I'm going to gain 100 pounds. But, as Martha would say, "It's a good thing", so I'm just going to go with it.

Our Last Days in Hawaii

When we are on vacation, I'm always torn about blogging. Part of me doesn't want to use up time every day to write stuff. The other part of me is always so happy I did as by the time I get home, I'm too busy and have forgotten things. Which is exactly the case for the last few days of Maui.

Oh well, so here's what I remember. We did half the road to Hana. We didn't do the whole 46 miles as we didn't have the entire day. We got to these falls and thought we'd be able to swim in them. We'd seen beautiful pictures online of people playing in the light stream of water. We got there and it was like ragging rapids. They've had a lot more rain this winter than normal and everything was flowing. We didn't dare go in.

We did walk through the arboretum and see a bunch of cool trees.


These are the rainbow bamboo trees. The trunk is actually like a rainbow.

We got it a little wet with some water as the colors come out even more. They are totally cool.

It is like total rain forest over in this area, just massive trees and green.

We stopped at this watering hole along the way. People sometimes swim here and clif jump, but we just took a few pictures.

We got to this area where almost the entire town was destroyed during a tsunami in 1920 or maybe it was 1950's?  See, I can't remember. But, almost everyone in the town died.

The only thing that survived the tsunami was this stone church.

We finished with Hana, ate lunch and changed clothes. We also got our first shaved ice. I'm glad we didn't have this on day one as we'd want it every day. I thought am I really spending $6 for a snow cone times 5, well 4, David didn't want one. But, it was worth every penny. It's nothing like a snow cone. The ice is so soft and the flavors on top were delicious. It was awesome!

It was now time to head up to the top of Haleakala to watch the sunset.

On the way up, it was foggy and rainy and we were wondering how things would be at the top. 

Now, you go from sea level to over 10,000 feet. And all of a sudden, you are just on top of the clouds and there is no rain, obviously. It's the coolest thing.

This is the crater of the volcano.

The thing to do is watch the sunrise or sunset. For the sunrise, you actually have to make a reservation. So, we just did the sunset. It was magical.

It was a super long day. It was good to get home and know our last day in Maui was a full beach day, and it did not disappoint. The water was the most gorgeous color of blue.

 We just played in the ocean all day. We could see whales off in the distance playing.

 That little speck at the 7:00 position is Ben.

 Then, we watched our final sunset.

The flight home is brutal. It's depressing to leave the beauty of Hawaii. We had a layover in San Francisco, which was delayed by 90 minutes. But, we got home safe and sound.

Maui had changed a lot in the 22 years since I had been there with Pam. It used to be the sleepy, laid back island that people went to get away from the hustle and bustle of the bigger islands. Now, Maui is full of hustle and bustle. It was still amazing, but next time, we'd try Kauai for a more chill experience.