Easter Bunny

The girls wanted to go visit the Easter Bunny and get their picture taken.

We had a great Easter Bunny, he was very playful and made it fun.

It was one of the first nice spring days we had, so Skyler had to

model one of her new, cool spring/summer outfits.

Skyler Modeling her new, cool outfit!

The girls sporting Bunny ears! Big Sis, Maddie, was helping

with a few Bunny ears of her own:-)
And the best photo with the Easter Bunny!

Hope you had a Happy Easter (yes, I'm late getting these

posted, so it's hope you had:-)

The Sound of Music

"The hills are alive, with the Sound of Music..."

Niece Payton Dykstra (Jerry's youngest brother Curt's daughter),

was in the Waukee High School production of "The Sound

of Music" this weekend. That's quite an accomplishment for

a 4th grader. She played the youngest Von Trapp child,

Gretl, and played the part quite well! She is very

expressive, has a lovely voice and really gave a great

performance (along with all the rest of the cast)!

She even signed autographs for friends and family

following the matinee performance that we attended.

I love the expression on her face -- this is where the

children are all lined up to meet the new governess, Maria.
Here we have the Von Trapp children singing with
Maria for the first time.

This is Maria's bedroom, the first night she is with

the family and all of the children come to her room

because they were scared by a thunderstorm.

Here little Gretl sits on the Captain Von Trapp's

knee. He was an amazing performer and only

14 years old.

This is from the scene when Maria returns to the

Von Trapp family house after realizing she's in love

with Captain Von Trapp.

The entire Von Trapp family, including their

new step-mother, Maria.

Here the Von Trapp family children performed

Do-Re-Mi for the Music Festival.

The end of So Long, Farewell at the end of

the Music Festival.

Here the cast is getting well-deserved applause

from the very satisfied audience.

It was a great performance. I think this is only the

start of Payton's time in the spotlight for performing!

Girls Gone Wild -- Spring Break 2009

Spring Break started before the crack of dawn on 3/14/2009

at 3:45am when my baby sister Pam, her three girls and I hit

the road on our way to Florida. This was our second year,

so we knew what to expect with 2 days on the road.

Assuming that our little road warriors -- Maddie (8),

Skyler (6) and Emma (4) -- all managed the trip well,

we'd have 2 fun-filled days in the van before walking on

Florida beaches.

So how do you survive 2 days in a van? Well, you break out

the chocolate bars and Twix bars at 4:00am. Lemonheads and

Jr. Mints didn't come out until around 7:00am. We had to balance

the sugar with real junk food and around 8:00am we made our

first stop and picked up McDonald's.

Let's just say we didn't lose any weight on this trip:-)

It also takes lots of good movies. We watched several, including

Mama Mia and Madagascar 2. Thank goodness for the DS's

as they provided good entertainment when the movies

weren't capturing their full attention. We made great time

and stayed our first night just south of Atlanta, GA. We were

back on the road at 6:45am on Sunday. Skyler

reminded us of the chocolate bars around 7:40am that morning :-)

We arrived at Lido Key around 2:30pm on Sunday and hit the beach!

Pam had taken the girls to get pedicures right before our trip,

so we had to get a souvenir photo of their toes in the ocean.

The beach at Lido Key was covered with shells and we spent

hours going up and down the beach collecting shells and fishing

sand dollars out of the ocean. Pam and Maddie got up

early on Monday so they could have a better selection of shells.

The girls enjoyed the pool at the hotel and ended up with

a little too much sun. Poor Skyler was really red. When we

finally settled down for the night, she was lying in bed, crying

because her sunburn hurt. She had to get up and go to the

bathroom and as she got up, she said "I hurt so bad,

I can hardly move. I feel like an old Grandma."

If she only knew...

We all got up early our second morning at the beach and headed

up the beach in the dark so that we'd be in the right place

to get really good shells. We picked up lots of conch shells and

several other types of shells, even found a sea urchin.

We ended up with several whole sand dollars. They are so cool!

We saw some men fishing and one of them let Maddie reel

in a fish. Everyone along the beach was very friendly and very tan.
Our last morning at the beach, we had to do an official photo shoot.

The girls wore their pretty new dresses Pam had brought along and

Maddie wore her suit (no dresses for Maddie). They were so cute

in their dressy clothes and bare feet.

It was a little overcast, so it was perfect lighting too!

We left Lido Key on Tuesday around noon and headed south.

We went through the Everglades and took an airboat ride.

It was really fun and we had the best airboat driver.

We got to see Chuckee, the alligator, who only had one good eye as

his other one had been injured in a fight. He was rather calm,

which was good since we were very close to him. The airboat driver

actually reached over and touched him so he'd open his

mouth for us -- that's close! Once we finished the ride,

they had smaller alligators that Maddie and Skyler each held.

They were very brave to old one. We arrived at the girls great Aunt Linda and Susan's house

Tuesday around dinner time. Of course, the first thing the girls

wanted to do was get in the pool. They love the water and

performed all sorts of fancy dives and synchronized swimming

moves for us. We had a couple days of rain, so we just

relaxed at Linda and Susan's on Wednesday while

the girls played in the pool.

On Thursday, we went to Sawgrass Mills Mall, one

of the largest malls ever. The girls went to Build a Bear and

each made a new stuffed animal. Auntie Linda finally got to see

what Build a Bear was all about. On our way out of the mall,

we went by one of those massage stations. Emma grabbed her

neck and said "I need a massage -- my neck hurts

right here". I guess vacation is harder on a 4 year old than we'd realized:-)

On Friday, Auntie Susan took us to the Miami Sea Aquarium on

Key Biscayne. Maddie held and iguana and Skyler held a big,

blue exotic bird. We went to the sea lion, killer whale and

dolphin shows. We also saw manatees and sharks up close

and personal. They had a large inside aquarium and the girls

were amazed by this gigantic grouper. That's Maddie's reflection

in the aquarium glass next to the gigantic grouper.

On Saturday morning, it was time to head back to Iowa.

We hit the road around 5:00am EST.

The girls were all asleep by 5:30am.

We were successful in wearing them out on vacation!

Sunsets in Florida, can't be beat! Hopefully we'll get to

go back and enjoy them again next year!

Dress Shopping with the Girls

On Sunday, we met nephew Alex and his bride to be, Michelle,

at the bridal shop in Ankeny to have Emma try on the dress

Michelle wanted her to wear as flower girl in

their July wedding. Skyler is playing the piano for the wedding

and she loves dressing up, so she also had to try on

fancy wedding dresses. Below is my favorite pose of Skyler...

Except it makes her look much older than her real age of 6!

Emma usually isn't shy, however she didn't want to stand on

the bridal platform without Mommy for the first time!

Below is Mommy (my baby sister, Pam) and Emma

modeling the dress Michelle had picked out for her to

wear as flower girl. The pink socks add an extra

elegant touch, don't you think?

She also had to pose with Michelle, bride to be.

They are both so darn cute!

After trying on the flower girl dress, the girls had to try
on several other dresses, just because it was so much fun!
Here's Emma in an elegant black and white dress.

Skyler finally found the dress she wanted! It was actually
a turquoise color and I did a quick change in photoshop
to make it more of a charcoal grey color, which is what
Michelle's bridesmaids will wear in the wedding.
This dress is very similar to the bridesmaid dresses.
It was a little long, so the bridal shop is going to see if
they can make a shawl out of the extra they'll cut
off the bottom of the dress. It will also have little
spaghetti straps to help hold it up.

Aren't they beautiful in their elegant dresses?

My favorite shot of the two of them together. Skyler was
wearing a little tiara (hence the tag hanging from her head)
and both were holding bridal boquets.
They had a blast and so did I!

Winter Stroll by the River

Even though we had received 7 plus inches of snow Friday afternoon, the weekend was pretty nice. Temps were in the upper 20's and very little wind, so with full sunshine, it made a good excuse to get out of the house. So I asked Jerry where we could escape to outside!

He suggested we drive out by the river to see if we could spot any bald eagles.

As you can see, the geese were real easy to spot, the eagles, not so easy.


The river depth was actually higher on Sunday than it had been the past few weeks. They had opened up the flow and the water coming through the spillway was sraying everywhere.



You can see a little ridge of ice on the back side of the spillway. The water was very muddy looking.


There was so much spray from the spillway that ice had formed on top of the fence around it.

We then drove over to Big Creek and took one of the trails. It was very peaceful and no one else was out and about. We could hear the rustle of leaves that were left on the trees.

There were a couple of pine trees that stood out green in comparison to everything else along the trail.

Finally we reached the end of the trail walk for today. We did finally spot an eagle along the river, however I didn't have enough lens to get a good photo of it. Maybe next time!

Skyler's Story

Skyler's Story
Writing Class 1/29/2009

When I went over to my sister's house today, she had something for me. It was a story that our 6 year old niece, Skyler, had written in kindergarten writing class. It is so sweet, I had to share it.

In case you can't make it out in the scanned version, which wasn't run through spell check -- it's written as she sounded out the words -- here's what it says...

"I went fishing with my uncle and aunt and my aunt did not fish. She was only taking pictures and she is an expert at pictures and she prints them on the computer and they are amazing."

The girls love to go out on the boat fishing with Uncle Jerry. Skyler likes to "stir" -- that would be reel in the fish.

They are so precious!

1st Winter Trip to Ledges State Park

On Saturday afternoon, the girls and I headed up to Ledges to check out the frozen and snow covered park. We all had two layers of warm clothes and what we hoped were waterproof boots! We were ready to take on the trails! We parked on the lower end of the park, by the river, and started out heading up the little frozen stream. Every now and then we'd hear the ice crack and the girls would freak out. Fortunately, this little stream wasn't very deep, so not much of a threat.We made it to the first little stream that crosses the park road and the girls had to play and break the ice. We were surprised to find the streams as open as they were. They enjoyed throwing big ice chunks into the open areas.

We headed on up the road and noticed mother, son and their three dogs coming down one of the trails. The girls wanted to see the dogs, so we stopped and they played. We headed on up to the next stream together and the girls had fun playing with the dogs and the young boy.

We had to get a group photo, so you can see my shadow on the lower left side of the photo. That is Maddie's shadow next to me and then Skyler and Emma are trying to figure out how to break more ice around the edge of the open water. It was quite thick in this spot and it didn't break easily.
After playing for quite a while together, it was time for Lucas, his mom and the dogs to head on back to their car. We played around the stone bridge for quite a while. The girls picked up rocks and threw them into the stream to try and figure out how thick the ice might be. It was pretty thin in this area, so we stayed along the edges.Here's Skyler sporting her new smile (she finally pulled her front snaggletooth this week -- actually she let a complete stranger pull it on church night -- go figure!). This is one of our favorite spots in the summer. There are big rocks along the side of the stream and the girls climb up and down and toss little rocks into the stream.

Eventually we headed on up the road toward the last little stream. Maddie (in the red sweatshirt) was way out in front leading the way, followed by Emma in the pink sweatshirt and Skyler in the green sweatshirt. The water is much deeper at this stream and the ice wasn't very thick, so we didn't stay long at this stream. We finally made it back to the first little stream where the girls wanted to stay and play. As you can see, Skyler was standing in the water (not a good thing as later she had to whine a little bit about cold feet -- I had done plenty of warning that if her feet got wet, they would get cold -- however it didn't do any good) and Maddie was rocking on a loose chunk of ice. As you can see by Skyler's boots, the water was not deep right here.
No hiking trip would be complete without Skyler falling down and into the water. As you can see, this trip was complete :-) Fortunately the water was not deep in this area and they were having fun playing on their "ice" island. It wasn't too long after this that Skyler's feet were freezing and time to go.

Emma was pretending to fish. The stick was her fishing pole and she was catching lots of ice fish.

Here she is showing off her big catch of the day -- a great big "ice" fish (you have to use your imagination to see the fish).It was finally time to head back to the car. The sun had gone down behind the ledge and it was starting to get chilly. We made it back to the car and then everyone had to take off the wet outer layer and their boots. Unfortunately the underneath layer was also pretty wet, especially the socks! I had some towels in the back of the car, so they used those like blankets. We sang party songs, including "Don't Ya Wish Your Girlfriend was Hot Like Me" and "Hey Hey You You", all the way home. If they didn't like the song on the CD, then they would "vote" it off, pretending to play American Idol. Soon we were back home and the girls were quickly into warm, dry clothes and ready to play some Wii. I was ready to go home and rest :-)

Payton's Gymnastic Competition

Niece Payton Dykstra (Curt's youngest daughter), had a gymnastics competition on Saturday morning. She competed in 4 different events and placed 3rd in the overall competition for her age/level.

I don't know much about gymnastics, however I'm truly amazed by the strength, balance and concentration that it takes. It also means they are very well toned and have great legs! Too bad I'm too old to do gymnastics, as I'd love to have legs that look as good!







It was fun to see her compete and a great way to start off a Saturday morning!




Way to go Payton!