All Addy, All the Time

Two and a half days in Chicago with Addy and her parents. She was a little shy at the beginning, but, hey! some new play friends were in her house.  

What is a girl to do?  Climb up on the bed and get acquainted, of course.

Yes, this monkey barrel fits on this foot...

 

 ...and this pink cup fits on this foot...

...et voila!  We have Chicago snow shoes!

I don't care much for the fashion, though.

 

Eating is such a burden when a girl just wants to play.

 

 Unloading the dishwasher counts as play, right?

So many books to read, so little time with Grandpa.

 Come on now, Grandpa! No slacking! Feel the burn! Lean into the stretch!

Special delivery for Grandma.

  Queen of the hill at the mall play place.

Checking out traffic through the play place porthole, like any good pirate would.

Stylin' at home!

Bedtime stories with Dad and Mom.

We're going to see monkeys! Oo, oo, ah, ah!

Real Chicago family, real Chicago skyline.

A girl gets tuckered out talking to the animals

Hey, get that camera out of here!

Now give me the camera, I'd like to take a picture.

Hey look at this neat hole!

I think I can fit in it.

Maybe if I chew the hole bigger.

I'll just take a short break on Grandpa.  He's pretty warm...

A soft Grandpa and a soft blankie when waking up in the morning.  Can life get any better?

No, I submit it cannot.

Easter Walk 2015

From my walk Easter morning: everything is blooming.  These are the flowering pears. Paul calls them "stinky trees." the wind blew a lot today and the blossoms are off the trees, swirling like snowflakes.

Not sure what this one is.  Cherry?  Redbud?

Daffodils were out so early in Utah, they are almost gone.

Can't remember what this tree is called: smoke tree? But it is flowering with everything else.  Peer pressure.

Forsythia is its usual riot of wild spring color, and unruly branches.

Red tulips always shock me with the intensity of their color.

 My usual walk goes down 1300 W,

to the river bottom.

The views of the mountains are spectacular.

A river meanders through the rushes. Ducks are common, as is a family of red foxes I sometimes see.

And there is a trail, though it is usually covered in goose poop.

Aforesaid goose.

The trail wanders between farmers' fields.

And even the horses were napping in the warm spring sun today.

Back amongst in the neighborhood, more trees are flowering.

One house has a nice bronze in the middle of a roundabout driveway.  I doubt it is a real Remington, but it is in the style.

More flowering trees I don't know the name of.

And here is another popular spring flower.

Our own garden has pansies and crocuses and snapdragons. (Thanks in part to the Rogers' girls who helped Terisa until dark on Saturday night.

We set out the glass Philly plates, and had room to seat 20.

Everything looked nice.

Everyone brought their share of food, and we had plenty of everything.  Yes, LuAnn brought the hot mustard for the ham. It was sinus-clearing good.

 Always fun to have everyone milling around, snacking and talking.

And eating.

Terisa's ham was triumphant.

 Todd brought some bunnies from the pet store for the kids to play with.

Although the kids played with the bunnies a lot, 

 

and kept them off the furniture, as requested, Dayna adopted one for the evening, and kept it on her chest.

 

 

 Until it unloaded a dump truck of pellets on her blouse. Eventually all of the bunnies did something revolting on someone.

We sat around and talked and laughed and talked some more until it was time to go home. I suppose we have all kinds of challenges in this family, but we still like to get together.  And Easter is as good a time as any to do it.