Easter

Its always interesting to see what the newbies think of our strange customs....

The baby obviously has the right idea, but his inexperience is keeping him from full enjoyment of this holiday.







Big brother, on the other hand, seems to be with the program, and actually, is adept at finding candy at many other times of year, and in many places besides the garden!





Then there's Ali. He has joined our family for the last 2-3 months of his stay in America, and I'm sure that he doesn't know a whole lot about Easter either. And the relationship between Easter eggs and the Resurrection is fuzzy at best for this Muslim from India. But he knows a good thing when he sees it! Welcome to our family!




The extended family keeps growing. The nice thing about that is that there are always young folk to make the egg hunt fun and drag us oldsters into peeking around tree trunks as well. Of course, the seniors are just helping out the juniors....













Just so there is no confusion -- rabbits don't actually produce Easter eggs. Our small flock of hens (names, "Extra Crispy", "Deep Fried", and "Miss Bossyfeathers") maybe had a little something to do in that department. Although the real reason I included the photo is because I am amused that the three chickens are totally in charge of the three cats (one is camouflaged as dirt) who are looking longingly at all that tasty meat walking around.

Took my students whale watching! I was so excited, and I think my enthusiasm was contagious, so we were all disappointed when this was the best we could see. Still, it WAS a wild whale, and we DID smell his/her foul breath, and I am grateful. The boys made sure I knew how much they enjoyed this opportunity and wanted to do it again -- yeah, right.




So we went to the zoo. They seemed to like it a lot more and I got to people watch. Interesting...










Having Nina and Nathan around leads to interesting activities. Nathan started this brick path to our front door just before our one and only snowfall last Thanksgiving. In February I finished the last little bit of it, and made the one flower bed nice. It looks so good! The front yard is going to be really pretty one of these days!








So happy Albert could visit! Unfortunately, with two new jobs, I couldn't very well take a lot of time off, but Albert is resourceful. He decided he wanted to try squid and octopus for dinner. The squid dinner turned out pretty good....








The octopus, on the other hand, well....












We took Benny shopping with us -- it made shopping much more fun, but it took a lot longer. He's a good kid -- in the final analysis, he did, in fact, obey us and not take the candy -- but it wasn't an easy decision.







We took Albert camping at camp Zarahemla. If you double click on this photo you will see that it was snowing! (so nice to have a heated cabin!)










But it was beautiful!












We dropped by Fort Simcoe -- the history buffs among us thought it would be a neat experience, but in early April it's not. Closed. Cold. Old porcelain and furniture seen through the windows. And no spiffy updates from 30 years ago (or whenever it was) that Dad took a school trip there. But we were happy to spend time with Albert. This may be the last time we see him for years, since he will be graduating from RIT soon and returning to Kazakhstan.