The Hamstras: April 2009

Well, most of you already know about this but for my own records I'm gonna blog about it anyway. The Wednesday before spring break I looked at my calendar and noticed a miracle; I actually had a full week and a half with basically no commitments. That is completely unheard of for me. I was talking with my friend Dave who is a minister out in Colorado and we started joking about me taking that time to go out there to visit. Ha, ha, ha..... ha, hey, I could actually do it!! SO.... I talked with Jack when he got home that night, he took a day to think about it and then all of a sudden I was packing and on the road Friday morning.

I packed a cooler with tons of PB&J, pop & juice and a whole bag of snacks (thanks to Grandma Mary!!). I'm actually very surprised at how organized I was for this trip with the little amount of thought I actually put into the planning. Each kid had their own gallon ziplock bag with their name on it and each bag had the exact same thing in it, even down to the flavor of the dumdum suckers! I learned quickly into the trip that I needed a plan for the snacks. Jackson had seen the "bag-o-fun" that Grandma had brought over and so every few minutes he would say "um, Grandma DID pack snacks for me. Where are they, why can't I have them." So, we made a snack/activity schedule to minimize questions. I had popped a few bags of microwave popcorn before I left so I would open a bag at the beginning of a movie for them and it would last them most of the way through it. While they watched a movie with head phones, I listened to a book on CD by one of my favorite authors, Karen Kingsbury. When the movie would get over we would pop in a kids CD and dance to fun songs like "Old Sock Stew" and "I Took a Bath in a Washing Machine, " they'd get to sing loud and get their wiggles out for about a half hour and then we'd have another snack at the start of the next movie. Jackson did GREAT napping in the car in the middle of the day and while he did that Emma would listen to her Barbie CD player (she's SOO cool you know!). She got some great Cd's for Christmas this year and we also have the VBS Cd's from the last three years so she was kept very occupied.

Jack has a cousin who lives in Kansas City, MO and they were nice enough to let us stay with them overnight on the way out and back so it really made it a very affordable trip. It was also so nice to get to visit with them after a day full of driving with kids :) Mike & Leah have three kids and their oldest two are very close in age with mine so they were also grateful to have their fun cousins to run around with for a few hours to stretch their legs.

Emma doesn't nap a whole lot any more but after staying up WAAAY too late giggling with Maddie this is how she looked :)

We made it to Denver Saturday evening and got their just in time to go to a church with Dave and Jenni. They were staying in Denver for the weekend while Dave was on sabbatical. His time off work was another reason why this trip worked out so great. After church we went out to Red Robin and Erin was excited to give hugs and the kids were very excited that Dave and Jenni had got a us a room at a beautiful hotel with a pool!

Sunday we visited the Denver Zoo. It was lots of fun!

Sunday evening we got back in the car and drove the two hours to Canon City where Dave & Jenni live. Jenni was so nice, she decided I had enough driving and she took my van with the kids and drove them while I rode with Dave in their car!

Emma and Jackson were very excited to get to go to the park with their friend Erin. While we were there.

We were very excited just to hang out with them and of course we had to drive up "the mountain" while we were in Canon. Makes for great pictures and it's fun to be able to see their house right now at the bottom of it.

When we traveled out there last, Jackson was about eighteen months old and every time we would go down a big hill he would say "dan dup" (hands up) like you're on a roller coaster. They were very excited to be able to teach it to Erin this time :)

Another reason that made the timing of this trip so neat was that it was my friend Jenni's birthday while I was there. The kids helped me make her carmel brownies and we blew up balloons and made her a big poster which everyone (including Erin) got to draw on.

It was so fun getting hugs and sharing laughs :)

and fun visiting lots of states.

and most of all fun having friends :)

I had been talking for about six months about starting a play group at our house. Well, a few weeks ago I finally did it! Jackson really needed something to do during the day while Emma was at school and I'm trying to get him prepared for preschool next year.

Our play group is made up of mom's from our church that have children that are either home schooled or have young children still at home. We have met twice so far and it is going great. We are meeting every other Friday morning and we have story time, a craft, play time and then snack. We take turns with each responsibility so it's not a financial burden for any of us. I do host it at our house each week just because it's the easiest for us and we've been blessed with the large space in our basement for it.

We made rainbows for our craft the first week