photo free for all....

Well, the car lot has not come through for us, Caden and I are still car-less. The "rental" they had offered ended up to be broken. Just like a lot of promises....Luckily my mom was able to pick us up to get a couple of errands done and we were able to get a ride to Caden's school to go on the field trip that he has been looking forward to for days. Needless to say, our life has been filled to the brim with stress. Ok, enough of that ugly subject!

We were able to get away from the hustle and bustle and attend the spring kindergarten class field trip to the Grand Rapids Children's Museum and Frederick Meijer Gardens. I will let the pictures to most of the talking....

This week in pictures starts with April 15, the evening Caden lost his second tooth.

the tooth fairy left $1.50 in quarters which is burning a deep hole in Caden's pocket already!

Tuesday's field trip began with the Grand Rapids Children's Museum. Caden has been there two or three times. I think this will be the last, unless they do a major change up, it kinda gets redundant after so many trips.


domino stacking...

mirrored tunnel posing...(this is the only unsolicited pose I got, Caden bemoaned the fact that I was shooting so many pictures)


Caden particularly enjoyed working at the wee bank drive Thru window, and had his go at robbing the ATM also.

as always, the bubble area was a big hit.


such concentration!

and finally a little practice for backyard camping in the summertime..



Next it was time to go see the butterflies!

they set out nectar fulled sponges for the butterflies to feast upon. You can see the star of the show on the left, it is a clear wing butterfly. Beautiful!



views inside the butterfly incubator....


the moon moth, my favorite this year.



so pretty!

so many cocoons in various stages of development. What a wonderful sight!









and moments after:

it hopped onto my pant leg. We got it safely off the walkway.





a final close-up on another clear wing.

They also have a beautiful display of orchids...







and a family of flightless Japanese quail, but only one little guy kept following us around...


we finished up our day quickly observing some of the sculptures in the sculpture garden and playing in the playground.


sculpture made out of bicycle parts.

As you can see I got a lot of practice using the macro setting on the camera!

ps...Caden did his own hair, especially "spiked" to give the butterflies a place to land! so cute!

the amazing internet...

Ok, I am really thinking I am a puppet with someone with a strange sense of humor at the strings just trying to push me over the edge. We have all of last week, which is summed up in the post right below. Then I had the wonderful luck of our phone being called three times a minute for three and a half hours, from midnight to three thirty. Apparently one of those wonderful "unknown" callers, who use automatic dialer's targeted poor little me. I turned off the phone, but could still hear the answering machine. I called Paul, it interrupted me through caller id, beep beep beep. Hello? click. ugh. Going insane....Luckily Caden was fast asleep and blissfully unaware of my trauma.

We finally got it to end by looking the problem up on the wonderful world of the Internet. Apparently you answer the call and push 11 * 3617 #* . Who would have thought of that. I was in disbelief, but it actually worked.

So I got three hours of sleep last night and did not wake up on the right side of the bed so to speak. Where is that magical hole that I can crawl into? Oh yeah, I am a parent, not so healthy. No hole. Today will be a better day.....um please?

My Life...a sad, sad book?

We have been told more than once that we should write a book about our life and our multiple experiences. At church today we were talking about how sometimes some people go through so many trials and others, well, not so much. Everyone has trials, but then there are TRIALS. For example a couple from our church lost a baby tragically last year, and then this year, while on vacation, the husband dove into a wave and broke his neck. Now that is a TRIAL. He is a pastor. Miracles have been happening for them, but he is still paralyzed. But God has equipped us to make it through our trials. When I have a bad few days like I have been having lately, I am reminded of their journey and every step of the way when a door closed, at least one window of opportunity opened.

Ok, back to our zany trials. Paul has been in South Carolina for a week. In that week I locked myself out of the house. I discovered that Paul had all of the house keys. I discovered that I cannot kick a door in. I also discovered that calling a locksmith is much cheaper than kicking said door in. Then our telephone went on the blitz. I could call out, but every time someone called me it rang once on their end and promptly hung up. It never rang inside the house. This problem caused me to crawl around the house trying to figure out if something was wrong inside the house etc. Not fun. Well, that got fixed by our lovely AT &T man. He was awfully kind. I was finally coming out from underneath my week of small trials and tribulations when someone knocked on my door this afternoon after church.

Who could it be? Well, apparently, while the phone was on the blitz the car dealership where we just bought our car two weeks ago had been trying to get a hold of us. The title papers did not go through on their end and they discovered someone had not paid the lien on the car. It was basically illegal for me to have the car. Bye bye...Audi. See you later. Me, here, all alone, no car. Ok, panic settling in. The dealership was very understanding and is bringing me a loaner car tomorrow until we can find another car of theirs that we like. They think that they have a used lexus coming in (I have never driven one, we are more Saab, VW, Audi people) But at this point I will just be happy with four wheels that will safely get Caden to school and back.

....
suddenly, as I was just writing this, I realized that the timer for my comfort food (chocolate chip cookies) didn't go off. Can it get any more like a sitcom? I don't want to ask, I am afraid of the answer. My cookies are now very brown, but I think salvageable......

ok...well wish me luck for a better week this week. Caden has a field trip on Tuesday and we need transportation that day or he will miss it. The car guy even gave me a hug...so he better keep up on his promise for the loaner car tomorrow. Or I will cry.

I thank God that all of my trials this week can be fixed. I am thankful for our health, I am thankful that Paul's cancer is in remission and I am thankful that I have a good set of doctors that help me deal with my back. I thank God for the hope of another day, and for that day to be better than today.

ok, venting does help. I don't feel like crawling into a hole too much anymore....

happy Easter

Caden (still with his fever rash above his lip from being so sick last week) posing with his new little mini moopy bunny.



Happy Easter.....♥ ♥ ♥ Paul, Michelle and Caden



ps....this is our weather...colder than Christmas! too funny!

hackers suck!

Two days ago I was cruising the web, answering email, you know, the daily routine...and I was interrupted, left a few windows open connected to the web. Well, withing ten minutes we were under attack from some nameless predator who strives only to wreck other people's things, even livelihoods could be affected. Someone completely hacked my new lap top. I mean I have had this thing for like three weeks. I was so devastated. They locked down everything, right down to the motherboard, basically rendering it a six pound chunk of junk. I thought that I had lost everything again (only a month or so ago my last laptop had a meltdown and I lost all of the info on that one).

Luckily I have a husband who, given a little time, was able to break back in and get it back to normal. When this happened he was really skeptical if he could fix it. He was also swamped with work. We were really fortunate that Paul was home when this was happening and on the network and was able to stop the attack as it preceded onto the rest of the computers on our network. Even though it is just a "thing", I felt so violated, even lost sleep, just because someone, who does not even know who they are attacking, violated us.

So, I just wanted to warn you not to leave your computer with open windows. One day, you may find yourself with a locked down computer or worse, they could take vital info from you.

We are all better now, thankfully.

The Easter bunny decided to make an early Saturday stop at out house, so Paul can enjoy a little Easter celebration before he leaves for South Carolina. We were able to find a second car, and are enjoying having two car payments once again, so he is able to drive down. This saves us tons of money as renting a car is quite costly. Now the only thing left is to find housing (the house we think we are going with is not quite finished) sell half of our furniture, (the house does not have a basement and is about one thousand square feet smaller than our current house), lease our current house (we are not selling it because the economy in Michigan is scary, plus we haven't owned the house long enough to have much equity, and Paul wants to keep it as an asset), Caden to finish kindergarten, pack, have a yard sale, and move in mid-June. Oh boy....wish us luck.

bug is sick....

Caden has been very sick for the last three days. 103 temperature....brought him to urgent care because we were afraid of pneumonia, but they said it was viral. After another talk with his pediatrition today, they said the fever could last one week. ugh. poor little bug, not a way to start Easter break...