Aruba Arriba!

Nate and Jen took a much needed vacation this last week. Their destination? Aruba! What a wonderful trip. They spent 5 nights on beautiful Palm Beach just letting life's stresses drift away with the surf. We stayed in the Holiday Inn resort, which was a typical middle-aged Holiday Inn hotel, but it had the closest proximity to the ocean of any of the hotels on the strip, and the view from our room was spectacular. A big thanks to Grammy and Grandpa Q, and Mike and Katie for taking such great care of our kids while we were away.

 Enjoying some time on the beach

 Jen with the setting sun in the palm of hear hand

 There were a lot of restaurant choices near our hotel.  This was at a little sushi place and was a sushi sampler. We liked the food so much that we came back to this place twice.



 Here is the view from our hotel room

This was a pretty typical picture of me for the week.  

 Enjoying the warm weather.

At the little grille on the end of Pelican Pier, directly out from our hotel.  You're literally a foot away from the edge of the pier (no railings).  They had a wonderful grilled mahi mahi sandwich.  

We took a snorkeling trip on this pirate ship with the "Jolly Pirates".  This was a lot of fun. We snorkeled over a huge sunken US battle ship from WWII, as well as some off-shore coral.

Easter 2012

Nate coordinated a large data center network maintenance activity at work, which was scheduled for implementation on Easter Sunday once again.  This is pretty typical, as Easter is the only day that Target stores are closed (except for Thanksgiving and X-mas, but those days are during peak retail season, so the IT teams aren't able to make any changes).  So, while Nate put in about 22 hours at work on Easter Sunday (with an extremely successful maintenance), Jen and the kids went to the farm. 

The kids helped out with some chores, had an Easter egg hunt with their cousins, and searched for their baskets on Easter morning. 

Cisco the cat had kittens a couple weeks ago. 

 Daniel picking up eggs and putting them in a pail.  Someone dresses him in that green and gold stuff when Nate's not around.  Please note, Nate does not condone this. :)

One of the chickens was laying her eggs up on top of the coup.  Daniel had to crawl up there for Grandma to get the eggs.  Good thing he was there!

Daniel is 5!!!

Where did those last five years go?  Daniel turned five this year on April 1st.  It was a special birthday because it fell on Palm Sunday again; the last time his birthday fell on Palm Sunday was the day he was born, 5 years ago.  He has such a unique, fun, and wonderful personality.  He is incredibly smart, and physically talented, and the sky is the limit for this one.  We're so proud of him, and while we don't want to rush through these fun years, we can't wait to see what God has in store for him.
Like most years, we had numerous birthday parties.  The first one was with the Fedies at the Water park of America near the MOA in Bloomington.  Daniel wanted nothing more than to go to a water park.  Following some pool time, we all headed back to our hotel room for some pizza, cupcakes, and presents.

Daniel and his cousin Will having fun in the kiddie area

Opening presents in the hotel

Our family stayed at the adjacent Radisson hotel.  The kids had their own little room with bunk beds

They both insisted on sleeping on top, and even with the openings packed with pillows and blankets, it was

an all but sleepless night for mom and dad.  The slightest noise from that room had dad running to make sure they weren't falling out..  

 

On the morning of April1, he woke up to a flock of flamingos in the front yard again... the neighborhood sure loves it when we do this.

Daniel trying out his new skateboard and pads from John and Amy

The day of his actual birthday, we rented a giant bounce house and put it up in the back yard for the 'neighborhood kids party'.  This was party number 2

Daniel got lots of fun stuff from his neighborhood friends

Party nunber 3 consisted of Nate's family coming up.  Daniel wanted a Pirate party, and Jen hand crafted this incredible pirate ship birthday cake.  It truly was a sight. 

Jen even made Daniel a "Jake" outfit from Jake and the Neverland Pirates cartoon that he loves.

And, here's Daniel almost giving Jen a heart attack by pretending to slice the cake with his sword before anyone got a chnace to see it... fortunately, he was just kidding.

 Daniel and his cousins.  Brooklyn wasn't in the mood for pictures today; It was pretty cute. 

Nate and Kate