Springtime at last

We spent Easter at the Spangler's house. The goats were there too.

Here is a picture of our dancers practicing in the yard for their performance of 'Magical Creatures'. It was the first really nice day of Spring and they begged to go outside and dance. Great fun for all! Our recital is coming up in June and then a nice break in July.

Joys of Travel

Well fans, here we are in beautiful Ohare Airport. The snow outside is lovely! However, it is getting less and less likely that we can get out of here tonight.

Amazingly, we did get out! Here is the view from the plane, and another of all the unhappy people at the airport! There was quite a storm that night. We finally go home around midnight after a long day of travel. Several days later the same storm hit us!

A quick trip to CA

We had a whirlwind tour! Only three days to cram in all the visiting we could. Dorian and Angelina are thrilled with their new life in Costa Rica. It's hard to have them so far away but we are happy that they have each other and their grand adventure.

Mom and Dad seem to be doing well; we had our dinner at the Balboa Bay Club, Dad's favorite place to take us. Also managed to get to Mi Casa - have to have that CA Mex food! The only down side was that 51 weeks of the year, it is sunny and 70 in Newport Beach and we clearly were there on week 52. Oh well, still can't beat a beachfront room!

Dorian and Angelina had a huge garage sale on the one sunny day we had. They sold a lot of stuff, but have lots more to go.

Well, more to come on our trip and our life!

Jurassic Park Projects

The Jurassic Projects - Part One

Our fireplace went from this (the charming lime green shag carpet was on top of the pristine oak floors when we moved in) to the one below in last month or so.

Robert was apparently inspired by Jurassic Park and has been on a fossil mission (actually missions...there are two others that we'll show more of later...wall plaques and a table which are in "The Sanctum"). Our new fireplace is decorated with fossil Ammonite shells, Trilobites, Raptor claws, various dinosaur tracks and is even sculpt-reliefed with Hadrosaur skin imprinting - a nice deep green (called Ancient Bog!) has replaced the rather annoying 1960's red brick facade. We also put a Victorian Fireplace replica with electric heater in there to help with heating the room (the original fireplace can't be used for firewood fires). Ahhhh, all ready to settle in and watch movies!

Our firelplace went from this



to this



over the last month or so. Robert was inspired by Jurassic Park, apparently and has been on fossil mission. Our new fireplace is decorated with fossil shells and dinasour tracks - a nice deep green has replaced the rather annoying 1960's red brick facade. We also put a victorian replica electric heater in there (the fireplace can't be used); helps with heat. Ahhhh, all ready to settle in and watch movies!

New Year's Day

This is how the new year started out for us! A beautiful snow that just hung in the trees. We took a walk over the bridge at Penn's creek, with our cups of coffee. We had a couple of cold weeks, and then it got very warm. Two weeks later, and the grass is green in the yard.