Good morning, Palm Springs

This is what our first morning & following mornings looked like. Elliot enjoying his favorite breakfast - bagels with cream cheese

Dave & Jonas picked oranges and made freshly squeezed juice for the rest of us!

Papa & Sadie enjoying a story together.

The Living Desert

One of the family events Dave & Jody had planned to do was to take the kids to the Living Desert. It's like a zoo, but the animals are more in their natural habitat. When I saw this picture, I thought the third boy looked quite like he belonged in their family!



I'm thinking these are a kind of wild pig, but I'm not sure. I'm just glad they're not real - they look pretty viscious!

This goat on the other hand, looks innocent enough, but apparently Sadie had a run-in with one of these! Jody said she'd turned away from Sadie for a moment & the next thing you know, this guy had head-butted Sadie & she landed on the ground. One very indignant & upset little girl!

Ice cream, anyone?

  Who doesn't like ice cream? Everyone enjoys it differently! Jonas & Sadie decide to get their licks in outside in the sunshine.

  Sadie especially enjoys her's all over her face!

  Elliot likes to eat his this way!


 
Larry looks like he's either quite content or had too much!

Swimming

Our first crack at swimming. The day is finally warm enough. The boys started off not wearing any life jackets or water wings. However, after two episodes of slipping into too deep water & swallowing more than a little quantity of water, Elliot conceded to wear water wings!

He just didn't have any fear before that!



Jonas can swim short distances if he needs to so he seems to be fine without any swim aids.

Bring on the bikes!

Dave & Jody's plan was to ride the bike paths of Palm Springs with their family. Larry & I have two bikes which they could use. We brought along a bike seat to attach to one of those bikes so Sadie could come along. Jonas needed a bigger bike, so they bought one for him. Because we were driving the van back, we had plenty of room to bring it home with us. And, for Elliot, we decided to purchase a bike that we would just leave at the condo for other years when grandkids would come down. Both bikes needed assembly, so here's Dave working on Jonas'.

All done! Jonas is ready to roll - and he does.

So now Dave works on Elliot's bike & it's ready.

So, Elliot is ready to roll - but, he doesn't! He seems to have forgotten how or has lost his confidence. It seems a little incomprehensible that last summer, at age 2, he was ripping up the streets like a maniac & this spring he can't ride! Anyway, we put the training wheels on & he rides away happily! Just a note, upon arriving home the weather is beautiful and within two days, he's back riding his bike quite confidently!

Greenspace

One of the unique things about Sunrise East is the amount of greenspace surrounding the condos. The more newly-developed condos have next to no grass, mostly cement. The grass makes it very attractive for kids to run & play. There's even a little hill in our backyard where the kids love to roll down.


Sadie enjoyed spending time here...

...and so did her Rosie, her bunny.


The kids blew lots of bubbles one day & had a great time with that.

Off to the pool

The first three days were not really pool days, but finally, by Sunday the temperatures started to climb into the mid to upper seventies. So, we're off to the pool.

It looks to me like Sadie is actually pulling Jody along! I think she's excited to be going swimming!

Papa spent some time with the boys in the water.


Sadie preferred to relax poolside & nosh at some food.

Poolside

This is what the kids were waiting for - swimming!

I don't know whether Jonas learned to dive here or if he'd done it before. Here he goes...

...and he's in! Elliot was also very comfortable in the water. He jumped into the deep end with no problems.


To get the two of them to stand still together was almost impossible! To get them to look at me at the same time - that WAS impossible! Oh well, you can tell they're enjoying themselves!

McDonald's for supper!

On the last day before Dave & Jody left, we had decided they could go out for supper, just the two of them, while we took the kids to McDonald's. So, here we are, having a burger & fries feast!

The boys were happy with their "kid's meal" because it included a toy! They were pretty excited about their toys!

Sadie was just happy to eat a few fries with ketchup and a yoghurt treat.

When we came home, we had mixed reviews from Dave & Jody regarding their dinner out! Dave asserted it was the best meal he'd ever had & Jody hadn't eaten a thing because she was too sick!

Escena Golf Course

Since we were both under the weather (how could you possibly be under the weather in Palm Springs?) we just didn't have the energy to do a lot of golfing. Hence, these are the only pictures of golf I have!

We had breakfast on their beautiful outdoor patio before we started. It turned out to be a gorgeous day, warm & calm. It's a beautiful course with lots of flowers and water.

It's also quite long so that made it a challenge.

But, we had a good time.

On our way Home

Having checked the weather we decided the best route would to be to head directly east instead of north through Denver. They were having some wintry weather in that area. So, at 7:45am on Friday, April 8th, under cloudy skies & cool temperatures, we said good-bye to our Palm Springs home. We had quite strong south winds that made driving a bit of a tug of war for Larry. The wind got progressivly stronger during the day. We drove through Phoenix, then turned north up to Flagstaff, Arizona. Here we ran into snow-clearing equipment where there was no snow & thought it was kind of funny! However, about 5 miles out of Flagstaff we did have a bit of sleet/snow. But those guys were ready - in case any snow decided to fall! At Flagstaff we turned east again and drove straight into New Mexico. The topography here is so different.

I quickly whipped my camera out for this picture which I thought was quite unique.

Somewhere along the way we spotted this tiny, old-fashioned windmill of yesteryear, dwarfed beside the giant turbines of today.


As you can see, driving long distances is not Larry's favorite mode of transportation! He'd rather be flying!

On the Homestretch

  Just a few miles north of Fargo, at Harwood, we hit floodwater! It starts off being just an inch or two...

  ... but slowly it gets deeper...

  ... and eventually we're crawling along through 5-6 inches of water. Not a very pleasant feeling! This is all run-off from the Sheyenne, Maple, Rush & Buffalo rivers. It felt like a lot more but I think it was 2-3 kilometers of flooded highway. I believe they closed the I-29 either the same evening we went through or the next morning. Anyway, we got through just in time!

 
Now this is overland flooding from the Red River. There is an amazing amount of water headed north! We are so glad we're home!