Eric Updates

We finally heard from Eric! He passed the GED portion of training and arrived at the processing part of boot camp. He's got 3-4 more days of processing and then the real work starts. He's doing good and had gotten really good at push-ups and sit-ups. He's been told that since he went to the 3 week GED training he's going to start boot camp 3 weeks ahead of the others physically-so here's hoping he gets promoted soon!

Museum Friday

For Kaia's last weekday of Spring Break we kept with our theme of "educational outings" and went to The Museum of Ancient History. The kids had a blast, largely because the museum is very kid friendly with lots of hands on exhibits. It's mostly filled with dinosaurs, but they've got an area where the kids get to play in a pond full of sand and little plastic dinos, and a pit where they get to pretend to uncover bones with little brushes. The museum boasts that its the largest dinosaur museum in the world, and they've certainly got a lot to look at! The kids had a good laugh listening to me try to pronounce the dino names. The pictures aren't very good because the batteries in my camera died and I had to use my cell phone, but they at least tell some of the story!

Clark Planetarium

Kaia has become very interested in the Earth lately, ever since watching "Planet Earth" with her Grandpa Hedman, and after she grilled me for over an hour about how the Earth rotates and space, I decided to take her to the Clark Planetarium. We, of course, picked to go the same day as a couple of the local schools so it was crowded but we still had fun! The girls got to pose for pictures on a landscape of the moon and one of Mars, and in front of a spacesuit. They got to rotate a little moon to show the different stages and see models of rockets and the planets. We got to see lots of pictures from the Hubel Telescope, see how much we'd weigh on other planets, and learn about why we have different seasons. We also got to see Under the Sea in 3D at their IMAX theater, which was very cool. After seeing all the exhibits we had a hour before the movie so we headed outside to the Gateway Mall to get some lunch, and not even 1 minute after we step outside it started snowing on us! We had to rush over to the "mall", which for those of you who don't know it's an outside mall where all the store entrances are on the street, and try to find the food court. By the time we got there we were all very cold and wet! We had a great time and got to see some really cool stuff!

Our day at the zoo

Kaia's school is on Spring Break this week, and since today is supposed to be the only nice day all week we decided to head to the zoo. The kids had a great time, especially Connor who LOVES animals. I think their favorite was the penguins. We had a great day!

Easter eggs

The girls and I colored Easter eggs on Saturday night and left them on the table for the Easter bunny to hide. The kids had a great time finding the eggs on Sunday morning and had devoured almost all their candy by lunchtime!

Eric

Eric made it to Arkansas safe and sound, after a few minor setbacks. First, they couldn't get him a flight out on Thursday so he had to sit around the hotel until Friday, and then he missed the flight! He has never been to an airport before and apparently he was waiting in the wrong part of the airport. So, he had to go back to the hotel and wait for another flight on Saturday. He finally made it late Saturday afternoon and was pretty worried about how much trouble he was going to be in. No word yet about how its going since he arrived, but I'm sure he's trying to adjust and will be just fine.

Eric's gone

We drove Eric to the hotel for him to ship out tonight. I tried by best to keep from crying too much, and Eric forced himself to go check in so I guess it went successfully. Even though we knew this day was coming, it really sucks. I miss him already and he hasn't even left the state yet! It's hard to imagine what these next 6 months are going to be like without him, but I guess we just go one day at a time.