"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." This would pretty much sum up our spring break. I'll start with the good stuff. :-) We journeyed to Wisconsin where Doug had a conference at a resort that has a waterpark. Hannah and I have accompanied Doug to this conference several times in the past. It's been great - she and I get to play while Doug attends the conference. This time Ava joined us too, along with my parents.
On our way to the conference we stopped and spent a day with our friends the Javoroskis. We traveled to China together to adopt our Hannah and their Hayley. They also have a daughter Hannah who has been given the name "big Hannah" when our girls get together. :-) They were excited to finally meet Ava and we enjoyed spending time with them. It's always so wonderful to see Hannah and Hayley together again since they share such a special connection. Hannah was eager to share our China pictures with Hayley... luckily Hayley was a receptive audience. It was a beautiful day so we savored the sunshine and spent some time outside. The time passed too quickly. Fortunately, we'll see them again this summer at our annual travel group reunion.
The next day we headed to the conference where my parents met us. Doug had to set up his booth but then had the evening free. We had a fabulous dinner at the Moosejaw Pizza and Brewing Company. Yum-o! That night Doug got to enjoy some one-on-one waterpark time with Hannah while I put Ava to bed. They had a blast! The next day & a half Doug worked at the conference while we played. We did all of our favorite things: pastries (and coffee) at
Nina's, slipping down slides and playing in the water, decorating cookies, coloring a tote bag (Hannah), sweets at the
Sweet Hut and dinner at the Cracker Barrel. This year Hannah also had a braid/weave thing done in her hair. She was super excited to have it done and of course chose the color pink for the string and beads. Ava was overjoyed to play in the water. We have another "fish" in the family. She couldn't get enough. She especially loved the little spouting fountains. We were so thankful to have my parents along to help care for Ava and Hannah. We all had a great time.
Once we got home we were excited because we had fun things planned for the remaining days of spring break. Hannah did get a chance to play with a couple friends, but then unfortunately she and Ava got sick so we had to cancel the rest of our plans. Both Hannah and Ava had terrible coughs, fever, runny noses, etc. That was the worst of times. It is so hard to see your kids feeling so miserable and know there is only so much you can do. Both Doug and I are still pretty exhausted after many nights of little sleep and some days of not feeling well ourselves. Hannah is feeling better but Ava is still struggling with her cough - poor thing. Hopefully we'll all be healthy soon. It's so nice to see the sunshine and warm weather...my spirits have definitely been lifted after being stuck inside for too long. :-)
I won't subject you to pictures of our "worst of times" so instead here are the "best times" of our spring break:
