The Last Day of March (and maybe winter?)

Over the weekend the weather actually improved and the snow mostly melted. The kids were able to go out and play a little bit. You can see the small piles of unmelted snow in the background in the pictures below. Fast forward to this morning, everything is covered in SNOW AGAIN and it is still snowing. I hope Mother Nature gets the memo that tomorrow is the first day of April. I really can't handle snow in April.


On a happier note, Anastasia and I made the Pioneer Woman's Chocolate Sheet Cake (you'll have to scroll through all of her cakes to see the recipe) a few days ago and it was sooooo yummy. Of course it uses nearly a pound of butter, so that might explain why it is delicious. :)

Snow. Again.

Yes, we woke up to more snow today. Never mind that it was the first day of spring the other day. Winter is desperately trying to regain its foothold here in South Dakota. I know I'm not the only one who is SICK OF WINTER!!! Joe keeps talking about moving to the Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico and I'm about ready to agree to it. :)
I don't have any new pictures to post. So here's a picture I took of Anastasia last summer. Can you tell I'm dreaming of summer? I promise I won't post/complain about how hot it is when summer comes. Really, I won't.

Happy Easter!

The kids were very excited to see that the Easter Bunny had stopped by our house last night. Unfortunately, it was only 28 degrees this morning. So we couldn't really dress for spring! Here are a few pictures from our Easter fun.
Anastasia colored eggs on Friday night because she just couldn't wait until Saturday.

Rafael having fun collecting eggs.

All dressed up after church. Anastasia is wearing a dress she got from Aunt Paulette for Christmas. Since it was pink and brown, we thought it totally worked for Easter too! Plus she wasn't freezing. :) Notice Rafael's chocolate mouth. He really didn't want to get his picture taken so we tried to bribe him.

First Day of Spring

Yesterday was the first day of spring and the kids got to play outside. It was kind of wet and messy, but they enjoyed it!

Nana & Papa

So I'm trying out Photobucket to see if I can upload images faster. Also, maybe they won't lose as much clarity. Here is a picture I took of my parents when we were in Lincoln a few weeks ago.

Yes, it worked faster!!! I was able to upload 3 images to Photobucket in the time it takes to do 1 on Blogger. And then it was a mere instant to move the picture from Photobucket to Blogger. Hooray!!!

Fishless in South Dakota

Yes, our last little fish has passed on. I really don't know what to do now. I suppose if we just keep the tank going it will continue to "cycle". Maybe if we wait a week and then take our water to get tested we can find out if we have nitrates in our water and then get more fish. This project was so much more complicated than I anticipated. Anastasia is sad but looking forward to getting some new fish. And she is really looking forward to coloring Easter eggs in a few days!

Movie Night

We took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who tonight. Anastasia really enjoyed it. Rafael enjoyed eating snacks and smiling at other people in the theater. (Over my shoulder in the dark). Silly boy. All in all, it was a fun night.

p.s. Our last fish is still alive. I think he might be lonely though. :(

Learning new things

So I have finally found what is possibly the best blog ever! Confessions of a Pioneer Woman has everything- funny stories, great pictures, recipes on her companion blog, and she'll even teach you how to edit your photos! She uses the fancy version of Adobe Photoshop, which I don't have, but her instructions are so detailed that I was able to find the comparable commands on my cheap Corel Paintshop Pro Photo software. So I used this old photo and turned it vintage. Ree (she's the Pioneer Woman), shows how to take a lousy photo and make it great with editing and get this, she is starting a Photoshop tutorial blog (which I can hopefully continue to use as a guide and learn how to use my software). Just thought I'd share! I still need to get a better camera, but for now I'm still having fun. :)

And then there was one . . .

. . . little fish left. Yes, we lost two more fish. It's hard to believe we only started this project a week ago. I have spent most of this week reading about cycling a fish tank, talking to the pet store and changing an enormous amount of water out of the tank in the hopes of "balancing the water". Today we took back 3 dead fishies to the store and had our water tested. The water actually was okay, so we don't really know why the fish died. The pet store suspiciously didn't have any more neon tetras, so I'm wondering if all of theirs died this week too. Hmmmmmm. Anyway, when we got home #4 was on its deathbed. :( I think if the last one survives we'll try getting a few more fish later in the week (from a different pet store). Sigh. This has not been fun.

Fun at the museum

When we were in Lincoln, the kids and I went to the children's museum. Anastasia has been a couple times before but it is a lot of fun (and 3 stories high)! Here are a few pics of things the kids really like. The old fashioned firetruck complete with fire hats-


The pin impression that Anastasia did with her whole body

The hot air balloon you can control and send up a few stories-

I took a whole bunch more pictures but I probably won't post them. The batteries on my camera were low or I probably would have taken about 100 (seriously, that's how many things the kids can do at this place). If you are ever in Lincoln, Nebraska and need something to do with your kids, check it out.

Another one bites the dust

. . . or in this case gravel. So this afternoon, another fish departed from this life. I called the pet store to find out what we should do and was informed that we should not have put 5 fish in our 5 gallon tank to start out. Of course they didn't tell us this when we were at the pet store buying the fish. Now they tell us we need to wait a month to have 5 fish in our tank and that I should change some of the water every 3 days to try to balance the bacteria in the tank. (Also, they told me that despite everything I'm trying to do, the fish might just all die because we have a new tank and it doesn't have the right balance yet). Who knew that having fish could be so complicated?!? Maybe we should have just stuck with the indestructible goldfish (although they are such dirty fish and I can't STAND them). Oh well, Anastasia fortunately doesn't seem too fazed by the whole thing. She was curious to look at the dead fish when Joe removed it today. Maybe she'll grow up to be less squeamish than I am (obviously, after the whole squirrel incident!).

We hardly knew ya

At 4:30 this morning I was alerted to the fact that one of our fish was no longer moving. So Anastasia and I removed him from the tank and I tried to explain to her that the fish had died. She seems to be taking it well. Fortunately, Petco has a 15 day return policy if one of your fish dies. Unfortunately, this involves bringing the deceased fish back to the store when you exchange it for a live one. So unlike the toliet flushing fish funerals of days gone by, our deceased fishy is currently in a plastic bag in the freezer (per the instructions of the pet store). Thank goodness he doesn't take up much room. :)

The Fish Whisperer

A few weeks ago Anastasia fish-sat for her friend Peyton's fish and LOVED it. So we decided to invest in our first pets - 5 tetra fish. Yesterday we bought the tank, rocks, and water. Anastasia informed me that she was going to make a fish-face at her new fish so that they would know she was friendly. I asked her if someone had told her that and she said "No, I just thought it up myself".:) So today we headed to the Petco (40 miles away) to buy our fish. They all survived the trip home and seem to be happily settled in their new home.

My handsome lad

I finally have been able to get some decent pictures of Rafael by using the burst button on my camera. I read this in a book, so I can't take credit for figuring it out myself. If you have this feature on your camera, I highly recommend it. The camera takes 6 pictures in a row, really fast, so you'll have a whole bunch that look the same. But it is a great way to capture smiles without having to wait for the camera. Normally on my camera it takes probably 10 seconds before I can take a picture again, which makes it hard to take the same pose quickly. So the burst button is a great way around that problem. I don't have a very fancy camera - trust me, so most cameras probably do have this feature. Now I just have to figure out how to make myself delete all the duplicates. I have a hard time deleting pictures unless they are completely blurry or ugly. :)

Playing outside

We had a couple nice days in Nebraska last week. So the kids got to play outside, finally! It was 60 degrees when we left on Saturday and there was no snow in sight. As we were driving home Anastasia said, "When we see the snow, we'll be in South Dakota." And she was right.