Tori had the awsome opportunity to visit the Grand Canyon a few weeks ago with about 20 kids from her school. (7th and 8th graders and 2 of their teachers) She had a great time and thought the airplane felt like a roller coaster. They were busy the entire time, they went to a minor league baseball game, a museum, a cavern, and of course the GRAND CANYON!!! Here are a few pics.The1st one is from the airplane window.
John's parents came out to visit us this past weekend and we all had a great time catching up! We took them to Holland (on the others side of the state) and looked at a few tulips along the way. Then we went to the beach, but it was too windy. The sand was hitting us so hard it was sandblasting our legs. After we got some lunch we tried another beach that you had to walk 15-20 minutes through a wooded trail to get to. It was beautiful there, but we had to head home (2 hour trip!) so we only stayed 20mins.
Tori is headed to Arizona this Wed. til Sat. on a school trip to the grand canyon!! I'm hoping she takes a lot of pics because chances are we won't make it out there any time soon. Not much else going on except the lasts few days of school. John has 1000 words left on his BIG paper and then it's pretty much smooth sailing until the end! We will be moving on or around the 25th of May and we will be heading back to NY in the 2nd week of June. see ya-all later!
Sorry there are no pics this time, I'll try again next week.
Saturday was John's birthday,since it was going to be in the high 70's we decided to go to the beach in Grand Haven on Lake 
Michigan . We stopped in Grand Rapids to see the Fredrick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Gallery, which had it's butterflies on exhibit. We saw hundreds of butterflies up close! Some of them even landed on people while they were walking around. We chased this blue one around for about 10 minutes until it finally landed with it's wings open so I could get a good pic. 
We had a great time even tho' the water was FREEZING!! The kids loved the sand and they were covered in it by the end of the day.(so was the inside of the van!) We played in the sun all afternoon and when we were getting ready to go to the pier, that's when we realized something was missing! Somehow John's wallet fell out of his pocket, and we think it got burried in about 4 or 5 feet of sand. There was a crew working on taking the snow fence down and the bulldozer made 4 foot ruts in the sand, which we had to climb through to get to the beach and back to the van to leave. We think (we hope) that it fell out there and got dozed over with sand. By the time we got back to the beach to look for it , the sand was all smoothed over and nobody had turned it in. But we weren't about to let that ruin our day, so we went to the baordwalk. While we were walking this huge ship came in the canal and blew it's horn so loud that I think 
everyone on the boardwalk jumped! We got half way down the pier and Derek had to got potty. And when a 3yr. old little boy needs to go... ya let him go. Luckily there weren't too many people going by right then so he wasn't too embarassed. After that we walked to the end where we sat for a while and looked at the lake while the sun was setting. It was a gorgeous day and hopefully we will get back there again soon. 
We really wanted to go home and be with family this past week, but we had a nice time at home finding tax info and catching up on much needed sleep. It has been so nice to sleep in until 9:00 every morning (not that I slept much after 8:00)-the kids were up, but they are getting old enough to get breakfast on their own, so I enjoyed my comfy bed a little longer than usual. (2 1/2 hrs to be exact!)
On Saturday AM Tori had a flute duet for a competition at school and she did great, she even got a metal! At 4pm we went to Ann Arbor with our Malaysian friends to a South East Asian Exhibit, food tasting and performance. The kids enjoyed trying new foods and pictures from the different countries but I think 
they liked the "show" the best. We had to leave a little early because of the 45 minute drive home, but it was a nice evening with the Cheah family, learning more about their culture. 
and learned how to cook some yummy food while they were there! On Friday we went to Ann Arbor again to visit the Museum of Natrual History. We spent 2 hours looking at dino bones and fossils, checking out how we "really" got here.(ha!) It was interesting, and gave it us an opportunity to reinforce creation! The kids liked it, but not the walk from the parking garage to the museum! It was COLD and blowing snow sideways!! We ate at a Potbellies for lunch which specializes in sandwiches on toasted foccacia bread. Good stuff!! -if you ever get the chance to eat there, do it. 
for Easter Dinner. They were gone all week to Virginia so we didn't get to spend any time with them over the break. She made a hash brown casserole, baby carrots, green beans, & cupcakes. I brought turkey breasts done in the crock pot, corn on the cob, rolls and cranberry sauce. It seemed more like Thanksgiving, but it was snowing most of the day so we didn't mind! We had a great break week, we are all so tired going back to our regular routine should bring back some sense normalcy if there is such a thing!! 
