Firsts

A couple weeks ago we took Lily to Chuckee Cheese for the first time. She was a bit overwhelmed by all the "excitement" that goes on in a place like that, but she has asked to go back a couple times already. This was the only picture that I took the whole time we were there.


We also had the first backyard fire of the year. We didn't have any big marshmallows, so we roasted fruit-flavored mini marshmallows for mini smores. (I don't recommend it!)

We all took our first bike ride together tonight! I don't have a photo from this, but it was quite a sight to see Lily furiously pedal her trike the 3 blocks to the park and back home.

Finally this is a first-look at Lily in the morning. Her hair is becoming quite the wild animal!

PS -- Lily also wore underwear to daycare for the first time yesterday! (No photo available)

Happy Easter!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter and had a chance to celebrate Christ's resurrection! I don't usually post "deep" thoughts on my blog, but our pastor shared something on Sunday that had never occurred to me before. I had always thought of humanity's salvation as the most important consequence of the resurrection. But there are so many other things that would not exist without Jesus' victory over death. We are now able to pray to a living God, one that is empathetic to our pain; we can believe in all Christ's promises stated in the Bible (if he can come through on his promise to conquer death, he'll probably make good on his others!); and we can find hope in all circumstances because we know our team wins in the end!

Mike's mom came to visit us for the Easter weekend, and we had a great time with her.

During Lily's nap, the Easter bunny came. What kid doesn't love Peeps?

She looks so grown up (and cheesy!)

I will leave you with two more pictures from the past couple weeks. The first one is March 31st. The second one is April 10th. Maybe spring has finally come to the north land?

The Mighty Red

The Red River of the north has apparently crested, and now we just await the recession of the water. They say it will be a slow process and no one will breathe easier until next Sunday when the river will be below 38 ft. All kinds of outside support is here to help monitor and repair the miles of sand, earth and even hay bale dikes. At one point today we saw both a Coast Guard and Black Hawk helicopter flying over the city. We ventured to the river today and took a few pictures -- after all, this is an historic event! The first picture is a summer view that I found online and is simply for comparison to the second picture, which we took just hours ago.

The trees on the left side of this picture normally mark the riverbank. All of the water to the right of the trees (pretty much all the water you see in the picture) is outside the river channel.This picture shows the Fargo side of the bridge where there is usually a cement platform for viewing the river (left of photo). You can see that the retaining wall is holding back the water from the main street bridge (right of photo) that connects the two cities.

This last picture is my favorite. There is normally a road that runs under this railroad bridge. Notice the yellow sign. The road usually has a 14ft 3in clearance. Thankfully we are completely dry in our neighborhood. . . until tomorrow when we expect 4-8 inches of snow! Crazy.