Lets be honest

Lets be honest ... raising kids is hard.  There are so many things about life that are tricky, heart breaking, etc. but ultimately I choose to focus on the beauty that surrounds me.

These moments are not very fun, but ....

 I wouldn't trade them for the world because of moments like these!

 2 days of shorts weather and this is what Landon's knees look like.  Yup he plays hard!

and here is a little diddy to make you laugh.  Landon CRACKS ME UP!!!

tid bits

Since my sister titles about one of her blogs "tid bits" every week I figured I could take the idea for at least one of mine.  Here are just some of the pictures of life lately.  To quote a young Justin to his aunt "I sure do love life!" except that I mean my real life and not just the cereal.

ENJOY!!!

strange strange weather

You hear it most places you go ....

If you don't like the weather, wait.

Yes yes I know it isn't true for San Diego or Florida, you don't have to say it in the comments.  This spring has been quite fun in Calgary!  It has been warming up for about a month now.  Seriously even I am out of parka's at this point, but then we will get this weird, out of nowhere, crazy snow!  Ive only been here for 4 winters and there haven't been any spring storms like these ones.

This first one hit over night.  We went to bed and the weather was pretty beautiful and we woke up to about a foot of snow.  I have always heard of the perfect snowman snow but this is the first time I experienced it.  It was wet, sticky, and heavy snow!  Sheena, Evan and I built this snowman while Landon and Prycen ran around like crazy people.  I was quite proud of this guy and thank heavens I took a picture because by 4:00 that evening.....

 he looked like this.  And by 4:20 ...

 this.

My Grandma came for Easter and stayed awhile so we took her (and my cousins who were also visiting from out of town) to the Tyrell Dinosaur museum.  We love that place!  When we left our house it was chilly.  When we were driving home we literally hit the craziest, kind of awesome storm EVER!!!!  The snow flakes were GINORMOUS!!!!!!  They ranged in size from 2-5 inches.  While driving Landon said ... "Mom there are snowflakes attacking our car!!!"  Evan said, "There are snowballs falling from the sky!"

It was so awesome!!!
and it was gone by the morning.

the boys LOVED it!

Lima: Last day in Peru

Our last day in Peru was spent touring around Lima.  Remember that we were losing people left and right this day.  Even I ended up feeling very ill!!  I don't have a ton of pictures because I wasn't feeling well and many of the sights we saw didn't allow cameras.

This first picture is on the beach in Lima and it is the love park.  It is here that the world record for the longest kiss was made.

 Who knew that there was a historical sight like this in Lima.  Whats left of this city is from the ancestors of the Inca's.  They existed around 900 years before the Inca's.  Each of these bricks were made by hand in this matriarchal society.  This sight was massive considering how old and primitive it was!!!

It literally exists right in the center of Lima ... so cool!

This is the cathedral that the catacombs are under.  The catacombs are creepy and cool, but we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the tombs.

(do you see all the pigeons hanging out on the cathedral.  At this point we were all really sick!)

We also visited the gold museum. It was VERY cool!!!!  There were even Incan mummy's.  It is unbelievable that the entire collection (actually the entire museum) is owned my one person!  Talk about OBSESSION!!!!

This is some of our group after waiting for someone to show up to report our lost luggage.  We were at the end of a VERY long trip home ... can you tell?

Who wouldn't be happy coming home to this????

Home Sweet Home

                                               

Machu Picchu Day 2

Our hotel was AMAZING!!!!

Machu Picchu is more than amazing ... there are no words!!!  It is WAY bigger than I thought it was!  You never get to see the back half in pictures! 

(Remember that they don't even have everything cleared!  It is a monumental task to keep this much cleared.  The terraces go really far down the mountain.  They have a few patches down the mountain cleared just so you can see how giant this place really was).

When Machu Picchu was first "discovered the only part that wasn't overgrown was the sun temple, which is the circular structure in the middle of this picture.  The reason is because there is no mortar or dirt between the rocks.  The stones are carved so perfectly that it is made with only stone on stone.

It was actually my very favorite structure in all of Machu Picchu!  The Inca's didn't have any metal so they were carving these stones (perfectly) with other stone.  The top round structure is the sun temple and underneath is the temple for Pacha Mama.

This is a good view of one of the walls of the sun temple.  You can really see the perfection in the lines.  Even the corner stones wrap around.

It is structures like these that they know Machu Picchu wasn't finished.  These are the beginning of some stairs ... yes more Inca stairs.

Historians figure Machu Picchu wasn't discovered by the Spanish because it holds the only completed alter of any Inca ruins.  Every other alter was destroyed by the Spanish because the Inca's sacrificed babies on these alters.

Look carefully and you will see a hole in the ground where explores discovered Incan mummies.

An Inca door way ... I think they were a bit shorter than I was!!!

(Which makes their stair climbing ability even more impressive!)

I really wish I'd counted how many stairs I climbed from the bottom of the ruins to the Inca bridge.  I felt like I was on the biggest loser.  I kept picture Bob behind me telling me how worth it this experience would be, how lucky I was to experience this!!!  I'm going to try and google how many stairs there really are ... I wonder what I'll find.  One things for sure, the Inca's were in really REALLY good shape!!

First to the top ... YAY!!!

Sisters

The Inca Bridge.  So cool.  It is just wood so if intruders happened to come they could kick it off and there was really no way for anyone to cross.  That is part of the Inca trail which is a very thin trail on a cliff!!!  Unbelievable!

There were lots of Alpaca grazing in Machu Picchu.  Unfortunately the best picture of me is with the alpaca butt!  Oh well!!!

20 minutes after cuddling with this baby alpaca I was eating alpaca ... is that creepy??