Museum of Natural History

Queens Day in Holland! Definitely something we miss here. Especially with the beautiful weather you now have in Holland, you are probably having a very (orange) ball...

We went to the Museum of Natural History in LA today ...

Can we lift that truck?

... where we saw too much to mention ... but we loved the skeletons and the fuzzy big bear!

Easter breakfast

Happy Easter everyone. As we said our 'Zalig Pasen' to each other before breakfast I was surprised by how much the kids love these traditional days and make it their own. First of all Bibi had made everyone individualized Easter-booklets with stories, wishes and games - 

After breakfast we saw something floating in our pool. The Easter Bunny had been very creative this year and not only hot all the goodies well, the ones in sight needed extra work to get ...

Then we suddenly found a 'statue' of the bunny in the garden with a whole search and find game following its clues. Strange that the Easter Bunny forgot to include Iris in the game or was she in on it?



















And then we also found a picture in the garden: 


 














Certainly very busy bunnies this year. 
At night we had an Easter dinner at our neighbors and afterwards played a bit outside ...

Wendy Trail

Very close to home we hiked Wendy's Trail today - a hike that leads you through Satwiwa American Indian Culture Center, with an Indian tent, herb garden and real life rattle snake. It's funny how we have already gotten used to snakes being a part of our nature trips. Iris ran into the tent first, so I asked her if there was anything to see, to which she replied yep! After asking her what and upon entering she replied: There a rattle snake here ...

Behind the sacred mountain where many American Indians are buried an easy hiking trail with beautiful views leads to a waterfall, which is small or big depending on the amount of rainfall. Which in our case meant small. But it definitely rains in California, because a few days earlier the ranger told us some of the trails were just streams ....

From Wendy point it is also nice to make a hike to the beach - which is about a 2.5 hour walk, so we left that for another day.

Skiing on China Peak with the Clark's

This Spring Break we were invited to ski with friends on China Peak. We had a wonderful time. 'Only' 3 days - but we managed to have fun and ski: 

The group minus 4

and have professional snowball fights, including the forts, the handshake and the attack from behind! ...

surprise attack ...

  

and make the real smores by roasting the marshmallow on a twig above the fire and then squishing it in between 2 crackers and a piece of chocolate .... mmmm ....

roast the marshmallow

the end result

and repeat ...

and snowboarding and more skiing: 

 

and relaxing in the jacuzzi ...


Unfortunately all good things come to an end but what a beautiful drive back home ...