2011 Highlights

Blessed....that's how I felt when I created this slide show.  Enjoy the highlights of 2011 for the Bakkers!

Easter, 2011

 My beautiful and courageous sister-in-law, Linda

 Kylie with cousin Jayce

 Not a great picture, but you get the idea of who was there!  From the top: Anna Marie, Ally, Lily, Isabella, Jayce, Sophia, and Grace

 The race to find the eggs is ON!

We are going to the Zoo! How 'bout you?

 The first day of Spring Break found us at the Chaffee Zoo in Fresno.  It's the perfect size for our kiddos...we can see most of it in under 3 hours (We did skip the petting zoo!).

 The girls enjoyed watching the elephants throw hay around for entertainment.

 The Orangutan exhibit had two adorable babies for us to ooh and ahhh over. 

 Another highlight was feeding the giraffes.

Nellie Sue

Lily was Nellie Sue from Every Cowgirl Needs A Horse by Rebecca Janni for her school's Book Character Day.  She was so excited to dress up like a real cowgirl!  We have a great background to shoot some fun pictures too!  I love the picture of her with Max, Kevin and Brooke's Lab.  The last two pictures are taken on our Feed Tractor, which we are getting ready to retire after running it over 15,000 hours.  It's served us well!

Gardening and a Class Project

 Lest my readers think we only go on vacation around here, I felt I should redeem myself with a "non-vacation" post. Lily's latest school project was on plants. She had to choose a part of a plant to do a short report on and give some examples. With some heavy guidance from me, she chose the root. She wrote a 25 word report, drew a picture, and added the following pictures from our garden to her project. We also pulled a radish and onion from our garden, as well as a carrot from Brooke's for her to take to school. She has a radish for each classmate to taste. That should be interesting! I knew growing a garden would come in 

handy! (Other than the awesome produce we get from it!) Let me tell you, as a former teacher, it was so hard for me not to jump in and help her with every aspect of this project.  It is ready to go though, in all its messy glory!

 

She had fun hunting for radishes that were ready to pick. If anyone of you is interested in starting to garden, grow radishes. They are so easy, and you will be harvesting in 30-45 days! Kids love to grow radishes.

I sacrificed one of my onions for her project. At this point, they are "green onions." They will not be fully ready to pick until July, give or take a few weeks. I am growing red and yellow onions, as well as garlic. We've also got some beets and lettuce planted. The tomatoes are in the ground too, so we're hoping for some fruit by the end of May.

The Mojave Desert

Charlie and I took the girls to the Mojave Desert a couple of weeks ago. He was all gung ho about the trip, and me? Not so much. I kept dropping hints about going to the beach, but he wouldn't take the bait. In the end, I was so glad we went. The girls ran around, rode quads, played in the dirt and picked up lots of rocks. Charlie and I read a lot and enjoyed watching our kids have fun together.

Above is our campsite....we "dry camped." For all you non RVers, that means we didn't have any electricity, water or sewer hookups. We also did without cable TV and Internet! (gasp!) Don't worry, we weren't without conveniences. Our RV has a generator (we did watch "Cars" on Saturday afternoon), capacity to store a lot of water, and also a huge reserve tank to hold the said water when it has been, ahem, "used!"

Lily learned how to use Uncle Jim's quad, which he so kindly let us borrow while he was in Australia.

The girls are wearing Mommy and Daddy's helmets.

Hawaii

Just saying the word "Hawaii" makes the family in my house giddy.  Charlie and I have been 3 times and our girls, twice.  Yes, my kids are spoiled.  We went for the first time as a family 3 years ago, courtesy of Nana and Papa DeVries.  Lily loved it so much, she asked, literally, for over 2 years, every week, "When can we go back???" No Joke.  We started a Hawaii fund in an empty 5 gallon jug and told her it would have to be full for us to even think about it. 

We surprised Lily on November 30 by picking her up from school and taking her to the local supermarket to turn in our Hawaii fund (Yeah, it wasn't full, but oh well!).  Half the fun of planning that trip was keeping a secret from her and knowing how excited she would be when we told her we were getting on a plane!  When we told Grace, she was disappointed we weren't going to see Mickey Mouse.

We stayed at the Hyatt on Maui for 8 days.  It was fabulous!