Aunt Gloria, Uncle Ben, and a Whole Lot of Fun

Grace with her cute pony tails and weird smile.  I thought Lily would grow out of it.  She hasn't and now Grace is following in her ways.

 

Lily in her "Monet" dress.  Picking the flowers.  I'm surprised I have any left between Grace and her!

An Easter egg hunt that a few families got together and put on in the park.  Lily finally got the concept this year and came home with a huge amount of eggs.  I threw some of them back.  I didn't think we needed that much candy lying around the house.  But then I got home and realized we probably did.

 Grace got the concept, too.  Jason wasn't able to come, though.  Can you guess why?  (Pictured below.)

 

 Beautiful Easter dresses that Grandma Ard sent.  I curled Lily's hair and below is a super cute picture of Grace.  The skirts on them reminded me of flower petals.  Loved it!

 We probably both had breakdowns during Jason's study regime this time around.  Even the girls were pretty affected by never seeing Jason.  We loved it when he would try to study from home.  The girls usually sabotaged it.

 

 And now for the highlight of this post...Aunt Gloria and Uncle Ben came to visit us for almost a week and a half.  And I could have had them stay for longer.  They did so much for this homesick mess I've been in again.  Not sure why it keeps hitting me.  We took the train into New York City.

 My Uncle Ben couldn't believe he visited Grand Central Station.  (He talked about the train and the station the rest of the vacation.)

 Some of us (Lily and Jason not included) went on a carriage ride through Central Park.  It was my aunt's dream come true:)  And we admired the tulips along the streets. (Pictured below).

 And we FINALLY got inside the Guggenheim museum.  We waited until Saturday at 5:45 pm because then you could pay what you wanted ($1 vs. $22) and we thought a small group of people had the same idea until 5:45 when we saw this line that had been around the opposite corner of where we had been sitting.  We couldn't even see the end of it.  It just kept going and going and going.  We were about to throw in the towel at 7:20 until I realized the line finally ended.  So Aunt Gloria was able to put another check on her bucket list of going INSIDE the museum.  (She'd seen the outside of it before.)

 The architecture was pretty cool.  The exhibit, not so much.

Although, coming down and looking around, you do feel like you are going around the inside of a toilet bowl.  Lily got some wonderful Uncle Ben time (pictured below.)  It was so nice because old people and babies have a lot in common...including nap time.  They seemed to be on the same schedule as my kids.  It was perfect!

I loved our morning visits, and our afternoon visits, and our evening visits.  I just love having someone to talk to throughout the day.  And they gave us so many tips on our house, inside and out!  Uncle Ben washed the dishes the whole time he was here and Aunt Gloria helped plan and cook a lot of meals.

 We went on the Essex Steam Train one Saturday.

It was built in the 1920s and I think I heard the conductor say that one of the cars on it was featured in Funny Girl and Barbra Streisand was riding in it.

 Lily helped me plant grass while they were here.  She also wanted to help water.  She came up this idea all by herself.  Fill the watering can cup by cup and then bring it out and water the flowers.  She stayed at this for at least an hour.  It was awesome.  A little messy, too.

Another Lily idea:  socks made out of Barbie dresses.  Genius!  And pictured below, poor Jason got in a pretty bad bike accident right before his exam.  Some cord started wrapping itself around his next so he stopped his bike quickly and fell over his bike, got scraped up, broken tooth, cracked helmet.  We're so grateful he was wearing a helmet.  He is such a trooper and resumed biking after his exam.  Pray for him.