Zoo Day

 While we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa we were able to meet Uncle Matt, Aunt Brianne, Brogan, and Payton for a fun morning at the Syracuse Zoo.  We haven't seen them since Christmas in July last summer, so we were excited to be able to finally meet baby Payton.  Addison talks about him all the time, so it was nice for her to actually see him in person.   It was an absolutely gorgeous day and all of us grown ups got our exercise keeping track of these two toddlers!

 Addison was excited to be able to help feed Baby Payton his bottle.  She's really into dolls right now, so Payton was pretty interesting to her!

 Addison falling in love with gummy worms.

 Payton decided he wanted to lay down to drink his bottle, so feeding him while we walked became a 2 person job.

 This was right before Brogan stuck his head through too far and got stuck.

 This picture captured the brief moment that Brogan and Addison were actually interacting with one another! :-)

New York Road Trip

 Addison and I just returned from a week-long trip to visit Grandma and Grandpa Liddick in New York.  David has been in Michigan taking a class for the past week, so we thought it would be the perfect time to get away; especially since we're now a drivable distance to them.  Addison did an incredible job being back-seat passenger all by herself and our drives there and back were both smooth and uneventful.

One of our favorite stops in Rochester is the Strong Museum of Play.  I believe this was Addison's third time there and it's fun to see her enjoy more and more of it each time we go.  While we were there, we also were able to visit the butterfly garden.  We would have liked to spend more time there, but a certain someone was in need of a nap. :-)

We had a lot of fun doing other great things on our visit, but I'll tell about those in separate posts.  For now, enjoy these pictures from our day!

Happy Easter!

Working for a church, you rarely have the luxury of celebrating holidays like Easter with your family. This was the first (and probably last for a while) time we've managed to get everyone together to celebrate Easter on the Gafford side. Though Addison's morning started off rough, (adjusting to a new church/toddler room after an hour drive to church), it got a whole lot better when her three big cousins arrived! We got a few shots of her in her Easter dress and then you'll see we quickly switched to play clothes for the real fun.




We decided to pull out an old Grandma Cox tradition of hiding the Easter baskets and giving each child a trail of yarn to follow to find it. We kept it pretty simple for the younger two, but made Emily and Lauren work a little harder for theirs! Here are all four girls lined up with their sticks and yarn ready to go find their treasures!

We had them spread out so no one's yarn would tangle. Addison kept yelling, "Hey everybody; over here!" I don't think she realized that the others were following their own yarn trails elsewhere.

Thank you Grandma for my Easter basket!

Allie's 8th birthday

Last Tuesday we celebrated Allie's 8th birthday. For some reason it has become a tradition to treat her to ice cream every year. Fortunately the weather was just nice enough last Tuesday to head out to Sophie's Ice Cream shop in Gas City for a cone. Allie ate hers like she'd stolen it from us, which is how she tends to eat it every year. She ate it so fast, it was clear she was suffering from frequent brain freezes, but I think it was worth it for her.




Of course the rest of us had to indulge as well. After all, we were celebrating a birthday. It's only polite for everyone to partake. Right?

The Indianapolis Zoo

We took the whole Gafford crew to the Indianapolis Zoo yesterday. David's sister's family will be moving away to plant a church in Denver at the end of May, so we're trying to make the most of the limited time we have all living in the same state for once! It was a cool day, but the animals were all out and fairly active for the most part. We brought along our resident photographer David to capture the day.

Addison and Daddy riding the train.

Addison and her cousin Lauren

Riding on Daddy's shoulders

Carousel ride with Mommy

Addison came face-to-face with a (stone) lion.

She didn't want to ride in the stroller. She didn't want to hold Mommy or Daddy's hand.
She wanted to hold Aunt Julie's hand. :-)

Mall of America and Dangie

There are 2 kinds of Minnesotans (at least in the Twin Cities). Those who actually go to the Mall of America, and those who won't touch it with a ten foot pole. In our nearly 6 years here in Minnesota, we have made several trips to the Great Mall. Some were to take advantage of our family membership to the Sealife Aquarium (one of the perks of me being a teacher). But many of those visits were planned in order to meet up with our long-time friends Dan and Angie Leverence. They live north of the cities and we live southeast. It was usually a good "split- the- difference" location for us to connect. We rarely bought merchandise there, if we're being completely honest. It was more just a good place to meet up with friends, eat a meal, and walk around.

Tonight was our final trip to the Mall of America. More importantly, it was our last trip to meet up with Dan, Angie, and Tate here in Minnesota. We decided to make it a memorable one and take the kiddos on a few rides. You can see here in the video, that they were a hit with Addison.



Will we miss the Mall of America? Perhaps on a dreary rainy day we'll miss the ability to have an indoor "playground" to get away to, but I'm sure we'll find a new version of that in Indiana. What we WILL miss is the reason that so often drew us to the mall. We'll miss the wonderful friends we so often saw there.

We love you Dan, Angie, and Tate! Thank you so much for your friendship and involvement in our lives. It has been so much fun living near you these past 6 years!

Daddy Daughter jam session

Addison has shown a real interest in Daddy's guitar lately. Here's a little clip from tonight's jam session.



However, I'm not going to lie, she can be a bossy little thing at times, so it often ends (as this one did) with Addison shushing Daddy or telling him not to use his pick. And then telling him to use his pick. And then telling him not to use his pick. And then telling him to "Shh, be piet (quiet)." But until it gets to that point, they share some pretty sweet moments making music together. :-)

Guess what!!!

God is so good. He can do the impossible.

We listed our house to sell onTuesday, February 21st. Don't tell anyone, but we fully expected it to take a long time and that we'd have to sell it for far less than we'd hoped.

But guess what!!!

We had 3 showings that Thursday night and our first offer came in around 10:00 that night. It was pretty good but not perfect. So we sent a counter-offer the next day. And guess what!!!

They dropped out. Their parents convinced them they were already at too high of a price point. But then guess what happened next!!!

We had another showing that Saturday and 4 more showings the next day. And then guess what!!!

The perfect offer came in last Sunday night. They offered our listing price with $0 back for closing costs and no contingencies. So guess what we said!!!

We'll take it!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our home inspection was completed this past Tuesday and went off without a hitch. We're scheduled to close at the end of this month.

I've felt pretty strongly that God' s hand has been in this move for us, and the way He sold this house is just more evidence of that. Thank you God!