Spontaneous Road Trip Anyone?--Wochen 16-17

So, after we got home from Switzerland on Sunday night, Dan headed right back on Monday.  He spent the whole week in Basel.  He got back late on Thursday night.  The kids and I had a pretty normal week.  We just waited for him to get home.  Friday, Dan decided to work from home.  As he was down in the kitchen eating lunch with me, we realized that it was yet another long weekend.  The kids didn't have any school on Monday.  We thought that maybe we should go somewhere.  The kids have been really wanting to go to LEGOLAND.  We checked online and called them.  We asked if by any chance they had any lodging available for a family of six for that night.  They were all booked, of course, but they had a camp site left available.  Dan and I looked at each other, shrugged, and said that we had the tent and at least a couple of sleeping bags downstairs.  That was the extent of our camping gear here.  We decided to go for it anyway.  We haven't done any camping yet because most of our gear is in storage back in the U.S., but felt that it would be a shame to not have that experience.  So, we decided at noon on Friday that we were headed out for the weekend.  The kids got home at 4:00.  We had their bags all packed and ready to go.  We did find that we had 4 sleeping bags.  The kids were not excited for this spontaneous trip.  They were tired and just wanted to rest--until I told them where we were going.  So off we went on a 5 1/2 hour drive to get to our camping site. 

We arrived just after dusk when there wasn't any light left, except for the moon.  We discovered that I had forgotten to pack a flashlight, but ended up using the one on my phone instead.  We got the tent all set up.  The camp site was not much to look at.  It was a piece of grass with small hedges growing on either side.  There was no fire pit (fires of any kind were not allowed) and no picnic table.  We got everything set up, and got two of the kids settled down with blankets.  Danyon, who is new to camping, didn't know how to settle down, and Dan had to put him in his sleeping bag with him to keep him from moving around and freezing during the night.  Danyon slept great, but Dan, not so much.  Danyon flails and moves a ton in his sleep, not to mention that he still likes to sleep with his knees underneath him and his butt in the air.  This made it difficult for Dan to keep the sleeping bag on the both of them. 

We were awakened in the morning by the Cuckoo birds.  It was really cool to hear them--until we looked at the clock.  They were singing at 3:45am.  Who needs a rooster when you could have a stupid Cuckoo?!!  I think that I now know why Cuckoo clocks were so popular in Bavaria and Switzerland.  The whole idea of Cuckoo clocks is to get you used to the sound every hour, so that when the real ones start their racket in the wee hours of the morning, you don't wake up and get annoyed.

The rest of the camping facilities were awesome.  I had not seen cleaner bathrooms and they had huge stalls with a dressing area and shower.  You didn't have to pay for the showers either.  They had sinks at kid level and sinks at adult level.  There were Lego figures everywhere.  Later that morning, we grabbed some breakfast from a local store, ate it on the tailgate of our car, then headed for the park.  LEGOLAND was a lot of fun.  The only other thing that I had forgotten to pack was the stroller.  So we ended up renting one, but we couldn't lay it back, so Danyon didn't get a nap. 



There were not too many people at the park and the most we had to wait in line was for 15 minutes.  It was awesome.  There were 4-D shows, rides, and whole cities made from Lego.  Venice was our favorite.  Danyon was enthralled with the airport for more than half an hour.  The rides were a good mix for our family.  Dane doesn't like rides with loops or spins.  Danyon doesn't really care for fast rides either.  He loved the plane ride though and anything that he could steer--planes, boats, and the safari jeep.  Dane, Deagan, and I loved the Dragon/Castle ride.  We went on that one twice.  Dyllan and Dan liked the technic arm ride.  This ride was a robot arm that you were in.  You choose the level that you wanted.  (Level 5 was the pro level with the most turns and flips).  This is what Dyllan and I did.  Dan went with Dane and Dane wanted a level 3, but Dan negotiated to a level 4.  Dan said it was still fun and it was his favorite.  Of course, there was a gift shop.  We didn't buy any Lego, but we did buy some mini figure and block ice trays.  Dan also couldn't resist the single brick salt and pepper shakers. 
There were a few carnival games that Dan couldn't resist too.  After investing more than he wanted, he did win a big minion stuffed toy.  (He felt much better about it after he found one in Vienna that was selling for 79,99 Euro.  Luckily, he got a much better deal).  After the park closed, Dan and I left the kids in the tent, and we headed out to find more blankets in a store in town since Deagan got cold and Dan didn't get much sleep.  We were lucky to find a grocery store that just happened to have 2 sleeping bags in it.  We couldn't believe it!  We grabbed them, and some stuff for dinner and breakfast the next morning.  That night, things went much better.  We were able to put Danyon in his sleeping bag, add his blanket, zip it up and pull the string to make him a mummy.  Danyon found it much harder to get out of this contraption, but it still took him a long time to settle down for the night.  He finally figured it out, but continued his flailing and moving about throughout the night.  We were so tired that night that we didn't hear the cuckoos, or at least, I didn't.  Dan did--same time that morning.

Sunday, we just took it easy.  We wandered around and tried to keep it pretty low key.  They gave us two day tickets with our package price of the campsite, but the tickets had to be used on 2 consecutive days.  We went to the park on Sunday, but found it to be much more crowded than Saturday and not much fun.  We left early and spent some time in our tent reading Harry Potter.  We have just started this series with the kids.  (Dane has already finished it all, but the other three haven't read them yet).  They enjoyed listening to several chapters of the book.  We also played some games in our tent.  It was a fun day.



This is from the pirate ride

Monday, we got up, and then packed everything up.  We decided to head for home.  Dane had to get together with a friend to do a school project that afternoon.  We got home by about 3:00 and then unpacked and got everything ready for school the next day.  The rest of the week went well.  Dan headed straight for Basel, yet again, for Tuesday and Wednesday.  He got a break in scenery for Thursday and Friday.  He went to Barcelona for those two days.

Dane got to go to the ISST track meet in Waterloo, Belgium.  His flight was for Wednesday morning.  Unfortunately, there was a fire at the air traffic control in Brussels, and his flight was delayed for several hours.  He finally made it.  Dane ran in two races.  The 800m and the 1500m.  The 800m didn't go so well.  He came in last place, but it was okay because he was running against high schoolers.  The 1500m went better.  He didn't come in last and he even got a personal best.  He ran it in 5:19.  I think Dane's favorite part about the trip was getting to miss school for 3 days.  The people he stayed with were pretty cool too.  They had a great house with an indoor pool, tennis courts, a sauna, etc.  The family had 4 kids of their own and then housed another four.  It was a fun place to stay!  We're proud of our 13 year old middle schooler, in getting the invitation to run with the high school JV team and even though it was a completely different level of competition than he experienced in the middle school championships, it was a good experience and helps him prepare for next year.

Dyllan and Deagan both had their end of year strings and choir concerts.  It was great to go and see them.  The choir teacher is so good with her students.  The strings teacher does a great job as well.  Dyllan has decided that she does not want to continue with the cello.  She would like to try the flute.  I think that I will try giving the kids piano lessons during the summer.  If Deagan wants to continue with the viola, it can't hurt to have more practice reading music.  I think Dane has an interest in learning the piano, but will also continue the saxophone next year.

We hosted two girls from the Zug International School softball team this weekend.  It is interesting to see how other people live.  One was from Britain and the other was from the U.S.  One girl has lived in Switzerland for 5 years, and the kids and I speak better German than she does.  How does she navigate through her city?  I can only hope that I have taught Dane better manners than these girls had.  I fixed special meals for them (my kids favorites), only to have them eat just 2 bites and tell me that they didn't like enchiladas and didn't like strawberries, and really didn't like lasagna either "so I'll just eat . . . salad . . . I guess--as long as there are no tomatoes in it."--and certainly not with Ranch dressing.  They didn't eat cinnamon rolls or orange cranberry muffins and thought that cut orange slices were weird enough to not eat those either.  It was too much work to pick the grapes off the vine and they didn't really care for those anyway.  I'm very grateful that my kids are generally not picky eaters.  It was very frustrating for me to spend so much time in the kitchen trying to have nice meals for them when they wouldn't eat it anyway.  Luckily, Dane told me that he ate and was grateful for all the food that he was given while he was away.


School is winding down.  We only have two weeks left.  The kids are already mentally done.  They have switched off their thinking brains and are just only going through the motions.  We are really looking forward to summer.  It will be so much fun to have Dan's mom here, Lisa and Josh here, and then mom, dad, and maybe Caryn in the fall.  We are looking forward to warmer days, more sunshine, and more fun!!

18 Years and Life to Go--Wochen 14-15

We have been busy these last two weeks!  Lots of exciting events have been going on:

Dane traveled to Warsaw, Poland for the International School Track and Field European Championships for middle schools.  He was excited because he got to miss a day of school—and the day before was parent/teacher conferences, so he didn’t have school that day as well.  They traveled by night train to Warsaw.  I haven’t ever gotten to sleep in a bed on a train, so I asked Dane how it was.  He said it was okay, but there were girls in the next room that he could hear talking and talking through the wee hours of the night.  (On the way home, he was stuck bunking in the same room as the coach, who offered Dane ear plugs, as his snoring is pretty loud.)  The meet was great!  His team came in second place.  They brought home the sportsmanship trophy, too.  Dane ran the 800m, the 1500m, and the 3000m.  The 800m didn’t go so well.  Dane said that race is just too short for him.  In the 1500m, an 8^th grader from his school, pulled out just 100ths of a second in front of him, causing Dane to come in 4^th.  But in the 3000m, Dane came home with a silver medal.  We are very proud of him, as this is a huge accomplishment for a 7^th grader.  We look forward to seeing how well he can do with another year of maturity under his belt next time around.  Also, because he did so well, Dane was invited to the ISST European/Middle Eastern International Schools Championship meet.  Usually only high school kids go, with an occasional middle school kid invited to run with the Junior Varsity team.  There were 3 middle school kids invited this year.  So Dane is excited to miss almost a full week of school to head to Waterloo, Belgium, to compete there.

Danyon has found his new fetish and possible calling in life.  He is obsessed with garbage and garbage cans.  Every time we pass one, he says, “garbage, garbage” or “Look, garbage out”.  He has been known to search packages of food and find the picture of the little guy throwing the garbage away in the trashcan.  Then he points to the guy and says, “garbage”.  One day, when I was picking the kids up from school, he found a piece of garbage on the ground (he is also known for finding random garbage and throwing it away—at the track meet a couple weeks ago, he spent a good 5 minutes picking up the trash around a trash can and placing it back in).  He picked up this piece of paper and looked around for a garbage can to put it in.  He finally spotted one across the street.  As he headed out into the road, I yelled at him to stop and that he couldn’t cross the road because it wasn’t safe.  We walked a little further and there was another garbage can out at the street.  He headed out again.  It still wasn’t safe so I told him “no” again.  At this, he started to cry and throw a fit because he could see the garbage cans, he had the trash, but wasn’t allowed to throw it away.  It was his worst nightmare come true.

 

Dyllan had an activity for church.  They were making crafts for Mother’s Day.  When we dropped her off, we ran into a Flohmarkt (flea market).  While she was crafting away, Deagan, Danyon, Dan, and I explored the market.  We didn’t find a whole lot (Deagan and Dan were excited to find some WII games, and I found some kids movies that we hadn’t seen), BUT, the biggest find was the langosh stand.  When we went to Budapest for Dane’s track meet, I was fully expecting to get some langosh.  However, as it turned out, there wasn’t any time.  We came home with our mouths still watering.  Well, this little booth at the flohmarkt satisfied that craving and we were all happy again.

 

Dan spent a week in South Africa!  He was excited to go back.  He stayed at a place that was a sort of bird sanctuary.  He saw all kinds of different birds.  He even brought home a huge feather from one of the birds.  We are leaving it in quarantine for several weeks before we open the bag.  His favorite part of the trip was getting to go out to the cattle feed yards.  It’s a whole different world in that part of the country.  There were places that he and his co-worker drove through that she said that you just didn’t stop—for any reason.  They passed by men in camouflage—not military or police-- with automatic weapons hanging out by the side of the road.  Dan’s co-worker’s neighbor was robbed and the co-worker found men in her yard as well.  Her house was the likely next target but the police were coming quickly.  Dan said that the country is beautiful and the tourist areas are still safe.  We would like to take the family down there, if we are here long enough.  Dan said that you would need at least 2 weeks to see everything.  I don’t think I would have a problem with pulling the kids out of school for a week to see Africa.

 

Mother’s Day was wonderful, at least for me!  I got up, showered, and the kids and Dan had a full breakfast of muffins, fruit, and juice waiting for me.  They showered me with gifts and cards that I loved.  Dan brought me some cool African jewelry.  After church, I got to eat as many Cheetos as I wanted for lunch.  We also had strawberry torte.  Dan bar-be-qued pork steaks for dinner and vegetables.  Since it was our anniversary too, I wanted to make a nice dessert.  The kids didn’t want me to make anything on Mother’s Day, so Dyllan and Deagan made Whoopi-pies for dessert.  I did sneak into the kitchen and made homemade buns.  It was a nice touch to the Mother’s Day/Anniversary dinner.   It was a great day.

The next big event was Dan’s birthday.  (A big THANK YOU to all who participated!).  The kids were my partners in crime.  We spent hours wrapping and getting everything ready.  I decided that I wanted to give Dan 40 little gifts for his birthday this year (a block of his favorite cheese, a package of his favorite candy, notes from his co-workers, tools for his bike, etc.)  Dan’s co-workers were all very excited to participate and several sent me notes to give to him.  The “catch” to getting all his presents was that he had to fish for them.  Since Dan loves fishing so much, I thought it would be fun to let him fish all day.  He got to go fly fishing for some of the gifts.  (I tied a really long ribbon with a magnet on the end to a ruler.  Then he had to throw his line out into the pond—a very small bowl with fish with magnets on them.)  Dan proved to be a better fly fisherman than I thought, as he had caught all the fish in that pond within just a couple of minutes.  Each fish he caught had a number on it that corresponded to a gift.  As he caught a fish, he opened a present.  For the rest of the fish, I made a pond of blue jello.  I put laminated fish in the bowl and he had to show that there was still some youngness in him by not using his hands to pull the fish out.  Dan didn’t waste any time, he plunged his face right into the pond.  This fishing was a bit harder, and so he only pulled out a couple of fish at a time.  This fishing truly did last all day. 

Luckily, he didn’t pull out the fish that’s number was for the cake until after dinner.  Dan grilled some beef steaks.  We haven’t bought any beef steaks since we got here.  The beef is way too expensive.  But, we splurged a little for Dan’s birthday.  We also had baked potatoes, asparagus, and garlic bread.  Dan ended up buying all the stuff and grilling his own steaks.  I was too scared to ruin them.  Dan has always had a Dairy Queen ice cream cake for his birthday.  Since moving here, we haven’t continued that tradition because they don’t exist here.  But, this year, I found a copy cat recipe online and decided to give it a try.  My cake did not look nearly as pretty as DQs.  I had trouble with a small freezer and a few novice problems, but now that I have made one, I think that the next one will turn out better.  But, regardless of how it looked, it sure did taste really good.  Dan’s favorite present was the “surprise party”.  The kids took all the pictures that were sent and taped them all over the inside of a box, collage style.  Once every speck of the inside was covered, we put all the notes that we had printed out and placed them inside.  The kids made a big surprise pop out sign, so that when Dan opened the box, it said surprise and at the same time, we yelled, “surprise”!  He loved all the pictures, all the notes, and he watched all the videos everyone sent.  He loved it!!  He really appreciated all the time that people spent in sending him a note/video/message for his birthday.  It made his day perfect.

 

As my anniversary gift to Dan this year, I planned a trip to Switzerland.  I had never been, and I really wanted to visit.  Dan has been, but has never been to the touristy parts or gotten to do anything fun.  It stinks to go to Switzerland for work, and no play.  I arranged for a friend to come and stay with the kids so that Dan and I could have a weekend alone.  Wednesday, I packed our bags and by Wednesday evening, we said goodbye to the kids and we were off to the airport.  We flew into Zurich.  Since we arrived so late, we didn’t get to do anything but see our hotel

room that first night.  But, the next day, we were off and running.  We walked through the old town of Zurich.  We walked a bit along the lake.  We had a great morning.  We stopped at a restaurant for breakfast that a friend recommended.  It was called Cake Friends.  We found it to be a fun place.  We headed to a church, Fraumunster , to see the stained glass windows of Marc Chagall.  Unfortunately, the church was closed to the public as there was a church service going on.  We didn’t get to see the windows, but we did get to stand on a bridge and hear the bells of 4 different churches ringing all at the same time.  That was pretty cool.  After a couple of hours, we headed, by train, to Interlaken.  We stopped along the way in Bern—just to see it.  We only saw what you could see from the train, but it was a pretty place.  Once we got to Interlaken and settled in our hotel, we set off exploring. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We took a train to Lauterbrunnen and from there, a bus up to Trummelbachfalle.  We got to see a very powerful waterfall, made of the runoff of the alps, up close.  We took an elevator that took us inside a cave to the falls.  The water has carved chutes in the rock mountain so that the falls look like they are running through slot canyons.  It is pretty incredible to see.  There were 10 different chutes in these water falls.  The sound in the cave was a roar of water.  We had to yell to hear over the sound of the water.  None of the pictures that we got do it any justice.  It was incredible.

 
 

After the falls, we headed back to Lauterbrunnen and took the cable car up to Murren.  Since it was a holiday, the stores and shops were not open—only a few restaurants.  However, this made it so that we practically had the whole town to ourselves.  We walked the pathways and took pictures of the Eiger and Monch.  The Jungfrau was always covered in clouds.  It was a really fun place to be at the foot of the alps.  It was getting pretty late, so we headed back to Interlaken.  That night for dinner, we had to try the Swiss Fondue, of course.  We loved it. 

The next morning, we woke up to rain.  This was our day to head up into the alps and go up the Jungfrau.  As we got higher and higher, the weather was getting colder and colder.  On one train, the guy coming through the train checking tickets, noticed Dan’s sweater (Canada hockey).  He asked if Dan played hockey.  Dan of course answered, and a conversation started.  It turns out, that this guy whose name is also Dan, works for another company that makes and paints hockey masks for goalies.  Dan had done a mask for the goalie of the Calgary Flames.  He had all kinds of pictures and videos of the masks.  He also had one that he had done for the same guy for when he played for the Avalanche.  It was pretty cool to meet a guy that had painted NHL players hockey masks on a train in Switzerland. 

 

The snow plow

By the time we got to Kleine Scheidegg, we were in full white out snow blizzard.  We had one more train to get to the top.  The train was delayed due to the weather (I thought they should be used to the snow by now) and also an electrical problem.  After waiting about an hour and a half, we were finally heading up the mountain again.  We got about 7 minutes up the mountain when the train came to a very abrupt stop.  The engineer tried to back up and get another run at it.  He tried this for several minutes with no luck.  We were stuck.  We couldn’t get up the mountain.  They called the snow plows to come and clear the tracks again.  After the snow plow, we tried again for several attempts to get up the mountain.  Finally, after about 30 minutes of being stuck, the engineer finally gave up and decided to work on heading back down the mountain.  Where there was no snow yesterday, there was now snow thigh deep along the tracks.  The two engineers had to plow through it to get to the other side of the train to head back down.  The plows came and cleared the track.  We were finally headed back down the mountain. 

We saw that they were
preparing the rescue dogs

We got back to Kleine Scheidegg.  We were supposed to be seeing the alps really close up, but all we could see was white snow.  We figured that even if the train did get running again, we still wouldn’t see anything from the top.  We gave up on that idea to go up to the top of Switzerland, and decided to head back down the mountain to Grindelwald.  We never made it up, but we at least have a story that we were stuck on the frozen mountain for awhile.  When we told Dane the story of how we were stuck and could have frozen to death in the Alps, Dane’s reply was a very unenthusiastic, “hmm”.

 

 

My souvenir.  Dan's was a knife

Grindelwald was a nice little town.  We enjoyed wandering the streets and doing some souvenir shopping.  We found a little butcher shop that made sandwiches and we bought a house brand salami.  We had them slice it up for us.  We ate our little lunch of sandwiches and salami on the train ride to Lucerne.  We arrived in Lucerne in the early evening and we explored the town a bit. 

This restaurant had fur coats
 for the guests to wear on the patio. 
We knew we couldn't afford that.

We found a mini raclette set.

For dinner this night, we decided to have Raclette.  We have never heard of this before, but it was recommended to us by a friend.  They told us that it was very Swiss.  They brought us ¼ inch slices of cheese, tiny steamed potatoes, pickles, and little pickled onions.  You took the cheese and placed it on the hot tray.  As the cheese melts, you cut up your variation of potatoes and pickles into small pieces on your plate.  When the cheese is melted, you scrape the cheese over the top of your plate.  You can sprinkle a little nutmeg for garnish.  You then eat this wonderful plate of melted cheese and potatoes.  It was so good.  They brought us a huge plate of cheese, that there was no way that we could eat that much.  Well, guess what—we did.  We couldn’t eat another bite, but we did eat all the cheese.  There was something about the pickles that seemed to cut the fat and melting the cheese made it fit into the crevices of our stomachs nicely.  I asked the waitress how many kilos of cheese we ate (it really was a lot of cheese).  She said she didn’t know, and she’d have to ask the kitchen.  She never told us, so I’m assuming we didn’t want to know.

 

The next day we took a boat across the lake to Alpnachstad.  Then we went on the steepest cogwheel railway in the world (48%), up to Mount Pilatus.  It was really neat to see the views along the way up.  However, once we got to the top, we were in the clouds and couldn’t see the view.  We took a little walk along the dragon trail and learned about some of the dragon legends that come from this area.  (Apparently, there was a dragon skeleton found in the mountain).  Also at the top, there was a group of alpine horn blowers.  We stopped and listened to them for awhile.  Dan made some friends with some birds, too.  These birds would ride the wind currents and hardly have to flap their wings.  They just hovered over head.  We took a cable car down the back side of the mountain.  And from there we took gondolas across the back side of the mountain.  We did see a mountain goat on the mountain from there.  As we got lower down, we heard the bells from cows tinkling below us.   We caught a glimpse of a peacock as well, but figured it was owned by the farmer, not wild.  The whole place was green and wild flowers were plentiful.  Once we got down, we were in the small town of Kriens. 

 

We decided to do a little shopping and grab some lunch in this little town.  We found a store that sold fondue and raclette sets.  We walked in.  The shop owner quickly came down to meet us.  Our whole conversation was in German and this is what she said:  She asked if she could help us.  We told her we were just looking.  She told us that she had 3 shops she was looking after (all connected) and what did we want to look at.  We told her we would just look around, ok?  She said it was NOT ok to look around and that she did NOT sell any souvenirs.  At this, we certainly felt that we didn’t want to spend any money in this shop and not even in this whole town.  This was the only rude Swiss person we had come into contact with our entire trip.  And after that, we headed straight back to Lucerne where the people were happy to let you “look around” and were willing to be courteous to their customers.

We wandered around both the old and the new parts of Lucerne.  We were just taking it all in.  That night we really wanted to try a chocolate fondue for dinner.  However, after several attempts from the reception desk to book a reservation, we finally got a reservation for a boat restaurant that had chocolate fondue.  When we arrived, however, we found that the chocolate fondue is only during the winter season.  Since we had already had so much cheese, we decided to do regular meat fondue.  It was a perfect evening.  We practically had the entire part of the restaurant to ourselves and were eating on the lake.  It was the perfect romantic evening.   
 
 
 

 

The chipmunk cheek is a Lindt chocolate ball. 
I didn't think it would be polite to show you the inside.

The next day was our last day of vacation.  We took a walk along the lake and ended up at a museum.  We went on the Chocolate Experience.  It was a little cart ride that taught you about the making of swiss chocolate.  I have to admit that the tour wasn’t as filling as Zotter, but you still learned a bit about the chocolate making process.  We got 7 Lindt chocolate balls at the end of the tour. 

 

From there, we went to a pro beach volleyball tournament.  Admission was free and we got to see Netherlands play Turkey in the men’s semi final match.  The atmosphere was fun and it was cool that we got to see Netherlands play, as they are the current world champions.  After that, we took our stroll back around the lake and back to the train station.  We headed back to Zurich.  We had just enough time to head into the Fraumunster church to see the stained glass before heading up to the airport. 

 

Traveling with Dan has its perks.  We get to go to the business lounge—did you know that they have lounges that have lounging chairs, charging plugs, give out free food and drinks and tell you when to head to your gate?  They are there, you just have to travel with Dan to get into them!  We did have a great trip.  We loved Switzerland.  We loved spending time together and going on dates everyday—kid free.  It was a perfect weekend and best way to celebrate 18 years together.

The kids had a great time while we were away.  Dyllan cleaned her entire room while we were gone.  She even cleaned under her bed, all of her wardrobe, including under it, and even behind her dresser.  It was sparkling when we got back.  We heard reports of swimming all day one day, playing games all day, another day, and having a great time.  It seemed everyone had a great long weekend!  The best part was that after dinner, I asked the kids to do the dishes, Dyllan and Dane immediately started and finished.  Deagan got pjs for Danyon and everyone was only asked once.  It was wonderful!!  Maybe Dan and I should leave more often!