G'day Mate!

The grandparents survived and did an excellent job of caring for grandkids for 13 days - at least we think we did!  

Our son, daughter-in-law, plus 4 other family went to Italy - Tuscany and Venice - and had a great time and that makes me happy.  They returned home last night so it was quiet in our house.

Amy's mom and I had 4 "playdates" with the kids and the weather was beautiful every day.  Grandmas and granddaughters Lucy and Greta at Hyland Lake just a few minutes from our house:

I think I have my mom's good genes for tolerating kid messes as it has rarely bothered me - thank goodness!  And who can not like a formal dinner party in the living room with glass beads for food?

They tried to get me to do the splits but at 68 and not doing yoga it did not happen so next on my bucket list is yoga!

We took a 3 day 2 night road trip to Alexandria MN to visit niece Molly and family which includes 4 little girls 6 and under and very well behaved!!  This was a stop we always made in Freeport, MN on the way to visit my parents.  Good food in a small town cafe!

Little Ruby is Alex's 2nd cousin and we called him the "baby whisperer" because Ruby seemed to love him and just kept sleeping while the rest were swimming.  He was one guy with 5 little girls and he was a champ!

Niece Molly, me and the 6 and nobody got hurt or choked  on water.  Fantastic!

And before all 10 of us went to dinner we all went bowling and it's hard to believe but I got the lowest score of all.  Of course nephew-in-law Josh got the highest.  Little Hazel about 2 years old just wanted to stick her fingers in the bowling ball finger holes.  I wish I had a photo of our table of 10 dining out but suffice it to say 3 people told us how well-behaved they were as the kids were on one side of the long table and the adults on the other.

Alex calls this "Grammy's contraption" but it's the best thing I have in my kitchen and was used every night - a Zyliss manual food processor.  We made applesauce, malts, chopped vegetables, crumbled up oreos for ice cream topping.  The possibilities are endless.  They decided it was kind of like starting a lawnmower:)

Entering our bedroom after our loft and surrounding area became a hotel/restaurant constructed out of big cardboard boxes I had been saving.

Niece Sara gave me two of these "Encyclopedia of Immaturity" books a few years ago and I found it at Lucy's bedside.  It's their favorite bedtime reading and has endless possibilities of free things to do.

The kids helped so much with yard work they each got to choose a gift and Lucy chose a nail spa/ salon and did her own pedicure with every nail a different color.  Don't worry the nail "polish" is water cleanup kind.

Next project - they planted all the tiny garlic seeds I got from one of my Italy travel companions.  Spring will be interesting as they spent some time digging trenches and measuring depth of planting.

So today I am packing and just printed our boarding passes as tomorrow we head to Australia and New Zealand for 23 days.  We'll be doing a hot air balloon ride, skyrail gondola through rain forest, a jetboat ride that is said to be "adventurous", and snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef.  Ross doesn't like heights and I don't like water over my head but neither of us want to miss a thing.  So off we go on another big adventure!!!  Airport to airport flight time is 30 hours 30 minutes including layovers and the longest flight is 15 hours from LA to Sydney - I'm hoping to sleep but if not that's the way it goes!  We are meeting friends from Pennsylvania from a previous trip so we are all looking forward to getting together again.

I hope it's ok to use this clipart because whoever did it did a great job and I compliment them on it!