Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Eleventh Month of the Fifteenth Year

Hickory leveled up and taught the boys the fine art of pie eating with ice cream.
Pie skills in progress.

Dash and his world instruments for Cub Scouts, all the minions chilling with their friends from N.R.

Playing with our drinks on a sleepy morning.

Lumpy brought Mr. Potato Head out and said, "Look at the funny man!"
Our walk to church each week begins in this large parking lot.  
Then we meander several city blocks.  Play the 'statue' game, and finally arrive.

We love and will miss Pastor R and all of our church family there.
Last moon of playing "statues" the game where the kids climb up these barricades on the way to church and we guess what they are pretending to be a statue of. 

Back to the car and headed back to our now significantly less populated abode.



Nothing like living with practically nothing to realize how much stuff you don't really need...
as well as learning what you really do miss and are blessed to have.
Skoshi was thrilled to learn new skills.

Time to clean and be nerdy, only 6 weeks until due date.

House cleaned, cleared, and now onto our time at the Inn.

Benefit of not usually having television?  Easy entertainment when forced to live for days in a hotel room with no vehicle or other options.

And for a throwback reference...this is what it looked like four years ago.




Snowball fight!


Happy Thanksgiving!


Playtime.

Hummingbyrd is actually straddling the center of the see-saw here.

Paperwork, paperwork, always paperwork.

Hummingbyrd made the minions their own teapot so they won't break hers.

It even tells them when they are running short on tea.

Look how short Skoshi is.

Big changes are in the future of where we had been living, the boys watched the demolition of their former Cub Scout hut, only a week or so after they helped move all the scouting stuff to the new hut.

The eerie beauty of building as they are slowly demolished.


This is a monster created by Dash and Grins....the tissue box is its head.

Saying a very enthusiastic, but sad farewell to Maber the Magnificent.

And now for some pictures that show just how much our party has changed over the duration of our campaign into Europa.

Christmas of the Eleventh Year...and Christmas of the Fifteenth Year.
So we when we first arrived we went out and played at the brand new playground...it looked like this.



It was so bright and they were so tiny, and our party so small.

Fast forward and you see the same playground just before we left, with the same party.

It is so hard to get them all to look at the same time at the same place.


Our small minions are no longer as small now.


Yet the party still has some small minions...they are just different ones this time.



As much as many things change, many other things stayed the same.


Chubblies still loves this rhino.
The slide is still a hit.
The rope hallways rock.

And are always tough to navigate at first.



And exploring and playing with siblings is amazing.


Even if bigger minions are sometimes not the most loving.

Mama is always watching.

And Papa is always ready to be silly with you.


That brings us to the end of the Eleventh month and nearly to the end of our time in Europa.

It has been amazing and we'll miss it I'm sure...time to hop the pond in a week or so.