spring break, selling a house, birthdays, and so on

A lot has been happening in our lives lately. The kids are on their third week of spring break right now. Right before break we worked hard to get the house ready to go on the market. The kids and I left for Rochester to spend their first week of break with Paul. The house went up for sale while we were gone, and we ended up getting an offer on our house within the first few days. This is a very good thing. The inspection was last week, and so far things are working out. The one down side to this offer is the buyers want to close early May, which is much earlier than the kids and I were planning to move. More on that later.

We had a great time with Paul in Rochester. I took the kids around exploring the city most of the week. We went to the Strong Museum of Play, the Seneca Park Zoo, The Rochester Museum and Science Center, saw Dinosaurs Alive at the Planetarium and even got a peak at the beach and Lake Ontario (the kids had a hard time believing it was a lake and not an ocean). We also had a lot of fun swimming in the pool in Paul's apartment building. We started looking at houses out there but didn't find our house just yet. We stayed with Paul for over a week (stopping to see family in Cleveland on both ends of the trip).

Our moving plans are to stay in this area through June, so that the kids can finish school and attend some camp in June. There is a 4H overnight camp that Kestrel has been looking forward to since last summer so we promised her we would work it out so she could still attend. The folks buying our house were pretty firm that they wanted to close early May, so that means the kids and I need to find temporary housing for May and June. I ended up finding a 3 bedroom furnished apartment in the area that will let us take a 3 month lease. It is an apartment complex geared towards students, but will work out well for our situation. I can't believe we'll be packing up and moving out of this house in less than a month!

Paul was in town with us this past weekend, which was great because we got to help him celebrate his 44th birthday. We had a nice family dinner out and the kids and I had a cake for him (Kestrel insisted we had to get Daddy a carrot cake).

Here are a few pictures from Rochester and Paul's birthday:

At the Museum of Play, inside a giant kaleidoscope

Kestrel and Cooper (below) loved this "tippy room" (as we called it). The floor was sloped down, but all the visual cues made the room look level, so it created a kind of illusion that made you feel really dizzy, and like you were going to fall off the floor.

"On my way to where the air is sweet..."

The Museum of Play had a great Sesame Street exhibit.

Shopping (and cashiering) in a kid sized Wegman's Supermarket

Cooper with the Mastodon at the Museum and Science Center

Kestrel is riding on a hoover chair. It is actually floating on a cushion of air. Very cool!

They loved watching this miniature roller coaster.

We went back to the Museum of Play so we could take a picture of Flat Stanley there. After we got the picture, we discovered this cool city park next to it, so we stopped to explore the park.

Here is Kestrel with Flat Stanley at the beach. For a school geography project, she was supposed to take pictures of Flat Stanley (who is decorated like a Flat Kestrel) in various places around a new city.

We had a really nice day on Friday so we decided to check out the Seneca Park Zoo. .

These Arctic Wolves were our favorite animals in the zoo. They were just feeding them when we were getting ready to leave, so we stopped to watch them. The food was put in a closed box and the wolves were cautiously attacking the box to get at it. It was really interesting to watch the interactions between the two of them, named Niko and Luna.

Paul's birthday cake!

At Jupiter's for dinner