4 Happy Family The personal blog of Kevin R. Hoffmann

15 minute update

Need to get to bed, but have been neglecting my peeps.

 So, went on vacation to the wonderful and exotic confines of Pella, Iowa for the yearly Tulip time trip. Good times seeing C's college roommates and trying to figure out if we still had the same liver potential as we did in college. This was pretty tame this trip around. I had a sinus infection and the ladies were just getting over being sick as well. We had some great food on a stick, saw a couple parades and kicked it Dutch style. Sara's parents were awesome to be party central and the two days we were there were fantastic. Just really chilled out and enjoyed the time there.

From there, our journey took us to Des Moines for 5 days. We used our hotel points to get a suite so that we could hang out when Maya went to bed. It was all we really needed. A pool, room service and the ability to get away from it all. We took a day trip every day and then spent the afternoon in the pool which Maya loved and flourished, She was swimming on her own (with her inflatable duckie) by the end of the week. We went to the zoo, Living History Farms, the Science Center and spent a day looking at books at Barnes and Noble. It was just a really realaxing, worry-free time. (Except when they lost our reservation for the final two days, but we were able to work things out.)

 We came back relaxed and took care of house stuff. There was about three feet of grass to get through and we just continued to take it easy. We did not think about work or anything complex and just went on auto-pilot for a while.

The big news when we returned was that we got Maya her big-girl bed. She was ecstatic to have it and only took up about 1/15th of the space. Pretty weird watching her growing up. I hope to write a separate post about it and include some pictures.

Later in the week I had to spend a couple of days in Toronto on business, no big deal.

C's Mom got a new cat today and took Maya to see it. She went into freak-out mode; she was so excited to see the kittens at the house (which she called kintts. She seems to be working through her double t's. Says bunts for buttons, mints for mittens, etc) She keeps calling her cat hers, she thinks she owns him. It was really cute to see her so excited and playful. The funny thing is that C told me that for the first time she received all of the typical head-shaking adoption questions from the breeders including:

"How much did you pay for her, I hear those kids cost like $50K"
"Do you have any kids of your own?"
(To her son) "Would you want a sister that looked like her?"
"I've had two miscarriages in the past 6 years, I would love to get me a girl like her."

Ah, it takes a lot of people to make the workd go around. C handled it with her usual grace and bit her tongue from being snarky back. 

With me being in Canada, we were unable to celebrate our "Family Day" on the 15th so we did it today giving her a present (the stuffed mascot from the forthcoming Olympics) from China. We had cake and sang the Happy Family Day to you song (think Happy Birthday). It is crazy that it has been 2 years since we first met her. What an awesome experience.

So, no humor, nothing funny coming from me tonight. Ready to go to bed, need to catch up at work. I went for a run today trying to get back to some kind of shape for our corporate challenge on Thursday. My parents are coming in for Memorial Day weekend which should be fun. We have been building Maya up for fishing at the lake with them. I hope to get back to more frequent updates soon and try to bring more interesting stories., it is just the way things flow some times. Well, that is the 15 minutes I promised myself, (actually 20) and hope to get more out soon.