Nate's Trip and Birthday and then Easter

In our continuing effort to dig out from the unwritten posts and unpublished pictures from March, it's my turn to help play catch up. First up, I had the chance to go to Hawaii for a week for work, and yes, I was working the whole time other than my first and last day there. When I first landed, I went and climbed up Diamond Head (a volcanic crater near the ocean that is one of the more recognizable landmarks in Honolulu). I did this to try and avoid some of the effects of jet lag since it was going to be another eight hours or so before the sun set (nevermind that I had left the house around 5 AM Eastern time that morning to make my flight and it was around 7 or 8 PM on my body's clock when I landed).

Here's a picture from the top of Diamond Head looking down at the ocean and a lighthouse (I was annoyed that the zoom on the camera I took with me didn't work well).

And the view back to downtown Honolulu and Waikiki beach where I was staying.

No idea what this tree was called, but I thought it looked kind of cool.

On my last day, I finally made it out to walk along the beach for a bit before I needed to go to the airport. I really did feel bad being in Hawaii while Tanja, Mormor, and the kids were back in Maryland dealing with the most snowfall we had received all year. And I was very grateful that Mormor extended her stay to help with the kids. Traveling for work isn't very conducive to how I want to live at this stage of life.

A few days after I returned, it was time for my birthday. German chocolate cake (or at least the frosting this year) is my favorite!

Easter followed shortly after. Tanja and the kids went to a friend's house for their annual Easter egg hunting party while the kids had the day off from school on Good Friday.

Karina ran around collecting as many eggs as she could. From what I was told, Derek was more interested in opening up each egg immediately after picking it up to see what was inside and then trying to shove it in his mouth, so he didn't get many eggs.

Lydia was a good hunter too as she brought her stuffed dog along.

Then Easter Sunday morning, the kids had fun going through our yard looking for more than 100 eggs that Tanja hid. They had so much fun, they did it twice that morning. Derek in particular was very pleased with himself as you can see.

It was hard to get them to stand still and smile long enough to take a picture, though we did get some good action shots of them running after the next egg.

Hope everyone had a Happy Easter!