Easter Egg Tree...

This week Alex reminded me that we had not done our Easter decorations. This usually consist of a cheap wreath on the door, and a couple of rabbit Easter related things to set out on the dinning room table and coffee table.... and of course the Easter Egg Tree. My mom did these trees for us when I was little, and when Alex was born I started doing them for her. When she was two years old though, she imagined up this whole Easter Bunny/Egg Hiding Scheme!! All on her own, she said that all of those eggs on the tree were there so that when the Easter Bunny came, he could hide them all for her! Only she told me this after we had hung approximately 50-75 eggs. So the tradition continues... and the Easter Bunny does hide the eggs (usually not all of them though)... the weather has hindered the outside hiding over the last couple of years, though... Maybe this year will be better!

New Addition to the Hershbine Family

Well, we had promised Alex a puppy for her birthday in September, and for one reason or another every attempt to adopt was not the right one or time for us. So, last Friday, Jody calls me from work asking me to bring Alex by there when we got done with school! I of course asked why? He said he had a surprise for Alex. I asked, can't it wait until you get home? He said well its kinda a puppy!! What?? Long story short... somebody had him on base, and if they did not give him away they were going to take him to the pound. That was all Jody needed to hear... since we had been talking about getting a puppy anyway... he said why not? So Alex and I headed to base to get the puppy... only I did not tell her why we were going! She was very excited to get him and after going through a whole weekend of deciding what name... she finally decided on "Copper" (Like from "The Fox and The Hound") He really probably looks more like Tod, the Fox than Copper, the Hound... but she liked the name copper best! So here are some pictures of our new baby!

SNOW AGAIN??

How is this possible?? All my childhood, the most frequent snow that stuck that we got was maybe once every 5 years! And now, Alex goes to Ohio in November and gets snow... then in Birmingham one pretty good little snow in January, and now in March (enough that Alex wants to be in it) and they said it probably would not stick here this time! I am just glad that it did not fall on a school day! We should still get an inclement weather day in April, now! So hear is our March Snow Pictures.

Cozumel Meriachi

The main thing that I loved about cozumel is all of the color. After our trip to the beach, we took a much more pleasant taxi ride to downtown Cozumel with a really nice guy.. (cant remember his name... maybe corey and erin can help me out?) Anyway, we had him drop us off at his recommended restaraunt. We specifically asked him what he thought was good, not a "touristy" kind of place. He took us to a place called "The Mission". A really neat place that was an completely outdoor restaraunt but you would never know it by the shelter overhead. I thought it was a very quaint place. We were getting pretty hungry, and they brought us out our "chips and salsa" (just like the mexican restaraunts in the u.s.) only they serve the chips around what is the best guacamole I have ever had... and I think everyone else agreed. We were pretty hungry so Corey asked the very Mexican water/bus boy for some "queso" (in the u.s. that is cheese dip, right?) Well, as I said before, the guy was very ethnic... ie did not speak english... very nice though... So he brought Corey a plate of grated cheese! We laughed at ourselves, and very politely waited for the waiter who spoke english to come back. So, when he came over, Corey explained that he wanted melted cheese, like a dip. That seems pretty logical, right? Well, they brought out a small iron skillet with melted cheese in it (probably the same cheese that was on the plate earlier). We all got a kick out of that... apparently cheese dip is an American thing... or it is just called something different there~! We all placed our order. the menu was translated so it was not that hard to figure out what you want, only apparently I cant read Spanish or English because I thought I was ordering something really authentic (Dont know exactly what it said, but it was interesting enough that I read the English as something authentic also.) Only when my plate came out... I had ordered shrimp cocktail! Albeit a good shrimp cocktail, it was not quite as authentic and exotic as I had hoped it would be. But, I loved this little place. About the time that we were finishing up lunch, a mariachi band came in... and I loved them! Corey proceeded to give me some quick lessons in photography for my new camera... so that I am not using the automated settings all the time... so the following pictures are the ones that I thought turned out pretty decent.

COZUMEL!!!

Okay, I have sorted through my pictures and have picked out some of my favorite ones!

This one is... for obvious reasons! I really just took this one to show Alex that her name was written in Mexico!

This one is not the greatest of photos on my part but the circumstances were pretty funny... I thought! When we got off of the ship we decided to go to the beaches first. We got a taxi"van" with Erin, Corey, Rhonda and Gary. Only Corey and Erin got the boxseats (and opposite of sporting events... this is not a good thing!) They were litterally sitting on a box covered by a blanket. There were no seatbelts or bars to even hold on too! To make matters worse for them... or at least for Erin, there are no speed limits or as it appeared on this 5- 10 minute 60Mph trip, no traffic laws either! and erin who tends to get a little nervous about even the safety of an escalator had to endure this "rumble seat"

Here is Jody once we arrived safely at our beach spot. I must add he was much the trooper. He had the flu! He starte feeling bad, at dinner on thursday night, and continued to feel bad all day on Friday. He made his way up and off of the ship on Saturday for my benefit and the fact that he reallywanted to see Mexico! I think he was really glad he did!

(photo deleted per Jody's request)

The following are just some random beach photos that I took and thought were kinda fun. I will post more later, I need to get Alex to bed.

Gymnastics

Thought I would post some pictures of Alex in Gymnastics. She is absolutely loving this "Cheer"nastics class. But, she also wants to play soccer... so that season will start in a couple of weeks and we only have about 4 more weeks of Cheernastics. Anyway... enjoy... I am still working on compiling some pictures from our trip... hang on a little while longer ... all four of you readers.

Funny Video

We have been playing around with some new stuff we got for the computer. One of them is so that we can convert all of our old videos onto dvd. Here is a funny one of Alex when she was about 2 1/2 or 3.