April!

April started with my kids’ Spring Break.  I had the same plan as last year:  one big activity/outing per day, and it worked out great. 

Jane was really sick on Day 1, so we made that Craft Day.  (This is evidence that I’m a good mom:  I hate crafts but do them once a year anyway.)  I picked the most perfect ones.  The kids made this lion,

which was great for ages 5-12 and then made their own marble maze.

They played and ran timed trials with their mazes 121 times in the next few days, so it was the activity that kept on giving.

The other Spring Break activities included…

Bowling with our friends/neighbors, the Fuhrimanns

 

Jumping at the super fun/super expensive trampoline place in town.  Seriously, it was the most active fun I’ve had with my kids in a long time. 

The last day was the best.  Ryan took the day off and we used this little kids magazine we found to be tourists in our own downtown. 

It had a little detective theme and we walked about 2 miles, checking out the different sights and learning about stuff like the most dangerous saloon in Spokane (cool!)

 

and hydroelectric power (snore…though it came in handy at a charades night a few days later).

The rest of the month was filled with…

Uh, this was the part where I look at my pictures so I can remember.  But there are none, just a few videos of Faith counting to 29 (yeah: Genius 2 year old) and bunch of self portraits of those silly kids. And this shot:

which represents this fantastically crappy spring we’ve been having here in Spokane.

I’ll actually have to rely on my memory for a little person by person recap:

 Emma spent a lot of time with us, as she is allowed to play with friends, talk on the phone and watch TV when her grades look like she can handle those distractions.  There is some slooow progress (both Emma and her parents are learning a lot).  Gabe spent April running 50 miles, total, in the school’s running program, getting a lot of migraines and taking 5 pages of notes on General Conference.  Jane also ran (36 miles), played soccer (1 goal = big milkshake) and got one of the larger parts in her second grade play.  Seth talked a lot and played with his friends a lot and did his jobs really slow a lot and kept learning to read like a champ a lot.  Faith had an easy phase in April and continually amazes us with her vocabulary and memory.  She has lots of buddies in her older siblings; we think she’s a pretty lucky kid.  Ryan finished his MBA class with 100% and is really questioning the wisdom of being on the city council. I am training for a half marathon and have lost 29 lbs since January!

We ended April with another week of fun:  a trip to Women’s Conference for Mom and a long playdate with Grandma Dorrie for the kids.

 

I joined them the last two days for a much-anticipated-by-Seth trip to the Bean Museum, where they got to pet a snake.  Seth asked me to take a picture so it’s look like he’s fighting the animals:

 

plus the Market Room Buffet at Brick Oven.

After, we met up with cousins McKennah and Cecily

(between dance competitions) to bowl.

Jane won

and Gabe, um, didn’t:

We also had a SUPER fun dinner at Cade and Stacy’s, where this crowd:

just sat around being hilarious for a few hours. 

 

We even got Aunt Bekah to be our Easter Outfit photographer:

Man.  April sounds really fun, when you read about it like that!