April

April has somehow come and almost gone. The month literally is a blur as work has been hectic, Kevin was working full-time while maintaining 4 day weeks and we had something almost every weekend.

To recap--

Easter:
The month started off with a crazy Easter weekend. The kids had 4 official egg hunts, many impromptu egg hunts and much fun getting their Easter baskets. The baskets contained one bottle of bubbles, gardening gloves and a package of bandaids. After loving each item, Samuel declared Easter better than Christmas. Really? A bottle of bubbles and band-aids is all it takes.

Egg dyeing went much more smoothly this year with most colors remaining their original color. Oliver was, however, a disaster and had dye all over the floor, himself and the table. But, he had a great time and only 14 of the 16 eggs were cracked after he handled them!

We had a very funny egg hunt at church. Somehow the older kids thought it was best to have the hunt on the side of a very steep hill. Perfect--send 2 & 3 years olds up steep dirt hills in quest for candy!

First full week of April:
Jennette spent the week in Philadelphia leading a retreat for our program managers. In all honesty, it was delightful to have 4 full days on my own! The days were full of leading workshops but the evenings we did "team building" which consisted of a great city tour and taking in happy hour. The trip did provide me with enough time to watch a full season of Mad Men!

Second Weekend of April: MCC Relief Sale
We were originally planning to go camping but we got rained out so we made an impromptu trip to Fresno for the MCC relief sale. We got up early and did the Fun Run. Oliver did an amazing 100 yard dash and then was pretty much done. We spent the rest of the walk admiring flowers and kicking leaves. Samuel almost finished the full course--the short cut they took was probably only 1 mile! It was a bit rainy which made the sale less than perfect. However, many fritters were consumed by all which is really the point of the sale--right?

Third Weekend of April: Maxwell Park Camping Trip

About 8 families from our neighborhood spent the weekend camping at the beach. It was perfect weather with much sun on Saturday and cooling fog on Sunday. We had a great time sitting around, watching the kids ride bikes and fly kites, drinking beer and overall enjoying ourselves. Highlights:

• Samuel and several other kids learned to ride bikes without training wheels. The boys were quite proud and had so much fun riding. They thought they were pretty special b/c they could ride around the loop without a parent with them. They were overheard talking about how cool it is that the parents aren't always around!
• We all had a very strange fascination with a dead seal that had washed up on shore. The head and tail had been bitten off by what we presume was a shark. This was by far the most interesting and most talked about item of the weekend!
• The perfect climbing tree in our campsite. There were very few trees in the campground but the one in our site was perfect for 3-6 years old to climb. Only a few kids fell out but there were no broken bones so I consider it a success!
• The kids lived on air--or more accurately chips, sugared cereal and smores.  If the kids did eat they kept on their helmets and shoveled food in fast so they could get back to their bike riding. All-in-all it was clearly not our most nutritious weekend.