April

In April, I once again forgot to teach my children about the wonders of April Fool's Day.  I miss that holiday every year, and I could do so much with it!  However, in the very beginning of April (according to the date stamp on the picture), the children put together a wedding parade for one of their stuffed animals.  Can you tell what they used as a model of organization for the parade?  I was most impressed that the colors are in the correct order.  I taught them ROY G BIV early on...

 With April came Easter, and our annual egg dying party at the church...which means Allie's traditional dyed hands...

 It also means the annual egg hunt at the nearby campground, and we were joined again this year by the Beauties!  Love our time with the cousins.

Ryan and the ladies.

 Being 5, our kids were moved up to the next oldest group for the egg hunt...which means way more cut-throat.  Which also means that I didn't get a single picture of the hunting because I was too busy trying to keep track of my children in the mob.  But I did manage to capture the kids combing through the loot.

 They also had an egg hunt at our house with Nana!

Easter morning, I managed to get the traditional picture together (which I completely forgot last year, so score 1 for this year's picture taking!).  Yes, my children are wearing light-up sandals with their beautiful Easter finery.  It went like this.  I needed sandals for Allie and the light-up princess sandals matched beautifully (except for the lights...).  But I couldn't just get Allie awesome light-up sandals and Ryan nothing, so I decided to get them both light-up sandals (Cars for him) for their Easter baskets.  And then prepared myself for the inevitable, "If Allie is wearing hers, why can't I wear mine?"  And I decided he could.  Because he's a kid.  And what is more important, that he be picture perfect with no tacky, light-up, character shoes on Easter, or that he head to Easter service with joy in his heart because he is proudly wearing his new favorite thing on earth?  Granted, the joy is NOT reflected in the pictures...

 And the traditional egg hunt.  I like this action shot of Allie.

Meanwhile, Ryan seems content to hang back and let others get the eggs...

Also, in April we upgraded the twins to larger bikes.  Finally able to pedal comfortably again, going for bike rides became a new favorite activity.  We would go to nearby trails (where I didn't have to worry about cars or intersections), and had made it up to riding 5 miles...then it warmed up and my children melt in the heat.  Suddenly, we could only make it 1/2 mile before we would hear "I'm so hot!  I'm so tired!  Are we almost done?" in the whiniest voices.  So much for making it up to 100 miles (their initial goal).

We also made the goal of ditching the training wheels by the end of the summer...a goal that, as I write this with more than half of our summer gone, has not yet been achieved...

And these are all the pictures I took in April.  I told you this would go fast!  I'm sure many other amazing things happened, but without pictures as memory prompts, I have temporarily forgotten them!  Oh, well...on to May!