April: pretty much everything else

I know everyone has been on the edge of their seats, so here are some promised tulip pictures:

Aren't they so so so pretty? They randomly changed colors sometimes which was fun; I was obviously thrilled when the yellows turned orange.

Sometimes our children were conveniently next to the tulips and made it into the pictures too haha ;).

 Ahhhhhhh I love spring!

Easter came along. I am the least consistent person when it comes to Easter, so I wish the best to my children's future therapists in figuring that out. This year I pulled out the Easter books and decorations and then each kid got a couple coloring books for church, hand sanitizer, and a new pillowcase because I found one at Target that I couldn't not buy for Clyde, so the whole gang got one. Our kids blessedly understand that the Easter Bunny doesn't come to our house because of their mom's VERY RATIONAL fear of rabbits. 

Chuck worked most of the day, so the wee children and I went to church and then over to my mama's for a while.

Grandma Pam put together a fun Easter egg hunt for the crazies:

My favorite is just staring at hard to find eggs and laughing at my kids as they can't find them. I might be a terrible person. Also enjoy the duplicate picture of Carma in her little Easter dress and hat and purse!

Grammy and the gang! 

I got jury duty!!!!!! Which was funny because Chuck just had jury duty last fall, and we have both been registered voters in this county for almost nine years, so it's random that we both finally got called - and that we both served! I'm a dork, so I obviously loved (almost) the whole experience. Our bailiff was Matt, meaning we were in the "cherry" aka PINK group. Jury selection was super interesting -- not to brag tooo much but I definitely made the entire courtroom laugh when the defense attorney asked me if I owned my home and I responded, "Yes... well, us and the bank...". Pretty sure it was that quick wit that earned me a spot in the top 13 ;). Once the jury was selected, we jumped right into the case, which was a drug possession/paraphernalia case. I took copious notes because you know, it's me. We headed home for the day with STRICT instructions not to research on own, talk to people, facebookstalk (I don't think they added that one just for me, but possibly...), etc. Day 2 we headed back in to DONUTS because Matt is a rockstar. There were a few tense moments when one jury member hadn't arrived yet and it looked like our alternate was going to earn his keep, but then he rolled in haha. There were tons of dorky funny moments, like when we lined up in the hall every time before entering the courtroom - we needed to be in the exact order we were selected, so we had a running joke about how long it took us to get into formation, etc. We listened to closing arguments and headed in to deliberate - each figuring that it was all pretty open and shut. BOY WERE WE WRONG. We deliberated for like four hours! Praise the heavens for the pizza break in the middle. Finally we kind of started over and cleared our heads and went through and finally came to a consensus on all four counts. I refrained from asking for a group photo of our jury because I was QUITE sure they would all say hey'll no but Matt was a champ and totally down for a selfie:

Here's the official instagram caption for posterity: "Spent the last two days at jury duty 👨🏼‍⚖️🤔⚖️. Shocking lack of photo ops (phone was locked in the jury room during court and confiscated during our FOUR hours of deliberation 👍🏼👎🏼 but I got one with our bailiff Matt because he was awesome and hilarious and put up with me 😂. Definitely a sobering experience but also loads interesting and horizon-broadening to work so closely with eleven complete strangers and have to agree unanimously four separate times 😳😜😭😑. But we did it! Yay America and rights and justice!! 🇺🇸"

 Chuck had to work the second day, so Grandma Pam came to the rescue and took care of Carma and Jack, including taking Jack to kindergarten orientation. It literally was just walking into the building and saying, "Yes, Jack is going to kindergarten here in the fall. Yes, Jana will register him online and upload all his shot records and proof of address." but Jack was REALLY excited about it - he legit wore a Park Ridge t-shirt for it. Thanks for taking him Mama! (the pansies have nothing to do with kindergarten and everything to do with my mom's flower and gardening addiction...)

And who wouldn't want to attend Park Ridge? Behold, the amazing Literacy Night they put on in April:

Got pictures of Clyde and Will with their respective teachers, Mrs. Keene and Mrs. Wallin. Ohhh we love those two! Also a picture of Jack with the Park Ridge Falcon, sooo cute. And a picture of Carma with Snow White, aka Mrs. Koeppen! Carma was so star struck haha.

The Harry Potter hallway was pretty dang amazing:

 Seriously so impressed with all the fun details and doorways!!

We also headed up to the school for the jog a thon! This is the yearly kick off to the spring walk/run club:

We took a hit with Jack having preschool on walk/run club days; he was our top family contributor. Carma was unpredictable - sometimes she walked, sometimes she ran, sometimes she played on the playground.... and sometimes she made me carry her haha. But it's cool, I workout. Speaking of which, Nicole came back! She was in town so she sneaked in and surprised everyone at Zumba and led a couple songs. So fun.

Remember a couple years ago for Chuck's birthday when I blogged about all the stuff he had to talk me into and then turn out to be awesome? Well, get ready because here's another addition to the ever-growing list:

a balance bike! Chuck was prettttty sure that Carma needed one and I was pretttttty sure she didn't, and then Chuck's craigslist addiction paid off and he found one for an amazing price and 

CARMA LOVES IT. It really is way cool; it's super lightweight so she can hop on and off and move it around easily. She was pretty tentative at the beginning as she scooted around on it, but got the hang of it wayyyy quicker than I would have and became a force to be reckoned with:

And it has been amazing not to kill my back by bending over here and helping her sit on Jack's bike alll the time, as was our previous tradition every. single. time. we were outside.

Our beloved van has been having some slight issues, you know, starting all the time so jumping it and charging it is a frequent occurrence at our house. I sat pondering it one day while gazing upon the millions of bikes in our garage and was reassured that at least we always have one form of transportation ready!

We send the boys to and from school and scouts on their bikes, and sometimes to church for other activities.

We also love living close to a couple different bike parks - the 'dirt' one is prob our fave, over by Lakeview Park:

And it has a handy playground right there too for when Carma is done biking and running up and down the little hills haha.

April Girls Night! It actually came a week early since Nicole was in town, hooray.

I think our great intention was to spend the evening hammering out specifics for our girls retreat later in the month but I'm 99% sure that didn't happen haha. It's all good, our retreat was a-mazing! And will get its own post! Next! With a million pictures!

Okay, say a box with like eight cans of Shasta black cherry pop showed up on your grass one morning... would you let it sit there a few days and then eventually pop some tops and drink it? Asking for a friend. Named us. Other front yard adventures: Clyde and Andrew playing nerf, admiring the tulips from afar, a random April dusting of snow, and some cute little flowers on our peach and apple trees! We haven't given up on them quite yet!

 Insta caption: "When you need to burn some energy on the trampoline but also want to discuss Minecraft strategy... you grab each other's shoulders and jump together in a circle so you can talk 😂🙌🏼👬."

Chuck and I went on a date! A date that didn't involve Costco or the temple! We went and had dinner at the little Chinese restaurant where we had our first date and it was really nice. Chuck's a rockstar for putting up with me and doing it mostly with a smile ;).

You know those facebook articles reminding men to grab the camera and take pictures of their wives/partners so they're in the scrapbook too? a) It's fine, I just take a million selfies, and b) here's the secret: agree to play Battlefront with your sons. Chuck couldn't record the moment for posterity fast enough ;). Spoiler alert: I sucked. I kept accidentally changing the viewpoint (like helmet view, then aerial, then I think I was looking at myself from behind?) and there's too many buttons and I'm not grrrreat at telling the good guys from the bad guys so I generally just shoot all the time - when I press the right buttons, that is. The boys were thrilled I made the attempt though!

Carma and Jack and I headed over to find out if Carma can't hear... turns out she can, so that is not what's behind her speech delay. They did find some pretty large adenoids (not to brag, but we're four for four on kids with those) so we made plans for those to be evicted.

 Carma and Jack and I also hit up the library a few times during the month - including once where we bumped right into my lovely cousin Amanda and her lovely daughter Cecily! They had moved to Nampa a few weeks earlier and we are so happy to have them out here! And share a library for fun impromptu family reunions!!

Jack and Carma managed to have three preschools between the two of them during April. One, Jack's legit preschool which he continued to LOVE. The tree painting comes from there, as does the drawing in the top left that he was given by a female classmate. Allegedly she made one for each of the students, but I'm sure she made Jack's extra special ;). Two, Carma headed over to the developmental preschool for a couple days of observation! Does that backpack all the way down to her knees just kill you?? Three, the playroom at plasma haha. I totally count it as preschool! That's where Carma made that darling handprint flower picture!!

Speaking of preschool, via instagram... "Jack was the VIP at preschool last week and he and I had a rock solid plan for him to take his stuffed animal monkey for show and tell 🐒☺️. Chuck was the one to drop him off and somehow Jack instead took an xbox controller and Battlefront - rated T for Teen, not Tiny Five Year Old 😳. Still looking into how the show and tell mix-up occurred 🤔🕵🏻‍♀️🙄😱👀🤦🏻‍♀️😂"

Random Carma Junie pictures, mostly how she spends her quiet time around the house. You can usually find her coloring or reading or playing with dollies or eating a Nutella sandwich or in some hidey hole with the iPad haha:

Ahhh, more of the many faces of Carma. She highly enjoys having a living, breathing human underneath her while she sleeps (have I mentioned I prefer sleeping completely devoid of any human touch?). She sported her Easter hat to Fred Meyer one day and got several compliments haha.

Carma and Grandma = bffs!

Random sibling bonding and cuddling. These four legit warm my heart.

Random pictures - Chuck advised as Will created an egg drop container, sleepy kiddos, hats were on clearance at Target!, dentist, Clyde got beamed in the face with a ball during P.E., my kids like to sit on me, my kids like to sit on Chuck, and snuggling with my Clyde. For a while there we had a pretty regular tradition of reading our own books in his bed at night. Might need to bring that one back.

Oh, my blog! I enjoy providing anyone with some nonsensical, rambling entertainment but I LOVE when Chuck and the boys read it. It's seriously so fun to find Clyde and Will (and Jack!) re-reading old posts on the computer or in the blog books (I have the first couple years printed out so far...). And of course I laughed so hard at Chuck's cousin Rachel's post on fb about her blog ;). 

Okay, almost done! Couple funny screenshots for April: 

Oh my gosh, I love the Obamas. I follow Pete Souza, who was the official White House photographer during their tenure, on twitter and instagram and I looooove his throwback pictures. 

 Quick confession: I don't know for sure if this text was from April, but that's when I took the screenshot, so there ya go. 

Isn't Courtney the cutest? And Mallory so perfectly observant? I'm not saying I like have a corner on the market of hoodies, athletic shorts, and winter boots but I do sport that look a lot. A LOT.

Although possibly less so since I discovered the black leggings at Costco....

This is literally me. Right now I have six pairs, although two are still brand new in the packaging - you know, for a rainy day. I have four pair that I wear every single day of the chillier months and they bring me incredible joy haha.

Okay, that's pretty much everything else in April! All that's left is the amazing retreat and then Mayyyyyyyyyyy.