April All the Things

Quinn and Eden's family came to visit for part of their Spring Break, hooray! These girlies found lots of time to play in Grandma Pam's dollhouse:

... when they weren't out for walks with Albie and Grandma, of course.

I've taken a lot of pictures of Quinn and Chuck over the years, these might be the ones that make me laugh the most though:

Allll the nostagia - lots of childhood memories of playing basketball with cousins and uncles in front yards, backyards, and churches after family dinners.

This was between general conference sessions on Saturday, so everyone had lots of stored up energy to burn:

Some more fun at Grandma Pam's house - Chuck and Quinn teamed up for a laundry room project, Isaac and Jack commandeered the kitchen table for arts and crafts, and Eden and Clyde declared the living room a quiet place to read.

Random cute pictures of Will and Carma June:

I don't remember the circumstance around this cool magnet robot looking thing BUT Will is creative and darling, so there ya go!

Once upon a time in March Paulina and Brad bought this amazing house and we all forbid her from moving UNLESS we got to be included in all the fixing upping and such.

So one Saturday in April Chuck and I loaded up the kids and drove out to be nosy and look around under the guise of "helping". Chuck actually proved himself an asset (as usual) and helped Brad in the front room. I did some therapeutic ripping of wallpaper off of the stairwell - let me just say, there is nothing like that moment when you finally get a good corner and a big piece just pulls right off. The kids had the best time ever running all over and playing and watching shows with the wee Jenks children.

For girls' night in April, we made a return trip and continued to conquer in the battle vs. Wallpaper. We also ate delicious treats. Because... girls' night.

This is just an early glimpse of the paint transformation in the front room. We all love Paulina's house and also Paulina's willingness to drive to Nampa so often to see us!

Katie had a birthday in April! And a birthday party! Clyde was psyched to get an invite and slightly less psyched when I made him pose for a picture when I picked him up. Whatever, it's what I do. Katie is a doll and she and Clyde have developed a way cool friendship this year.

Cute little Cray-Cray going to preschool with her shoes on the wrong feet.

One of Jack and Carma's favorite activities: playing 'camping' in her room with her awesome lamp.

Of course, it's hard to get a good night's sleep after a campout, so sometimes you have to take over Mom and Dad's bed, grrrr.

Random pictures from an afternoon with Carma:

I didn't pick this up at the thrift store even though it's accurate... I just feel like it would ruin the surprise- I like to catch Chuck a little off guard with my crazy ;).

Make Way - we got a pet duckling! Well, really he got us - he randomly showed up in our driveway one afternoon. Carma and Jack immediately fell in love and christened him Joe-Joe.

Sadly, we quickly remembered that a) we have a no pet policy and b) ducklings aren't really pets anyways, so we optimistically led Joe-Joe back over to the path and I guess assumed he would roll down the banks and into the water and flap a wing to say good-bye?

Alas, he did not. He just stayed on the path and followed Carma and Jack around. I also didn't see any duck families nearby in the water. At this point my phone battery was low (possibly due to how many pictures I was taking??) and I was about to be late to pick up Clyde from tennis and some sketchy door-to-door salesman came over and were a little TOO interested in the duck.

After a few phone calls, I was instructed to put Joe-Joe in a box and walk along the path until I found a duck family with ducklings around the same size and stick Joe-Joe in with them and then make a run for it. We commenced with the plan, although we recruited our cute neighbor Jazzy down the street to do the actual 'stick Joe-Joe in with them' bit. Joe-Joe still writes occasionally and checks in with us around the holidays :).

I always feel bad when we road trip without Chuck, but then I see pictures like this on the photo stream which assure me he was juuuuust fine in our absence:

Check up for the new ten-year-old. Happy and healthy and hilarious - he helped me fill out the screening questionnaire and when it came to a section about school, he suggested we disclose his tendency to be tardy there ;).

Pulled this off facebook (without credit, sorry!!). Love.

This picture is somewhat misleading since I VERY much prefer Great Value chocolate milk from Walmart, but the ratio of my chocolate milk to everyone else's chocolate milk is accurate.

Pulled this off facebook one day (with credit! positivelypresent.com). Obviously these ideas vary in effectiveness based on a number of factors including severity of anxiety. I can see a few of these helping when I feel anxious about something:

Um, have I mentioned how lame it is to live several hours away from most of our nieces and nephews? SEND ME CUTE PICTURES OF THEM PLEASE.

I don't remember the context of this conversation, but it was clear that D.I. wasn't in the plan and I sneaked it in anyways haha. So glad Chuck knows me so well ;).

Peace out, April! You were awesome!