First half of April

April Fool's
I'm not a huge fan of April fool's day, but I saw this idea online the night before and figured it was easy and harmless enough, that I could manage it. I told the kids I had brownies for them upstairs after quiet time. They ran up, and were sorely disappointed to find a pan full of "Brown E's". THey felt much better when I showed them the real brownies I had made. Ha!



Conference
This was probably the least effective conference for me. Maybe ever. Richie was gone all day Saturday (as he has been most Saturdays for the last month or so) working on his Masters, so it was just another day with me and the kids. Except that I felt obligated to get the house clean and make sure they quietly listened to conference. HA! What a joke. This is a picture of our attempt. I pulled out butcher paper and stamps and thought it would keep them listening for a while. I think it lasted about 5 minutes. (I love Miles's face here! Cracks me up)


Planting Strawberries
One Monday, during the witching hours from about 330-530, I was struggling to get dinner ready while the kids ran circles around me. Grandma Garner showed up out the blue and told me she had strawberries to plant! We've tried strawberries before without much success. At first I thought, "I love strawberries, but I have zero time to plant them and our garden space is running out." Luckily Grandma took charge and brought the kids outside with her, found places to plant the strawberries and I got to finish making dinner! What a relief it was. The kids made a memory with their Grandma and hopefully we'll get a few yummy strawberries to nibble on this summer.


School
A few pictures as proof that we're still plugging away with school. Gwen's practicing sight words by gluing letters from magazines over the letters I wrote on the index card, and Lindy is becoming a pro at stickers! :) I'm just hoping I can make it till the end of May. Every day we finish our allotted school work is a big accomplishment to me. I don't know how I'll do it once baby gets here, right before the school year starts.





It's a boy!
My ultrasound was at 730 at night, which worked out great so that Richie could be home with the kids. The tech was running over an hour behind, but I rather enjoyed my quiet time just reading and resting. I wasn't feeling anxious at all, to find out the gender. We had pretty much come to the conclusion that we were having another girl. And that was great! However, when she was checking everything, the baby turned just right so we could see the evidence of his gender, without any confusion! I just started laughing and told the tech how excited my older boy would be. I didn't make it home until around 10, and I figured everyone would be sleeping. But Dad, Miles and Gwen were all still wide awake, anxious to hear the news. I brought in blue balloons and candy, and it took the kids a minute to figure it out, but Richie was immediately overjoyed. He was yelling so loudly, I had to tell him to be quiet so as to not wake up Lindy. Miles said, "A BOY??? Oh I've been praying so hard for a boy!!!" :) Gwen wasn't as excited, although she's come around to the idea now. Lindy has no idea. We are SO excited to get another boy. We have a bunch of names to choose from, and are working on switching rooms around so that we'll have an official boy's room and girl's room.