What April Looked Like

Road trip to Florida

A quick night-time visit to Cocoa Beach, FL before the cruise.

Beautiful FL morning sky

Lobster bisque

Worst family photo shoot ever! Ha!

After the cruise, we dropped Andrew at the airport

in Orlando to leave for a work trip.

The kids and I headed to Disney Springs for a quick visit.

My fun shopping buddies.

Care Bear got herself a Kylo Ren lightsaber.

(Also notice the "Lefty's" kiosk in the background.

Ned Flander's Leftorium anyone???)

B introduced us to one of his favorite stores,

Uniqlo. I LOVE it!! Affordable and very visually appealing.

It reminded me of Ikea for clothes.

The Cupcake ATM wasn't working. Boo.

We came home to SNOW!!!

Not fun.

Andrew's work trip was to SANTIAGO, CHILE!

He hadn't been back to Chile since his mission.

Even though he was in a different part of the

country than where he served, he loved going back there.

He was there for a week and experienced an earthquake

and a riot that the police had to break up. Yikes!

But he loved his visit. Santiago was a beautiful city and

he enjoyed spending time there.

When Care Bear has friends over,

they like to play out in the woods behind our house.

She and Sarah found this jaw one day.

It has been the source of lots of creepy stories.

Sometimes when Andrew leaves on work trips, 

I decide to do projects around the house.

This time, I almost bit off more than I could handle!

Our front porch looked horrible and needed

to be repainted.

It's small and looked very doable.

But these types of projects are always harder

than they appear. It was exhausting.

And this is what I looked like at the end of it.

Sheesh! How do you get paint on your shin??

But look how good it looked when I finished!

One of the steps in prepping the porch

was to power wash it.

So I decided to buy a power washer.

AND I decide to power wash the

backyard basketball court while I was at it.

It was looking pretty rough.

With the shadows, it's kind of hard to tell,

but it looked SOOOO much better when I was done.

Time Out for Women came to Raleigh this year.

Yippee!

AND as a special surprise bonus, Tony was one of the speakers!

He was able to get VIP tickets for both Stephanie and me.

We had such a great time!!

Tony is an awesome speaker.

We loved hearing from him and the other speakers, too.

We had fun visiting with Erika and her friend, too.

And, lucky us, Tony got to come home

and spend the weekend with us.

He and Brandon are almost exactly the same size.

Tony has him by a teeny bit.

Pres. Baughan loves hearing Tony speak,

so talked him into doing a youth fireside while he was in town.

It was fabulous. He has such a gift for speaking and teaching.

Whitney had a birthday!!

Her brother and sister got her this not-so-lovely

pinata. And it was already dark outside when 

it was time for gifts. That didn't stop us from breaking it.

Love this sweet, fun girl.

Tickets to see Beautiful, the Carole King Musical.

She got to ditch school early the next day to head to Charlotte with me.

We loved all the music in the show. Very fun.

Geocaching date!

Grateful that spring finally decided to make its way to NC.

Whit was chosen to participate in All-State Chorus.

She got to spend two days at the Coliseum with hundreds

of other musically talented middle schoolers.

What a dream!

She was in the SSA chorus.

They sounded so amazing!

We weren't allowed to take video,

so you'll have to take my word for it.

Greensboro got an Arena Football team this year:

The Carolina Cobras.

Andrew and I went to a game for date night.

We had so much fun.

They have some crazy rules.

We were learning as the game went along.

They let the fans go down on the field at the end of the game.

They are usually high scoring games.

We made a comeback at the end to win 55-47.

We bought a violin.

The girls have been asking for one and wrote THE BEST

persuasive letter that helped us take the plunge.

It's a little too big for C to play much,

but W loves it and has picked it right up.

(Like she does with everything musical

that she attempts!)

In honor of Wyatt, I signed up for Be The Match,

the national bone marrow donors registry.

4th grade awards ceremony

I love the view in my backyard.

Seminary has been a STRUGGLE.

This was my table at 7:15.

Class is supposed to start at 7.

Ugh.

Cute girl on picture day at school.

She likes to dress up even though I don't buy school pics.

April = Dogwoods!

My favorite!

I planted some new flowers in our front yard.

My other favorite: Gerbera Daisies

The climbers had their one and only ropes competition of the year.

It was in Charlotte at Inner Peaks.

Warming up

Climber's meeting

This was a flash competition, which I had never been to.

It means you only get ONE chance to climb 

two different routes. You get points based on how

high you get on the routes. And the top ten scorers in

each age group get to climb one last route for the finals.

B's first route

His second route.

He finished in the top ten, so got to go to finals.

While we were waiting for his age group finals,

C climbed her first route.

She did such a great job, but ran out of time

just before reaching the end of the route.

She was upset with herself.

It was sweet to see B comforting her.

He's a great big brother to her.

B was scheduled to climb finals at the same time as

C was scheduled for her second route. And they

were on different walls. I was torn, but ended

 up getting to watch both of them. Just barely.

Reading the route beforehand

B ended up finishing 7th out of 21 guys.

C ended up finishing 6th out of 19 girls in her age group.

Proud of these climbers!

Holy cow. That was QUITE a month!