This Month's Art: April

I just love the art they create at home or bring home from school. They each have such great creativity.

Here is Owen's this month. I love how he is working on the details in his work.

And Olivia's. She got this light pad drawing set for Christmas and loves creating pictures for her favorite people (friends, piano teacher, school teacher...). I love that she wants to share her art with others.

 Cats are a major theme for her right now and I love these kitties. She draws them over and over...

 This one is from Easter and I just love the drawing, spelling, and of course the chocolate!

 She enjoys making books. This one is about her and her best friend, Olivia Moll.

 And I just love this one. The colors! I love that little girls and rainbows are just made for each other.

Jonah has some great stuff. This is a watercolor map from school. He often uses black in his art. It's one of his favorites.

And here is an Easter Bunny he drew:

And here's Charlottes too. She got a watercolor paint set for Easter and here is a collaborative mommy and Charlotte work.

And a little sidewalk chalk art too.

April Lunch Dates

We had our kid lunch dates again this month, on or close to their birth date. We ask the kids what they are most excited about and worried or nervous about right now. Then we do "Talent Fingers" where we ask the kids what they are good at. Then we write something on each finger to represent something they are good at. If they say being kind, I might draw a heart, or the letter K or a smile. They just love it and we love to hear what they say. If they get stuck we help them by telling them something we think they're good at. It's a fun tradition we love.

Jonah was first. He chose Costa Vida and we had a great conversation. However, the only photo I nabbed was one of Charlotte. Sorry Jonah! Note to self: I must get better at taking pictures. But here is a cute one of him eating one of his favorite foods...a churro!

Owen chose Crown Burger again. Like father, like son. He is really fun too. I love that no matter how old, our kids love getting this kind of attention from mom and dad.

Olivia chose Chick-fil-A again. She is so fun and sweet and all the kids are so good at letting Charlotte participate too. I just love my kids and this chance we get to show them we thing they are pretty awesome.

Charlotte doesn't get her own lunch date yet, but she sure enjoys all the kid dates she goes on. She gets her talent fingers done too. Usually every time and it is so fun to see how much they love it.

The Bywater's Visit

We were so lucky this month! We got to see some of our very favorite people, the Bywater family. They live in Virginia and we don't see them very often. They came to town for a family wedding and were able to spend a few days with us. They are so fun and awesome and we can just pick up where we left off. Our kids had a great time together.

They spent just a few days with us, but we were able to visit, go see Lego Batman, and make dinner together. We hadn't seen them since Charlotte was born and they came to visit us in the hospital. We look forward to getting together with them again.

Easter Week & Easter Sunday

This year we wanted to make Easter Week a little more special for our family. We started on Palm Sunday and we talked a little bit about what happened each day in that last week of the Savior's life. I posted pictures and a sentence or two each day. It was really neat and something I'd like to keep doing over the years, to help our family to understand better the significance of Easter.

On Saturday our neighborhood had an Easter Egg Hunt, hosted by our ward primary. It was really fun. The kids were able to do a craft and participate in an egg hunt. They loved it!

Later that afternoon we colored Easter Eggs. The kids love doing this and then we have our traditional Easter Egg Rolling. This is a tradition from Nate's family. It's sort of an Easter Egg Demolition Derby. You roll you eggs together and the one that doesn't crack is the winner! We love it. And we get to eat lots of hard boiled eggs.

On Easter Sunday they got their Easter Baskets and hunted for eggs. The Easter Bunny spoiled them!

 Then we made something new for breakfast, Ocean! They LOVED watching it rise in the oven. It was a lot of fun.

There were art supplies in their Easter Baskets and they dove right in and started projects, which I just think is so awesome!

Then we went to church. After church, Jordan and Samantha and their family came over for Easter Dinner. It was a great holiday week.

Spring Break: Day 9

We packed up our car and made the looooong drive home in 1 day.

 Everyone did great and we had a wonderful break!

Spring Break: Day 8

Today was another relaxing day. We took Beth to the airport early that morning, then we spent another day at the pool, just letting the kids wander and play. Charlotte took a much needed poolside nap. And Nate and the kids played foosball to their hearts content. It was a really fun and relaxing day!

Spring Break: Day 7

We had another relaxing day today. We stayed at Newport and let the kids play all day at the pool and around the resort. After logging so many miles at the park it was nice to have some downtime!

Then we headed back to our condo for a movie night!