April Re-cap

April was a busy month for us: Evelyn's Spring Break, Ben starting the last quarter of the academic year, Easter, a birthday, and then all the regular stuff that goes on. 

 Ben took the kids to the mall for free scoop day at Ben and Jerry's. 

 Ben scopes out new parks and viewpoints on his bike rides, and this was a fantastic park we found for flying kites. The ocean breeze comes right over the top of this hill. 

 We also practiced softball skills with the kids.

 Playing after a softball game. 

 Ben's favorite dessert that we mostly gave away this time. 

 The kids were big on Playdough in April. Jillian especially can sit there and create for quite a while. Gordon likes to mash all the colors together, much to the girls' chagrin. 

 Evelyn loves making pictures for people, here's one for her cousin. 

Jillian likes being in control of the camera, and this was one of the few decent shots she took on her last "photo shoot." Lots of blurry pictures, one of Gordon's underwear-clad bottom, pictures of "The Cat in the Hat" show on PBS, etc. 

The first-graders were asked to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" for their last school assembly. Ev's in the back with her hand raised. There are nearly 100 first-graders. Crazy. She has really grown up a lot this year and learned quite a bit. I wish she'd slow down on the growing part though, she's already got the mood swings to match a teenager. Ugh. Only 7.5 more weeks of school, I can't wait! 

Easter did not produce many good pictures at all; Gordon was fighting off the chickenpox, and so we kept Easter small this year. We did the goodies on Saturday (all the other festivities were that day anyway), so on Sunday we could better focus on the Savior instead of chocolate bunnies and jelly beans. I think it's a tradition we'll keep. 

My garden is a big source of satisfaction lately. I'm grateful to have somewhere to dig in the dirt. I got my garden all ready and planted for this spring/summer, and it's looking to be a much better growing year than last year. Most of the seeds have sprouted, and are continuing to grow instead of just staying tiny seedlings. I still had lots of trouble with my spinach (something ate the sprouts), and then a package of lettuce seed failed to sprout at all, leading me to think it was bad seed or something. My Calendulas and Bert's button flower mix are growing fantastically, as are the tomato plants, sunflowers, bunching onions, and radishes. We planted "Martian Sweet Corn," and Sugar Baby watermelons, which I will attempt to trellis due to a lack of space and mildew problems here. We'll see how the experiment goes!