April summary

I used to have individual blog posts that followed a theme or a specific activity. Now, more often than not, the title is something along the lines of "Fill-in-the-month activities." I guess that's what 4 kids and my preference to spend whatever free time I do have reading rather than blogging will do. But hey, at least I am still blogging. I count this as journal writing and family history, which makes me feel a little better when I remember how little I get around to doing either of those activities.

Anyway, April has passed us by, filled with sickness, silliness, and stuff.

Annie came home from preschool one day with a ladybug crown/hat thing she had made. It inspired her. She told me when she grows up she is going to be a fashion hat designer, then set to work putting together some prototypes with construction paper she tore into strips and stapled together.

We had probably close to 10 of these hats of various styles and color floating around the house for a while.

Megan has begun pulling up on everything and is cruising a little, but not much.

She loves climbing the stairs most of all and occasionally gets lucky when someone leaves the gate open and she rushes to get as high up the stairs as she can. Today I found her 4 stairs from the top. She's actually really good on the stairs. The problem comes when she decides to sit down and forgets that the floor isn't all there. So far we've been lucky that when she's on the stairs alone her main goal is to get to the top before someone catches her, so she doesn't pause to have a seat. We've had a talk about the gate at the bottom of the stairs, so hopefully we don't have any falling baby stories any time soon.

Megan looks so much like Ryan. Except with piggie tails.

Ryan at the same age:

Rachel and Annie got hit with the same bug within a day of each other a few weeks ago. It totally wiped them out and for one entire day they hardly moved from the couch, even when the TV was off. Ryan got a different bug the day before, so he was still recovering, so there were 3 kids with no appetites and no energy. That they were sick was a bummer, but it sure made for easy housework: no toys to pick up, food to cook, dishes to wash. The only downside was some extra laundry, but even that wasn't as bad as it could have been. Here's Annie on day 2--finally with an appetite, but still no energy to sit up at the table, so I made a makeshift TV tray for her to eat on.

The next day everyone was better, so we went to the park. Apparently 2 days of hardly eating drains the energy out of you. After 5 minutes playing on the playground we went to walk a little way to the swings and Annie and Rachel were dragging their feet from lack of energy. They didn't even argue when I suggested we head home after we had been at the park for less than a half hour. Another day or so and they were back to their normal energy levels again.

Here's the promised picture of Annie's bangs/hair to compare with Willy Wonka:

Megan loves her swing. Since we usually just take down one of the kids' swings to hang her baby swing on the swingset, and vice versa, her swing was sitting on the ground one day when she found it and was so excited to climb into it. I don't think she even minded that it didn't move. She played in it for a good 5-10 minutes.

Ryan still loves playing with the camera whenever he finds it. One day he got it all set up and told me to sit down and we'd "do cheese" with the camera. When the light didn't turn on I showed him how to turn on the timer so we could get this fabulous self portrait of the two of us on the kitchen floor.

We've been trying to invite the kids' cousins over for movie night for a while now, but something has always come up: sickness, March Madness, etc. But last week we finally made it work, even though Justin ditched us so he could stay home and watch the playoffs.

The kids all had fun together. Megan wouldn't leave Rachel alone. I think she wanted her popcorn. But when I offered her tiny baby-safe sized pieces she wasn't interested. She only wanted them out of Rachel's bag. Rachel put up with her for a little while before asking us to take Megan away.

Speaking of Megan and eating...

She will not eat baby food and hasn't for a couple of months. She loves real people food, and now has 4 teeth which help a bit with all but the real hard stuff that you really need molars to chew. She's not picky, but has definite preferences that she will make known if she sees someone eating something she wants.

April had beautiful weather. The highs were in the 70s and 80s most of the month. We spent a lot of time enjoying the weather. Looking for shapes in the clouds:

Now that May is here our outdoor time will slowly be cut back to only early mornings, or whenever there is water to play with. Welcome summer, I guess.

Community Fair and other adventures

Most weekends we get together at my parents' house for a family dinner either Saturday or Sunday. Peyton and Ryan are best bud cousins. Last week they shared a table. Rachel had decorated it with a flower, so with the towel for a tablecloth and the vase and flower it looked like a fancy dinner date. :)

 Megan rediscovered the tunnel. She loves it.

 Ryan and his cars.

 When Megan comes in his room he gathers them all in close so Megan doesn't get them. He likes to tell her they're choking hazards so she can't play with them. That boy plays with his cars 9/10 of his free time. All day long.

Friday evening Rachel's school put on a community fair. We went and the kids had a good time.

 They had a rock wall and as soon as Annie saw it she wanted to climb. She's seen pictures of her friend, Slade, climbing at a climbing gym in town and has been looking forward to getting a chance to climb herself.

 Rachel did a great job. She made it all the way to the top and got to ring the bell.

Annie had fun, too, but once she started getting about 5 feet off the ground she started to get a little nervous. A few more times and she'd be a pro, but we weren't about to wait in that line twice.

 When it was time to head home we bribed the kids with cotton candy. Here's Ryan with his:

 In other news, Megan made it almost to her 9 month mark without pulling up to standing. I was getting all optimistic, thinking she may take her time walking, unlike her siblings who took their first steps at 9/10 months. Then she started pulling up to standing on April 1 and shortly thereafter started attacking the stairs and figured out how to climb those. We have the gate up at the bottom of the stairs now (which Ryan hates because he can't open it on his own), so Megan moved on to the next adventure:

 Climbing, climbing, climbing. I guess it's goose-egg season in our house. Though so far Megan has somehow avoided them. Maybe having linoleum and carpet in most of our house instead of mostly tile like we had in our other house where the other 3 learned to walk will make a difference.

Last night I had a girls' night out with some friends. It was a much needed chance to get away from the kids for an evening and play games and laugh. Then I came home to the kids all in bed (though Ryan had a fever which had woken him up, so I needed to attend to that), and the kitchen all clean and dishes done. I have the best hubby. :)

Somehow, either while I was gone, or first thing this morning, Annie saw Rachel cut one strand of her hair, so Annie decided to give herself a haircut. The power of example. :/

I did a quick trim to give her bangs before heading off to church.

 They look a little better than the picture shows when they're all dry. But I still hate bangs. You either have to cut them constantly to keep them out of eyes, or you have to deal with growing them out, which is also a pain in the neck. Sigh. Annie was a little freaked out when I pulled out the hair cutting scissors: "No! Don't cut my hair! I'll look like a boy!" Then after I just cut her bangs and not all her hair she looked at herself and exclaimed, "I look like Willy Wonka!" And it's true. I'll have to get a picture of her with her hair down to see her Willy Wonka look alike shot.

Easter

For April Fools' Day this year we actually did a few mild pranks. We glued eyes on many of our fridge occupants, which the kids thought were great.

I also told them at dinner that I had made brownies for dessert (we never have dessert unless it's someone's birthday or we have guests for dinner). I pulled out a pan with some Es I had cut out of brown paper--Brown E's. To assuage their disappointment I told them they could have juice and pulled out cups full of red jello with a straw sticking out. Annie was not fooled, but Ryan tried sucking and sucking until he looked around and saw everyone else had pulled out their straw and was eating Jell-o off of it. They got a kick out of it. Their April Fools jokes were mostly along the lines of "What's that?!" and when we look they yell, "April Fools!"

The first weekend in April was General Conference and Easter. Since Rachel had the Friday before Easter off of school we decided to go do our Easter fun at Grandma's house then so we didn't have to try to cram everything between sessions of conference.

First we decorated eggs.

 Annie and McKenzie dyed just a few eggs, then spent most of the time putting these stickers on every inch of their 2 eggs.

 After they were decorated the Easter egg hunts began. They had such a fun time hiding and finding and finding some more.

 We wrapped up the fun with their Easter presents from Grandma. Grandma made these shirt-dresses for all the girls. They loved them.

 A big dogpile hug-fest with Grandma:

 After opening presents we headed to the theater to watch Cinderella. Ryan and Megan stayed with Grandpa so Megan could nap and Ryan could run around as much as he wanted without disturbing the whole theater full of movie watchers.

Easter morning the kids woke up to find their Easter baskets. Ryan immediately saw a package of gum in his basket and didn't care about anything else after that. We couldn't drag him back to look at the other things the Easter bunny had left for him.

 They got some Legos from us and spent a good portion of General Conference building with Legos, including helping build a temple. It's the first set of the small (choking hazard size) Legos that we own and they're long over due. The kids have been really enjoying building with them.

Our awesome neighbor, Shannon, has given the kids Easter baskets every year since we've lived here. This year she didn't get Megan a basket (for obvious reasons), but she did get her this singing duck that sings You Are My Sunshine and the little chicks dance around. Megan LOVES it.

 During General Conference, taking after President Uchtdorf, I guess, flying in their airplane:

 And Megan doing her General Conference thing (playing with whatever remote she can find).

It was a fabulous Easter/General Conference weekend. Since then Ryan has begun doing this dying thing where he'll lay down on the ground and say he's dead, then after I say how sad I am that he's dead, he starts wiggling, then he happily announces he's alive again. Occasionally when he says he's dead he tells me how someone rolled a big rock over him, so I'm pretty sure he's re-enacting the story of Jesus dying and getting resurrected. Happy Easter!

Wrapping up March

March was a good month weather-wise. It was mostly 70s and 80s for highs so we spent a lot of time outside.

The Princess made her debut and came to dinner many evenings.

 It was nice to have her at dinner because she was as polite as a princess should be, using good manners, complementing the food, using a napkin, and cleaning up her plate afterwards.

Monday afternoons Rachel and Annie have gymnastics, which they both enjoy and are doing very well in. One afternoon while we were getting ready to leave, Annie heard Megan wake up from her nap. I hurried to finish whatever I was working on downstairs, and came upstairs to find Annie keeping Megan happy.

 She was very happy to have a visitor.

Outside Megan in very much enjoying exploring the yard. She loves the little pea gravel rocks that are by the swing set. Apparently they're great for sucking on. She gets very upset when we take them away and move her away from the rocks. But sometimes she manages to find other things to taste.

 Like dirt and grass. She doesn't normally like to crawl on the grass too much, but if she has long enough pants she'll endure it occasionally.

With the warm weather we pulled out the water table for some fun.

 Which meant the kids soon needed their swim suits out.

 

The water inspired a new "do" for Megan.

 Sunday Megan got a different new do. Cutest piggy tails ever.

 She had fun playing with Annie's hair. This expression is the best:

 "Ha ha ha. I have Annie's hair and I'm never letting go!"

Megan also began standing up very occasionally in March.

 Most of the time when she'd be on her feet, however, she'd be crying. She did NOT like to practice standing. That has since changed. :/

Ryan inherited this tricycle from our neighbors that has a place behind the seat for someone to stand. The kids have discovered that if Ryan scoots way forward, Annie will fit on the seat and Rachel can stand on the foot shelf thing. Ryan can move all three of them together, though sometimes he'll need a little boost from Rachel to get moving. Ryan loves to give rides to "school" or "work."

 Rachel had a Reading Fair project due at the beginning of April. She came up with pretty much everything on her own. Any time I would try to give a suggestion like asking her if she was using her best handwriting, or suggesting that she might want to make the word bubble a little bigger, or reminding her that she only had __ days left, we'd very quickly escalate to an argument, so I stepped away from the whole thing and she did it all on her own, which is, I guess, how it's supposed to be anyway.

 She did a good job and hers was selected as one of the top 3 in her class to go on to the school-wide judging. When we went to look at the finalists it was obvious that hers was one of few that was done without any parental help. :)

We got a big subscribe and save shipment from Amazon, so the kids were happy to put the huge box and all the packing paper to good use making a fort.

 All in all, March was a good month. :)