April 2011

I guess there was a lot going on back in April, because this post has a lot of pictures (even for me). 

Rachel played soccer for the first time this spring.  She loved everything about it and it was fun watching her play.  She was always easy to spot on the field because she was the only player who felt the need to pull her shorts up all the way to her belly-button.  What can I say – she’s always preferred things tucked in nice and tidy. 

Her team did not win one single game all season, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.  They just had no idea what they were doing. (But look at those shorts!  Awesome!)

After awhile it became exciting if they managed to score even one goal in a game.  This next picture shows Rachel’s one chance all season to actually make a goal – she’s the one with the ball, and nobody from the other team was even close to her.  I have to admit, I was pretty excited for her.  She gave a mighty kick and the ball hit right into the edge of the goalpost and bounced off.  I was all confused when I lowered the camera and realized she had somehow managed to miss.

I thought she’d be devastated, but she recovered quickly and told me after the game – “that was called a corner kick, Mom!” 

That might be my favorite quote from the whole month.  I’m going to start using it when I fail miserably at something – I’ll just blurt out, “that was called a corner kick!!” like I did something awesome. 

Tristan and Oliver were usually at baseball games during Rachel’s soccer games, but the younger three all had fun watching and playing around.

Henry is obsessed with climbing trees.  He cannot see a tree without expressing a desire to climb it someday.

Cynthia riding the Lizza train around the kitchen.  It’s one of her favorite games.

Cindy with a big pile of toys.

Lizza spent much of April reading books.

I love walking into a room and seeing this:

Also in April – Cynthia turned 6 months old.  She just gets better with age.  I know I always say this, but we really, really like this girl.

She figured out scooting and started getting into trouble. 

The kitchen is her favorite place to hang out, because she knows she can find tasty snacks all over the floor.

It started getting pretty hot in April, so Tristan and his friend started a little lemonade stand.  They were nice enough to let Oliver join the business, too.  I thought they wouldn’t make very much money, so after awhile I took pity on them and took over a few dollars to let Rachel and Lizza buy some drinks.  Tristan was like, “no, Mom – we’re good.  We’ve already made 20 bucks.”  It’s so funny to watch his little business mind at work – I love how he strategically wrote the price as $1 and then crossed it out to write 75 cents – he told me they did that on purpose so people would feel like they were getting a good deal (“plus,” he added, “a lot of people just give us a dollar and say we can keep the change!”)  Haha.  Also, just this last Saturday he and Ollie were selling lemonade again, and Tristan came running back to the house to get his bike.  We asked what he was doing, and he said since he knows a lot of people work in their yards on Saturday, he was going to ride around and let people know there was lemonade for sale.  Daniel asked him if he knew what that was called, and he looked at us and was like, “Yeah – marketing.”  We were laughing so hard.  How does he already know that?  I am being honest when I say that there is a good chance I didn’t know what marketing was until I was an adult.    

It also got hot enough to swim in April, but the water was still freezing! 

Easter!

We dyed eggs and they were pretty ugly.  Next year I am going to try this technique.

I love Lizza’s poses in our after-church Easter pictures.  She is such a little princess.  Rachel, on the other hand, is like, “check out my sweet plastic egg I got at church!”

Getting ready for the Easter egg hunt.  Yes, Henry is using a Halloween bucket.  We were a little short on Easter baskets this year.

Another thing we were short on was plastic eggs to put treats in.  So I printed off little pictures of Easter eggs, and taped them to the treats.  Each kid was only allowed to collect the specific color assigned to them.  It was a pretty funny Easter egg hunt.  Especially since Daniel got involved with the hiding – I had already hidden about half the treats, and he thought I was making it way too easy, so he took it upon himself to hide all of Oliver’s treats in impossible places. 

Easter Cindy:

The kids are always asking us to draw with them, and we usually don’t, so Daniel had the fun idea to have a drawing contest with the older four.  He set up the fruit bowl on the kitchen table, and they went to work.  He decided he was in over his head and declared the kids the winners (they each got different awards – best coloring, best shading, most realistic, etc.), but I think he did a pretty good job, too.

Daniel’s:

Tristan’s:

Oliver’s:

Rachel’s:

Lizza’s (she went with a loose interpretation of the bananas and ended up with this lovely basket full of all kinds of fruit):

Princess Lizza dancing with Prince Henry:

Watching Rachel’s dance class.  She chose not to attend her final dance performance (it was the same day as a soccer game, and she wanted to go to soccer instead), so we went to her last day of class to see them rehearse.

Oliver with our snake, Lucy:

Okay, done.  That was a long month.  I know I could have broken it up into different posts, but I just wanted to get it over with.  Maybe I will surprise myself and get May done before June is over?