Shakespear Shuffle

Sunday, May 11, 2014

April 2014

April always starts great with General Conference. Each time we have Conference the kids are more & more reverent & well-behaved. I couldn't believe how much I was actually able to listen to this time! It helped that Dallen napped during both afternoon sessions.

The kids picked Sam's Cafe for our Saturday conference lunch.

During my Mom's spring break she & her Mom, my Grammy, came for a visit. I haven't seen her since Hunter was a baby so it was fun to chat & show her around Seaside. She brought a stack of really old children's books that quickly became the new favorites around here. I think Grammy must have been hoarse!

She loves history so we took the kids out of school & went to Fort Clatsop for the first time to learn more about the Lewis & Clark expedition.

Grammy treated us to the Candyman

As usual we've had some gorgeously sunny days. We went fishing with friends & hiking around at Coffenbury Lake.

One Sunday it was like 75 degrees & we were all sweating to death on the beach :)

We had a once in a life time opportunity to see a 40ish foot beached gray whale that had washed up in Seaside. He had been dead for a long time but just finally washed ashore. Wow was he stinky! I felt kind of bad taking pictures & posing the kids by him because it's a sad thing but we had to document it somehow!

Nothing like a dead whale to bring the community together ;-)

A friend took Jeremy clamming & he came home with 12 of them. Hmmmm...what to do with clams? Jeremy made clam chowder but I think from now on we'll be giving the clams to someone else or tossing them back in (which I guess is technically against the rules around here).

One afternoon Dallen insisted on a date with Daddy so Daddy took him to return a Redbox movie but that didn't count so he took him on a nice walk to the beach & back.

Easter was not quite how I invisioned it going this year. We did color eggs & Hyrum did a hunt by himself & the other kids did one for our preschool earlier in the week. But Friday before Easter was the start of a nasty tummy virus that hung out for about a week going through everyone in the family but Jeremy. One night we had three kids throwing up all night long. It would have almost been funny, um, but it really wasn't! I'm so glad that doesn't happen to us very often!

Emma with her cute Easter hat from Nana! She loves it & likes that she can match her beloved Sunbeam teacher at church who often wears hats too.

On Sunday everyone felt great so we actually went to church. Then that night it struck again but I'm glad we were able to go to church as a family.

Here was our preschool egg hunt. I put stickers & money in some of the eggs to attempt to avoid as much candy but the favorite eggs were of course the candy ones anyway.

The same day as the hunt was my last day of teaching at my house so even though it was rainy & cold we took the kids to the beach. You could tell they were all true Oregonians because no one cared a bit about the weather & no one wanted to leave the beach (except me!)

This is Emma & her friend Grey. If they keep this up we'll have to really keep an eye on them in about 10 years. She definitely likes boys that's for sure & has the biggest crush I guess a 4 year old can have on this kid.

When our friend Jenn has a turn teaching preschool her son Tommy gets to come play with Dallen & he having him over to play. They just follow each other around the house. I love watching little guys interact with each other.