Sheep Shearing {April 26}

The little city-owned farm close to us had a big sheep shearing event at the end of April, where they had sheep shearing and sheepdog herding demonstrations, tractor / hay rides, and some other fun activities. It was pretty crowded (the sun was out!) but we had fun and avoided the most crowded attractions (which were also the most expensive – pony rides and bounce houses). I had never seen a sheep being shorn, and I was pretty fascinated. The boys were interested too, although I may have liked it more than they did :) It was interesting to see how the wool comes off and how thick it is. A few pictures from our day:

   

 

4 Months {April 8}

Eliza’s 4-month stats were:

weight: 14 lbs 8 oz, ~60%

height: 26.5”, >98%

head: 16.6”, 75-90%

At 4 months, Eliza:

~just found her toes. She loves to grab them and play with them (as you can see in the pictures)

~smiles at people, and laughs when she’s being tickled

~rolls all over – tummy to back and back to tummy, and likes to reach for her toys

~wiggles and kicks and likes to be moving

~still has a hint of red in her hair depending on the light. She has a big bald spot on the back of her head, and nice little mullet underneath :)

Overall, Eliza is a pretty happy, easy-going baby and we love having her in our family! She likes her brothers and spends a lot of time watching them run around.

Easter Celebrations {April 20}

We had the usual celebrations for Easter – dyed eggs the night before, Easter baskets in the morning, a little egg hunt in the backyard after church, and a yummy dinner (with the missionaries). The boys were pretty excited for Easter to come – they had been talking about it for weeks. We tried to really focus on Christ and what He did for us, and they seemed to at least understand a little bit – the next day, when we were talking about Bennett’s preschool’s baby chick that had died, Ryan said “I know what they did with the baby chick. I think they put it in a tomb”. In our rush to get to 9am church, I didn’t get any pictures of the kids in their cute Easter clothes before church. As seems to always happen, Eliza had a messy diaper during Sacrament Meeting that ended up all over her Easter dress and my white skirt. Lovely. I went home and changed and attempted to salvage our clothes, and we re-created the photo opp the next week by having the kids all wear their Easter clothes again :) A few highlights in pictures:

the boys were pretty excited about the bow ties in their Easter baskets

  

2 out of 3 smiling is pretty good these days :)

Tulip Festival {April 19}

The day before Easter, we made a trip up to the Skagit County Tulip Festival. We had several Easter-y things we were hoping to do that day, but wanted to make sure we made it up to the tulip festival before the flowers all died. We were so glad we made it up there – they were amazing!! They had a big garden area that we walked through, then some big fields of tulips. We had heard that traffic was really bad on the weekends, so we went up right when they opened in the morning and it was great – we beat the traffic and the crowds (although there were still a lot of people there), and the rain – it started sprinkling right as we drove away. It was beautiful. I love tulips, and it was amazing to see them in mass quantities, and to see all the different colors and types of tulips.

Happy Birthday Nate {April 3} & Ryan {April 8}

After Bennett’s birthday in February, Ryan had been talking about his upcoming birthday regularly. Multiple times a week, I would hear sentences starting with “Maybe when it’s my birfday party…”. I don’t think Nate was as excited about his birthday as Ryan, but hopefully his birthday was still fun. We didn’t do anything super exciting, but Nate was able to leave work early, so we enjoyed having him home for the evening. I made him honey walnut shrimp for dinner (and since the boys and I don’t like shrimp, it really was a special dinner just for him). Instead of a cake, we had fruit pizzas for dessert – yum! I didn’t think we could fit 32 candles on a little cookie, so we had to make do with 3 on one cookie and 2 on another.

 

We did manage to have a date night a few days later and had some friends watch the kids while we had a little date night going out to dinner. It was nice to have a couple of hours with just the two of us, and to extend the birthday celebrations a little longer.

Ryan’s birthday was less than a week later. We decided we didn’t want to do another big party like we had done for Bennett’s birthday (since it was just 6 weeks earlier), but I wanted to make sure it was a special day for him and that we did something a little different. We decided to go to the zoo – fortunately, the weather cooperated. It started raining that afternoon just as we were leaving but although it was overcast, it was relatively warm and not rainy while we were there. They gave Ryan a special big “I’m Celebrating my Birthday” pin and tokens for both the boys to ride the carousel. They two highlights of our zoo trip were the bears (the zookeepers fed them when we were standing just about 10 feet away) and the carousel ride, which Ryan especially loved.

            

That night, we had spaghetti for dinner, then Ryan was excited to open the rest of his presents. I ended up missing one of the key ingredients for his cake (don’t remember now what it was), so we sang to him and had him blow out candles a couple days later at my sister’s house. We sure love this little guy! Happy Birthday Ryan!!