Pieces of April

We started out our month by attending a 1st Birthday party for my friend Anna's son, Fletcher. Anna & I went to through the ASU Early Childhood Ed. program together. She now lives in North Carolina, but most of her family is here and she visits often. However, the past couple times she's been here I've missed her. I was so happy to see her and meet Fletcher. Anna's niece and nephew are pretty close in age to my kiddos so they enjoyed each other. Birthday parties are never a good place to catch up with someone though, with so much going on and especially with kiddos running around. But I was happy to be a part of the celebration! Updated: to add pictures Anna sent me from this day!!

Anna & Fletcher


Anna's neice, Rylie & Audrey


Cute pictures Anna took

The beginning of April also brought a surprise (and unfortunately too quick) visit from my Uncle Scott. You should have seen the way the kids just gravitated towards him. It was great!!! Audrey has only seen him a few times, over a year since the last visit I'm sure. But she was sooo excited when I told her he was coming. She even wrote a whole book for him. It was kind of like a Choose your own adventure book..except it was all about drawing. She drew some parts of a picture and left places for Uncle Scott to draw his own. I can't remember now what she titled the book, but I remember it being hilarious. (This is why I should blog when things happen, so I remember all the best parts!) Anyhow, the kids jumped around on Uncle Scott and wanted his attention the whole time. It really brought me back because I know I was just like that...uncles just bring that out in kids! Now I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but I would always say that Uncle Scott was my favorite uncle. To be fair to all the rest of my amazing uncles on both sides of the family, he was the youngest (on my dad's side)--only 11 years old when I was born. So, while my the older aunts and uncles were out of the house for school or getting married etc. he was around Grandma & Grandpa's the longest--in regards to me being around. We loved the visit and wish it were longer!

Kiddos & {Great} Uncle Scott,
with their "Cheese" faces of course!

April 7th Audrey & I went with our "Girly Girlfriendz" to see Disney on Ice: Princess Classics. I budgeted and bought these tickets way back in February. We haven't been able to do a lot of extra things so I really wanted to make sure we worked this into our budget for a special treat. The girls dressed up for the show and all LOVED it!

Princess Audrey

Girly Girl Princesses

As a belated birthday gift my mom renewed our family membership to the Phx Zoo. It was perfect timing as they had just opened the new orangutan habitat. It's so much better than what they had before which was basically a huge hole in the ground that everyone huddled around to look down into. This one you can see them from anywhere! It just makes you feel so much better for the animals. Now they have more toys and GRASS to play in! We of course made a stop by Audrey's favorite, the Komodo dragon. Usually they just hang in the grass doing nothing, but she still loves them. But this time the boy actually walked all the way fro m the back to the front, right by the window where Audrey was watching him. It was great, it was like he was coming just to see her!

Audrey & Abuelita checking out
the orangutan's new home.

Owen loved watching the baby orangutan play.

Audrey's favorite

The next weeks of the month we spent doing our regular stuff, but with 4 birthday parties! Yep, 4! {And we're going to our last April birthday party today...6 in all for this month!} After 4 parties in 9 days we also had 3 Easter Egg Hunts.

First, we had our annual Easter Egg Hunt & Brunch at school, MorningStar Academy Preschool on the 21st.

Audrey proud of her eggs!

Owen's first egg hunt...
I actually don't think he did one last year.

Just a cute picture of him that day!

The next day our friend Shabnam had one for our moms' group. It's hard enough trying to get both kids look at the camera at the same time, while giving a real smile...but add some candy into the mix and it's really impossible!

Saturday morning our church ward had a hunt at a park in our subdivision. My camera battery died so I didn't get any pictures. But it was a lovely overcast morning and the kids loved it of course. Later that day we went to the Neerings where the kiddos had fun dying eggs with their Aunts Rae Lynne & Sarah. We took some pictures with Rae Lynne's camera, I'll have to get them and post them since it was Owen's first time with egg dying and he LOVED it! That evening Audrey & I went with Aunt Sarah and cousin Camille (visiting from Thatcher) to see the Easter Pageant. Audrey fell asleep right after "Mary's Lullaby". I was sure she'd make it, she did last year! But she did have a busy day & week beforehand!

Easter Sunday the kiddos found their baskets on the piano bench, which Audrey said is the same place the Bunny leaves them every year. I guess placing eggs from the hallway to the piano bench isn't going to cut it anymore. I'll tell the Easter Bunny to please hide them somewhere new next time. Then we went to church and had Easter dinner at the Neerings'. The best picture I got was of them in their pjs without their hair brushed, this is when they decided to give me the perfect smiles! Not dressed up or anything of course. :o/

Easter Morning
(I don't know why it keeps loading sideways!)