We welcomed in April with a beautiful weekend celebration of Easter and General Conference.
We were lucky to have Chelsea and my parents come for the weekend!
We celebrated my mom's birthday and went on walks to the park
and the beach.
To add to the fun, we got to have my cousin Anne and her family out from Manhattan
for an Easter dinner,
an Easter egg hunt and
some cousin time!
Holiday crafting continues to be a big thing around here.
The day after everyone left, we had another 24-hour snow storm.
April is one of my favorite months because we get to formally celebrate our favorite man.
(I hope he feels celebrated everyday because he is the absolute best.)
I can't even begin to describe how much we love Elias.
How much I love him...I turn to butter just thinking about it.
He is my partner, soulmate, best friend, and total crush. My marriage to him has allowed me to better understand my Savior's love for me as he completes me and cares for me in ways I wasn't even looking for. He is so patient with me and makes me feel like I can accomplish anything. After a long, hard day with the kids, there is nothing sweeter than crawling into his arms. His love and approach to our marriage gives me faith in the afterlife; I can have peace with the unknown, simply by knowing we'll be in it together.
On top of that, he is such an amazing father. (The kids make him such cute cards all of the time. The top picture is one that Boyd made of Elias throwing him up into the air.)
He continually puts family before self and he genuinely enjoys being with his kids more than anything else.
Elias saved his second week of paternity leave for spring break, so once the kids got out of school, we headed down to Richmond.
It was such a blast to spend time with Heather and her family! Our kids played so well together
and we were able to enjoy some quality family time going to the park
and swimming pool.
From there we headed over to DC for the cherry blossom festival. We are discovering that road trips are a little trickier on the east coast. Between cities, tolls, and traffic, you can never really use cruise control and it always takes longer than expected. But Elias and I always repeat to ourselves that "fun takes work" and "we can either do something or nothing, let's choose something". I don't know if these are quality mantras because we are constantly questioning ourselves and fun takes a whole lot of extra work these days, but somehow at the end of each trip we decide it was all worth it. 
We enjoyed gorgeous weather in DC and the parade was a hit!
The parade takes place right outside my parents' place so it was crazy convenient even with the thousands of spectators.
I have great memories of parades as a kid. My dad would always make it really special and bring a ladder for us to sit on so it was fun to carry on the tradition with my own kids.
Joy was fascinated by the parade.
She either loved or feared each performance.
Elias eagerly volunteered to take care of Rose during the festivities.
The rest of our time was spent playing around the mall and going to museums. One night my parents' friends held a children's poetry reading night and Summer presented a memorized poem to everyone. She's such a good kid.
I can't believe how quickly she is growing up. Summer was star student this month and knew exactly what she wanted to share.
Boyd, Smith, and Summer have been enjoying playdates with friends. (It is so easy now that all of their school friends live within a mile of us.)
One day Summer had a friend over and wanted some girl time. Smith was upset so Boyd decided to throw a boy party. It was actually a really sweet gesture from Boyd and a cute party. They have both been a little more attached to their teddy bears since we moved here so their bears got hats as well. (Boyd's love for "Blue Bear" reached new heights after we moved and Smith adopted "Freddy" from the stuffed animal bucket a few weeks after we arrived in order to pal around with Boyd and his bear.)
So, you know how I used to mention funny side effects from raising kids in Santa Fe, well here's one about raising kids in Fairfield County...
Boyd: "Mom, can we go to the Cayman Islands?"Me: "No."
Boyd: "Awe! (Sigh.) Can we go to Long Island?"
Me: "Sure bud."
What preschooler asks to go to the Cayman Islands!?! How do they even know about them? (The kids at school were talking about them.) At least he considers Long Island to be an equivalent.
We've been trying to teach our kids the importance of taking care of our house. To give you an idea of how that is going, let me tell you about the time I walked in on Smith sitting in front of a new mirror we had just purchased. Talking to himself, he instructed, "I put my hand here...and then...it's dirty! I put my hand here...and then...it's dirty! I put my hand here..."
My big kids continue to be great helpers. (This is Boyd's "last time I fed Rosie she peed on me" look.)
For the past two months they have been working on being kind and helpful in order to earn PJ Mask costumes. They finally completed their goal and I accidentally had their costumes sent to our old home in Santa Fe.
When I told them, Summer sighed and said, "It's okay Mom. Everyone makes mistakes."
I hope she will always be so patient with me.
While the big kids are at school, I continue to pal around with these two.
It's exhausting and wonderful.
Grocery shopping proves to be especially hard because I can't seem to find a cart large enough to hold Rose, Joy, and the food and Joy just blots away as soon as I let her walk.
Rose continues to be a dream baby.
She is smiling so much and has been sleeping from 8:30pm-5am most nights. 
Joy continues to crack me up and tire me out.
She frequently requests to call her Daddy and I thank the Lord daily that she still takes a two-hour nap most days.
Joy has been waking up earlier and earlier.
She now comes into our room around six and hits me with her blanket to coax me out of bed.
She wakes up just like Summer does; when she's awake, she's awake. It's full-throttle all day.
I do love how purely she loves Rosie.
Joy rarely seems jealous of Rose and is usually excited to involve her in everything.
Sometimes I fear she will literally smother Rose with her love.
One Saturday we took the kids to the "Touch A Truck" Show.
They had everything from school buses, to semis, propane trucks to moving trucks.
The kids could climb inside any truck they wanted to look around and honk the horn.
They also had a live band, face painting and lots of games so it was an all-around win.
And so...April was a blast! We continue to love it here (despite the Cayman Islands trip request from a preschooler).
Love, Brittany et al.
No comments:
Post a Comment