April 2016

There is a free fishing camp every spring that we've done the past few years. After you do all the stations you get a free fishing pole.

And you try to catch some fish.

And if you have no patience for catching fish, you just try to look cute.

Naomi hauled this one in by herself.

This is the final fish count for the morning. It's worth noting that the lake is stocked. And only kids are allowed to fish in it. That's my kind of fishing. The middle fish was a donation from a stranger to Annika who was disappointed to have not caught her own. 

April was spring break for the girls. Clifton and I still had to work, but they played with friends, had sleepovers, went to the zoo with Jess and her mom, and spent lots of time at the playground. We also had our friends the Eurys over one night.

If only Naomi loved her sisters as much as she loves Silas.

Clifton took a day off to get the girls skiing one last time.

Annika was thrilled to have graduated from the bunny hill and onto the lifts.

And Naomi skipped lessons for the first time to ski with Clifton for the day.

Clifton caught a pic of Annika going down as he was going up the lift with Naomi.

Clifton has decided that we have arrived. We have two kids that get on and off lifts by themselves, and down mountains by themselves... We just need to get Sarah up and at 'em and I'll be all set to sit in a coffee shop with a good book all by myself!

Half of our spring soccer games have been snowed out, but it's been fun to see how much this team keeps getting better together.

We had Jeremy and Timothy for a night while Dave and Val celebrated their 10th anniversary. This is from the three minutes that they actually watched Annika's game.

After the game we decided to push our luck and go fishing again.

These guys gave up pretty quickly and were more content to throw grass and rocks in the water, much to the annoyance of the big kids.

See something on that pole behind Annika?

This guy... What a smart eagle hanging out by a stocked lake... Even smarter to let kids do the fishing for him. I was really hoping for a dramatic moment when kids were reeling in a fish while the eagle fought them, but it didn't happen.

Jeremy caught this one...

Annika's still not too sure about holding the fish she caught.

I dared Naomi to kiss her fish and she really, really thought about it.

Our haul that day. They all caught the biggest one of course.

Our fun spring nature lesson. I went from chasing away the mama bird so she wouldn't build a nest on our deck to creating shelter for her so she wouldn't get snowed and rained on. Because, in the end, I'm a sucker for most animals, but especially mamas.

Not sleeping, just snuggling her baby.

So the next weekend the girls decide to go fishing again. The problem is that this weekend, what you can't see well here, is that it's snowing and raining and really windy. So there was much whining. And no fish to be caught. Apparently, they hide from whining too.

Fear not. A couple days later it's 70 degrees again (Colorado is so weird), so the girls played with the neighbors on their trampoline with a sprinkler shooting up from underneath.

Notice the really super safe mini trampoline that they've rigged up to the bigger one. What could go wrong?

Oh, summer, we are ready for you!