April 2017

We're so glad our friend Kate turned 40 to give us a reason to dress up like this. Yep, that's a mesh shirt. And my original charm necklace circa 1984. (Credit for the crimper and the slap bracelets goes to Val.)

Clifton and Garth.

Kate, Erin and I -- our kids brought us together. Making it through life giving each other lots of grace and laughter keeps us together.

Because these are the kinds of friends you want to go through your days with...

This is our neighbor Kylie and her hedgehog Emmy, also known as the reason we have Boo. Emmy is still a baby. But Boo is probably obese.

Annika's pumpkin pastel was on display at the school district art show.

Easter morning. Yeah, he looks like he should be in our family, but it's just our buddy Silas who stayed with us for the weekend while his folks went to a wedding.

Dying eggs. Something that never seems to take as long as you think it should. A lot of build up for about five minutes of entertainment.

Easter morning.

My girls. Oh how I love these girls.

And their cousins are pretty great too. Not to mention total studs in their vests.

Thankful for family so close.

Warm enough to get in some hoops.

Obligatory stare into the sun photo prior to starting Easter egg hunt.

Collecting quite a stash of eggs.

Looking for the more challenging ones...

I guess we could give our kids a basket for egg collection but what fun would that be?

Little kid table!

Big kid table with Mark and Sarah back from the wedding.

Sometimes they even seem to like each other.

Annika had a really good soccer season. She could be a little more aggressive on offense, but she has really good intuition on defense. It's fun to watch her play.

So my friends Suzi and Holly have been inspiring me to try running. For probably the 20th time in my life. Every other time I've done this, I've give up pretty quickly, like after a few weeks when every step felt as hard as the first step of the first run. I've been at it now for a few months. It's definitely gotten easier. When I started one mile was hard. Not even kidding. Now 6.2 miles is my longest run. Like ever in my whole life. I felt so awesome when I finished. But I still don't love doing it.

This is why I'm doing it. For her and her sisters. One day I was running on the treadmill and she was jumping on the trampoline beside me, and I yelled, "This is so hard!" And Naomi said, "So why don't you just stop?" And I explained to her (breathlessly) that just because something is hard doesn't mean you just stop. The next day she wanted to go running with me which is when we took these pictures. So we ran four miles around the lake together, with some breaks to walk. And to look at pelicans who always seem so misplaced in Colorado. And to realize that we can do hard things together.

Rehearsal week for Giselle!

Dress rehearsals. Giselle--it's your standard love triangle between peasant girl and peasant guy and nobility guy. Except nobility guy is also engaged to someone else. And peasant girl finds out. And kills herself. And that's just act one. Naomi's in front there, in her trademark Flashdance shirt.

Backstage, showtime! There's a lot of hair gel in this photo.

After the show. Her friend Ella came to watch her.  Aaaaand I *just* realized what's in the foreground of this photo. And I'm not cropping it out. Because we're keeping it real here, folks.

Sometimes when a girl's got to do her homework and her sisters are being loud, she needs earplugs. Put in backwards.

Oh, man. If you have friends who offer to watch your kids because they "love" and "miss" them, you should let them. And then you should leave the country. We flew into San Diego, grabbed a rental car (where we were told that they did not offer "kidnapping insurance"), and drove to Puerto Nuevo.

...where we stayed in this house...

...with this deck...

...and read books and sat doing nothing staring at this view...

It was our 10th anniversary trip. We aren't always this exotic when we take a long weekend trip.

There was a private beach just a hundred yards away.

...where despite wearing long sleeves we still managed to get burned.

There is nothing like the ocean.

That afternoon our private beach disappeared with the tide so we headed to La Mision beach.

Also just gorgeous.

There is something about watching a sunset that puts us in our rightfully tiny place in the universe.

Totally unrelatedly, if you see two snakes doing this, get ready for eggs.

This is where we are now--aquarium for Myrtle (she was Peeves, until she was a girl) with a nesting box. Aquarium for Nick (all various Harry Potter characters). Incubator ready, waiting for eggs. Anyone want a baby snake in July if this all works out? Super low maintenance! Hypoallergenic! This deal won't last long.

And finally, it's like our kids don't have walls and walls lined with books. Unstaged photo. Naomi's browsing through the church annual report. And at least someone's reading my American Family Physician journals.