April

We're moving on to May but I haven't taken many pictures lately.  Every little adventure we go on, I forget to take the camera.  We have green grass now and blooming daffodils so it's strange to see these photos from a few weeks back. 

Karl made a grabber using a Lego book from the library.   He was much more excited to clean up but much less efficient.  😆

This spring Clare surprised me by wanting to play basketball on the 5th/6th grade team.  She had a two-week, 5-game season.  They won 3 and lost 2.  Clare had a blast.  We had to set up our basketball hoop again.  

Lena likes to play "basketball" too.   She can't reach the real hoop so she's using two chairs as her hoop.

One Sunday we took a family trip out to the local state park.  The kids had so much fun.  I was glad we went, but.... it was warm and sunny at home and cool and windy at the beach!  The kids didn't care.

So much erosion!  This is not unusual for this park.  They've had to completely change their campground layout in recent years due to losing land into the lake.  

The only sad part was that Nora had a big bag of special rocks she had collected and just before we left she realized that most of them had fallen through a hole in the bottom.   Those were our only tears so it was a successful afternoon.  

Lena picked out a princess dress at Goodwill.  Then she learned how to finger-knit, making a "dragon" to go with her princess theme.  

In house news, Matt built new stairs in the middle of the house.  The old stairs are now covered with joists and soon there will be subfloor over those.  

 The kids started working on their gardens, removing weeds and loosening soil.   They were surrounded by happy hens who gobbled up the unearthed worms.  

It wasn't long before Nora started making a worm habitat.  The kids love making habitats: for worms, frogs, toads, anything they can catch and trap.

We almost always have nice wind here for flying kites.  We only had 2 working kites this year but it worked out fine.  

Bored with kites, Karl and Lena found a dead tree they named their Scorpion (or Squid, the name kept changing).  They used sticks to pry the bark off.  A couple days later after school Karl took a saw out there and managed to cut through a 7" diameter section of trunk.   

Lena went to her first dentist appointment this month.  We have such awesome hygienists (one of them a former student of mine and Matt's) that these kids actually like the dentist.  Here's Lena in the cool shades they gave her.