April Fun

We had lots of fun in April after we got back from spending Easter at Grammy and Pop's house. School was beginning to wind down, the weather was warming up, and our garden was growing. April begins the "preview of summer" for us and it always gives me Spring Fever.

A lot of our fun came from the fact that this cutie right here lost his TWO FRONT TEETH within a day of each other. Both of them had been loose for a long time so we knew it was coming, but I had no idea they'd be within hours of each other. Eli lost the first one at Zue-Zue's house Thursday afternoon when I was getting things ready for Torri's surprise party. The next morning (after discovering the tooth fairy left him two dollars) he was taking his vitamins and bit down on one of the vitamins when his tooth just fell out. LITERALLY. He gasped in surprise and when I looked down at the floor there was his tooth. I didn't even have time to get a picture of him with just one tooth gone because he lost the other one so quickly! Needless to say, the tooth fairy had to make a return trip to our house that night :)

Barkley continued to grow like a weed. He made the transition to being an outside dog and he's happier and so are we. He LOVES being outside where he has plenty of room to run. Barkley, I'm happy to report, is NOT scared of rain or thunder like Maggie was so hopefully we won't have to drive around the neighborhood looking for him every time it rains. He is scared of the lawn mower, the weed eater, and the blower though. It's always something. 

We officially opened our pool in April. It was still kind of chilly for me and Josh, but Eli loved jumping in it after school. One afternoon we found a HUGE frog in our pool swimming around. Josh bet Eli $100 that he wouldn't be able to catch it and Eli set out to prove Josh wrong. Josh never specified that Eli could only use his hands, so my smart kid waited until the frog needed some air and used our pool net to scoop him up. We sent Josh this picture as proof and all of a sudden the rules changed...Josh never paid up but Eli didn't seem to mind. He had lots of fun catching this guy and then playing with him for a couple of hours. He wanted to keep him for another day so we put him in a five gallon bucket and brought it inside because we were scared Barkley was going to eat him. We left the bucket in the mudroom and after an hour or so I went to check on the frog and he was not in the bucket. EEK! I was not going to be able to go to sleep knowing that a huge frog was hopping around my house, so we all frantically started searching for him. Luckily, he didn't make it out of the mudroom. We caught him again and let him go in my flower beds in the front yard. Good-bye, Mr. Frog! 

Barkley became a pool dog and enjoyed finding an available chair to lay around and watch us swim. He wasn't a fan at all of the water and wouldn't even try to get in the pool. Josh threw him in a couple of times just to see what he would do and of course he swam but he immediately wanted to get out, which was fine by us. 

I used some blueberries from last summer to make some really good homemade blueberry scones. We planted blueberry bushes this year, so we can't wait until we get to have fresh blueberries without having to go to the store. 

Josh and I also decided to dig up just one of our sixty potato plants to see just how many potatoes we could expect this year. We were excited to find lots of new potatoes underneath. After digging that one up, it was definitely a test of patience for me to let the others continue to grow. I was ready for all those yummy potatoes!