Derek got dressed up for church on Easter Sunday, complete with a fancy clip-on tie and a snake ring.
He wasn't allowed to bring his toy snakes to church, but snake jewelry was deemed acceptable.
The kids armed themselves with their buckets and were ready for the egg hunt - I think this year we only had around 100 eggs for the three of them, so it was a fierce competition to see who could fill their bucket up first.
Our magnolia trees were blooming and beautiful like our girls.
Derek and Karina thought they would be silly by having Karina sit on Derek's lap.
Whenever we take our new minivan in for regular service at the dealership, we get a coupon for a free car wash at the dealer's wash. It is an exciting adventure for our kids as the brushes, foam, and air dryers do their work.
We celebrated Tanja's birthday.
Derek has been doing cub scouts for a couple years, but he had never been on a scout campout (and this is a pack that does a few campouts every year). We decided we would go camping so he could experience it as he decides if he wants to continue scouts or not. We went to the nearby Patapsco State Park and had a nice hike to the river to try fishing (spoiler alert - no one caught anything).
However, some of the scouts did claim they saw an eel or a snake swimming around the water (I doubt it). That was enough to capture Derek's interest and imagination as he poked around all the rocks trying to find that elusive snake.
Siblings were invited too and Lydia decided she wanted to come and experience camping as well. The kids played several rounds of gaga ball, a sport/game I had never heard of before the campout. Basically, all the players get into the small fenced in area and hit the ball with their hands/arms trying to hit other players with the ball below their knees. If you get hit below the knees with the ball, whether it is from a direct hit or a bounce off the wall, you are out. If you catch the ball, the hitter is out. It was a fun game and the gaga ball pit was a regular hot spot of activity during the campout.
I tried to convince the kids to hike to this pretty waterfall we saw a short distance away from the trail we took to go to the river for fishing. They didn't want to leave the gaga ball pit, but I thought it was pretty.
The scouts got a little over-eager with the fire size - luckily no one got hurt and we made it smaller in a hurry once everyone saw how large it was.
Yummy!
That night was colder than expected in our tent with just a quilt over Derek and me while we were sleeping on an air mattress until I pulled an unzipped sleeping bag over the top of us in the middle of the night. Lydia was cozy in her sleeping bag. I decided I much prefer sleeping in my own bed and think the kids agreed, though there were certainly some fun moments during our campout.
Tanja got to chaperone Derek's school field trip to the Maryland Science Center. It was chaotic there with different kids in the groups wanting to do different things, but Derek's group stuck together fairly well and cooperated. Here's Derek laying down on a bed of nails and seeing how his weight distributed across his body makes it more tolerable than something like standing on a nail.
The kids thought it was the best field trip ever as they got to explore all the interactive exhibits at their own pace.
Lydia and her team, the Flying Cometz (notice their space themed butterfly costumes), had their Battle of the Books competition after reading and studying ten different books for several months. Nearly two thousand kids answering questions about those books in an arena designed for big concerts made for a fun, exciting, and late evening. Tanja was the team coach and Karina was the assistant coach who had helped pull together presentations and test questions.
Karina celebrated her 13th birthday. Crazy to think we have a teenager now.
She hosted a joint party with her friend Ainoor. We had a large balloon arch and streamers all around the dining room courtesy of Ainoor's mother - it looked very festive.
The party was a very expansive and festive brunch and the girls just had a good time talking, laughing, and hanging out.
The county schools have a yearly art show where the art teachers at each school select the best artwork from each grade at that school and it is placed on exhibit at the mall. This year, Lydia's ceramic project was selected as one of the best 5th grade projects at her school, so we all went to see her work on display and look at all the other exhibits.
She made a pet store called "Pet Paradise".
We had Derek's birthday party more than a month after his actual birthday. In a funny twist, he wound up with three identical large robot snake toys from his guests who all knew about his love of snakes (two of the three snake presents came in the same wrapping paper). Here is one of the snakes making its way to a slice of his birthday cake.
He was thrilled with the cake Tanja baked (notice the balloons left over from Karina's balloon arch from her party).
What a happy birthday boy.
We had a pinata and were planning on doing it outside. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't the greatest and to save it from the drizzle, we hung it in our foyer. There were almost a few accidents of kids getting pounded with a bat or bat swinging too close to something other than the pinata, but fortunately everyone was safe and enjoyed the activity.
We also had a fairly large Easter egg hunt outside - the guests of course had to work out a candy exchange afterward.
We thought this bouncy house that we rented would be a highlight activity for the party. Perhaps it was the weather or perhaps it was just a function of the short attention span of 7-8 year old boys, but it didn't see much action until the end of the party when it took some of the guests more than a half hour to leave because suddenly they were having too much fun jumping in the bounce house. That was fine, that's why we had it, I just thought it was funny that they spent so much of the party doing random things in an unstructured way and didn't go to the bounce house until their parents were there trying to get them to go home.
All things considered, it was a very busy April for us.
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