April: Conference, Easter, and Spring!

April turned out to be a much more eventful month than March, which is probably usually the case because of holidays and the weather starting to get warmer. Although, speaking of weather, I swear it always snows right around the time we have General Conference. This year, it snowed about 4 days before, but luckily it all melted by that afternoon. That same day it snowed, we had our beautiful dark wood stained mantle installed on our fireplace! Yay progress!

Then, that weekend, I had the chance to attend the Saturday morning session of LDS General Conference with my brother! We had gotten him two tickets so he could go with his girlfriend. Sadly for him, but luckily for me, they broke up about a week before he came down for conference and I got to take her place! It had been a few years since I'd attended in person, and even though we were all the way up on the very right edge, we still had a great view and it was nice to be able to sit and focus and feel the Spirit while I listened. So glad I went (even if we did walk in about 3 minutes late... oops!!). I watched the rest of that weekend's sessions at home with my sweet family. Charlie's favorite part has always been when the choir sings!

The next week, Charlie and I took a fun trip to Ikea with our friends Brittnee and Aunika. The littles enjoyed playing with the toys in the kid area, riding around in the carts, eating lunch, and watching Tom&Jerry on TV from the upper level. Us adults enjoyed our shopping... and I tried not to spend TOO much! ;)
We also went over to Charlie's cousins' house to celebrate Scarlett's birthday and Grandma Jill's birthday. Charlie is always in heaven when he's surrounded by that many fun kids to play with! And I always like when he has lots of extra sets of eyes watching him and I can relax just a little bit, not having to be sole entertainer. :)

Here's a picture I took of me when I was 32 weeks pregnant! And a picture of Charlie enjoying our newly fenced-in back yard. Although, there's not too much to do out there right now... but he does thoroughly enjoy playing with all of our bushes.

The Wednesday before Easter, we had a little neighborhood egg hunt at our local playground/park. We got there just a couple minutes early, and it was all I could do to keep Charlie from running around picking up eggs before it began. He was NOT happy to have to wait... but had SO much fun running around and picking up eggs once we were given the go-ahead!

Also the week leading up to Easter, we had the painter at our house sanding, caulking, taping, preparing, and finally painting all the woodwork in our living room. It was a disaster zone... and the worst part was having our living room sealed off for a little over a day. In order to get to the kitchen, we had to walk out the front door and back in through the garage. Yes, even in the middle of the night, which meant getting dressed in order to get a midnight snack or drink of water. Good thing that's over and the results were WELL worth it!

We dyed Easter eggs during all the construction, which gave us something fun to focus on. This is the first time we've done this tradition as a family, and I think Charlie enjoyed watching the eggs change color. We let him drop the eggs in the cups, and even though they were hard-boiled (to perfection, I might add!), we were still worried they would crack with the way he dropped them from so high up. So we'd assist him with the task. ;)

I think his favorite part, overall, was just playing with the little metal dipper stick. Haha... but I think we ended up with a beautiful display of bright and colorful eggs! They sure do stink, though, and after a couple days, I couldn't take the smell of hard-boiled eggs overtaking my fridge anymore and had to throw them out. Oh well!

Here's a peek at our living room after the big paint job was done. He still needed to come back and touch up some of the grey on the walls around the fireplace, but I was SO excited with the results! Loving our new board and batten!

Easter week, I also got around to planting some spring flowers on our porch (something I look forward to every year!). And then, finally, on Easter morning the Easter bunny came and left some happy goodies for our family! Charlie ALWAYS looks forward to seeing his basket with eggs full of treats. In fact, I kept catching him getting into the treats all week and had to hide them from him to control his treat consumption... ;)

Here's a picture we took (using the timer and tripod) on Easter right after church. I was 33 weeks pregnant, and feeling pretty good! :) I love that we were slightly color-coordinated, and that we were all looking at the camera and kind of smiling! Victory!

That evening, Trevor came down with some sort of stomach bug and we spent the next 3 days pretty low-key, with Trev recovering and me hoping not to catch whatever he had. Luckily... or maybe we were just insanely blessed... Charlie and I never got sick. Whew! What a fun month!