A Jammed pack month!

Already April?  Man this year is really flying by!  April in Florida means FCAT!!!  We have been hearing about this dreaded test almost since the FIRST day of school!!  You would think it was the SAT or something.  Thankfully we didn't have to worry about it until the middle of the month and it only affected Lilly, but it was still painful. 

The last weekend of March the kids were invited to a birthday party at a local ice skating rink.  While we were in Rhode Island we skated a few times and it was never pretty.  However this time, the kids took to it amazingly well.  I was dreading having to get on skates myself.  I haven't ice skated since college and even then it was a huge ugly mess.  This is a short video of Lucy doing spins about 15 minutes into the party.  I am not sure where this kid gets her natural ability to be good at EVERY SINGLE sport she tries.  Lilly and Ben were also really good, but they didn't hound me like this one did to take a video.  Lucy is always the squeaky wheel...
 

Another thing Lucy has a knack for is getting her picture in publications.  Last year she was in our tiny local paper at least twice a month!  Granted it was a pretty small town, but still...  Of course Lilly took it harder than Ben - shocker I know.  Now that we're in a larger area it's harder to get in the paper, but Lucy got a picture here in Pembroke Pines after 9 months of waiting!  The county publishes an activity guide for the different townships/areas and Lucy was caught on film during one of her soccer games.  How funny is that?  If you are Lilly, not funny at all.

I am engaged in an ongoing battle with the squirrels, grackles and Scobie ducks in an effort to protect my bird feeders.  So far, I am losing -- badly.  Here is yet another picture of my squirrel-proof feeder being ransacked by a squirrel.  The crafty buggers work in tandem to attack the feeder.  Here one is trying to escape after he was just hugging the feeder while pressing down on the levers while his fellow squirrels and the grackles took turns launching themselves at it to knock the food to the ground.  I am not sure what exactly the ducks are bringing to the table, but they are definitely gorging themselves while there.

April also means spring sports!  The girls signed up for another round of soccer but Ben Jim decided it was time for some baseball!  Again, we went with the "less than competitive" organization SOLELY based on the inflexibility of the local leagues.  Sigh, maybe in the fall we can make the switch to legitimate youth athletics.  As you may or may not know, Jim's job has him out of town a minimum of 3 to 4 days a week.  So what did he do?  He signed up to be an assistant coach for Ben's team.  Well the joke was on him because he was assigned to be the COACH!  Ha!  Hopefully his work schedule will be able to support him being home every Saturday for the next 8 to 9 weeks.  Of course they don't play baseball at the same fields that the girls play soccer.  Why would they do that?  I did find a baseball league that was perfect for Ben's age however, so we went with it.  This league did offer soccer at the same fields, but the girls are established on their individual teams and I didn't want to disrupt that so we are now splitting locations during our Saturday morning routine.  Jim and Ben will go to baseball at one field and the girls and I will go to another.  Luckily, the "opening day" for baseball was a week earlier than soccer so the girls and I got to see the coach and player in action!
 

These may be the only shots we see of Ben all season.  I don't think the coach will have much time to take more.

Of course with it being April, the school is starting to wind things down too.  No school year can be complete without having a Volunteer thank you.  This year the theme was a Tea, complete with hats made by the 5th graders!  Everyone was "encouraged" to wear the hats throughout the event.  Don't we look lovely?  Call me crazy but that is not a way to ensure that you have repeat volunteers!!  Maybe that is their plan.  

Easter was fairly late this year thankfully.  Last year it was just really crowded in the month of March with both the Leprechaun AND the Easter Bunny, so I for one was happy with a bit more time to prepare.  We didn't actually have more time, mind you, but it looked good on paper.  Over the years the kids and Jim have had so much fun decorating Christmas cookies that the activity had spilled over to other holidays.  We have been known to make Halloween, Thanksgiving, Valentines, Shamrocks, 4th of July cookies as well as Easter cookies.  This Easter however the decorating really went up a notch...well several notches.  Gone are the days where Jim smears icing over the cookies and the kids throw random (and not always holiday/color appropriate) sprinkles on them.  THIS year the kids took great pains to decorate the cookies like they were doing a stained glass project.  I mean Martha Stewart would be proud!  Of course Mommy was still in charge of stamping out the cookies and baking them.  I left ALL the decorating to the masters.   

 

We also hit another milestone this year.  I FINALLY convinced the kids to leave the eggs in the dye for longer than 2 seconds so we could have eggs that were darkly colored instead of just a hint of color.  Who am I kidding, our eggs are usually various shades of brown by the time the kids are finished dunking them over and over and over and over and over in all of the colors.  I am not sure why I wasted so much of my time filling up all those little cups with the fizzies and vinegar.  I should have just dumped all of them together in one big bowl and let the kids just dye them all brown from the get go.  But I digress.  Thanks to Pinterest, I decided to forgo the fizzies altogether and use only food coloring.  For the most part the eggs came out looking great.  One thing though, the color did not set.  Maybe I didn't use enough vinegar or maybe it was the gel coloring, but once those eggs hit the wet grass, it was over.

Since we live on the sun, we asked the Easter Bunny if he could also hide some plastic eggs outside since the "finding window" is greatly reduced in the warm weather.  He graciously agreed (although it was hotly debated between Mr. and Mrs. Easter Bunny with Mr. finally seeing the wisdom of the suggestion).

This deal wasn't without a few caveats however.  Below you will see the children waiting oh so impatiently as the "rules" of the egg hunt are reviewed (by Daddy) and the video camera readied.  Live and learn children, live and learn.  Nothing is free.

Once we completed the egg hunt and the inevitable tears and the re-hunting for the leftover eggs we headed off to church.  Now we have been unsuccessful in our attempt to find a church here in South Florida.  We tried one, the fit was off, we tried another, children were happy and then suddenly they weren't.  I am sorry, life is too short to fight with your children about going to church.  If everyone is in a horrible mood by the time you get there, what is the point in going at all?  So we went back to the first church.  It is much smaller and more diverse and the children seem to have a better time.  I don't think Jim and I will be attending small group, but at least we can go to a service while the kids are in Sunday School.  Sooooo, we arrived at our new (old) church with zero time to spare and parked in front of this tree that is crawling LITERALLY crawling with grasshoppers.  Or maybe they were locusts.  I don't know but it was pretty creepy.  Not what you want to see - EVER!  A quick Google search once we got home revealed that they are called Eastern Lubbers and they eat fruit crops.  Not good for our mango tree. 

The kids did yet another Easter egg hunt at church and there was a reception after the service so this church really scored some major points with them.  I am sure we will be back.  Of course the first time there isn't some type of food afterwards the complaints will start.  Can't wait.

Got a good family shot!

Even Oscar likes Easter!

Easter also brought back the game Minecraft.  I can honestly say, with every fiber in my being, I really really really really dislike that game.  If I NEVER have to hear about it again, or rather, hear the angry shouts and wails of children who have had someone sabotage their stash, house, island, world, sheep, whatever EVER again, it would be too soon.  I forced the children to give it up for Lent and I enjoyed every wail-free day.  Lent is over, Sigh.  They are already shouting at each other.

The last weekend of the month was a busy one.  We had not one but two "customers" visit us.  For some reason, whenever we have people over whether it is for a meal, visit or even to spend the night, the children refer to them as "customers."  So our first visitor was a friend of ours from Jim's Harrier days (Mike "Sarge" Schulte).  He is now an airline pilot and he had a layover in Miami so we had him over for dinner and to be tortured by the kids in the trampoline.  Later, one of Jim's hometown friends came in for the whole weekend.  Scott was put through the Wellons wringer that is for sure.  Jim took him to Ben's baseball game, then the pool (where he was required to do mandatory kid tossing) and then a night out on the town!  I am sure no one was ever happier than Scott to be getting on an airplane so he could RELAX!

The girls and I had a Brownie Mother-Daughter Dance to attend and so Ben went over to hang with a friend whose mother and sister were also attending the dance and it was truly a Girls Night Out!  We danced and danced and ate and danced some more.