Tales of a Fulltime Mom: The Rest of April

So I've been a little lax in keeping things up to date on here. It seems every week there is something going on...family in town, a church trip, a convention, etc. I need to do better! As is my usual when I'm behind, I will mostly post pictures.

On Sabbath, April 7, it was Investiture for Adventurers. Aubree, Brady, and Colby sang with Adventurers for 1st and 3rd service and then we had the actual Investiture in the afternoon. Brady and Colby both won Adventurer of the Year! This also completed my first year as part of the Adventurer leadership team. Five more years to go!

Half the time Colby was supposed to be singing on stage, he'd stand there not singing at all with this worried look on his face. First row, far left.

Brady and his Busy Bees group.

Aubree and the rest of the Helping Hands

Colby accepting his award from the leaders, Joanne and Keith.

Meanwhile, Calleigh was on "greeter" duty for Pathfinders.

They had someone high up in Pathfinder leadership come assess them with their marching and uniforms and they scored very well.

Duncan took the kids blueberry picking the next day.

I was put in charge of the Pathfinder yard sale which we do twice a year to raise funds for the club. I picked a date of Sunday, April 15 and we were very busy in the week leading up to it. The kids and I drove around doing pick ups of stuff people donated and stored it all in our garage. A couple of times it necessitated Calleigh riding in the front seat so that we could put both seats down in the back. She was all too happy to oblige! Saturday night, the girls and I spent about 3-4 hours at the church organizing and tagging and then Sunday morning, we arrived back at 6:00 to carry it all out to the parking lot. The sale lasted until 3:00. We were worried about rain but it literally held off until 3:05 when it started pouring buckets in the blink of an eye. We were so grateful though that it held off the whole day until then! The girls and I were exhausted after it was all over but we made over $1,300...most ever for a Pathfinder yard sale.

Front seat. But don't get used to it!

I was so busy I barely got any pictures of our operation but here are the clothes tables.

One of the teenagers made slime and was selling it. Nothing but trouble for London!

While we did the yard sale, Brady did his last soccer game in the Apopka league. They gave him two medals apparently since he played so well. Next time he'll be in the 7-9 age group so things may look a lot different!

Thought I'd post some of the girls' school work to prove we actually do school! They each wrote a haiku. This is Calleigh's.

And Aubree's. The first line is supposed to be the title (we need to work on capitalization, obviously).

Soccer continued for the girls. I'm saving this picture for their wedding reception.

Team Yellow ended up finishing the "regular" reason in first place over Team Orange.

Studying Astronomy for Science in the second semester so we got the handy planets puzzle out.

Came into my room one day and found this sign randomly hanging above my bed.

Mio is that flavoring you can squirt into your water.

We bought this old fashioned camera at the yard sale so Aubree wanted to play dress up with it.

Watching the Boston Marathon on Patriots Day. We were so excited to see an American woman, Des Linden, win it.

Wednesday, April 18, the cousins arrive!!! Papa and Gigi arrived the night before.

On Thursday it was off to Legoland.

Winnie!

We all went on the Dragon Roller Coaster and the expressions, especially my mom's, were too good not to buy this picture.

Hugging Gigi since some of them had gotten wet on Chima.

Waiting to get on the carousel. Winnie was confused about putting her thumb up!

I let the kids each make their own Lego figure.

Sporting her Bruins hat since they were in the playoffs against the Maple Leafs.

Papa and Colby at attention during the Canadian National Anthem. The Bruins would end up winning the series and Brady would tell me privately, "I saw Papa with a tear in his eye." My dad is indeed a Maple Leafs fan but I'm not sure the tear thing was quite true. He's used to them losing by now!

Getting in some floor hockey in our great room.

And some swimming.

Sabbath, April 21, we headed to Bradenton for church and had lunch at the MacDougalls.

Bruce serenaded us.

Cousin love.

We spent the next four nights at this lovely rental property in Bradenton. Ron and Elaine accompanied us as well. It was a great house: five bedrooms, pool, hot tub, great view on the bay.

Kids had their won room which slept seven.

Sunday morning I ended up driving all the way back home (about 2 hours, 15 minutes) so that the girls could play in the playoffs for soccer. They both had a chance of winning it all, particularly Calleigh's team, and I hated for them to miss it. The weather forecast looked pretty bad but we chanced it and although it did rain pretty hard during part of the games, all the games took place. Unfortunately, Aubree lost her game in a shoot out (which is so, so stressful) which meant they took third place. Meanwhile, at the same time, Calleigh won her game 1-0 which meant they got to play in the final game for first place. It was against Team Orange (Blake and Zachary's team)...they had both won a game against each other in the regular season. This time, the earlier score was reversed and they lost 1-0. What a bummer but Calleigh had a lot of fun and I was glad we made the drive. They can't wait to play again next year (although Calleigh really, really doesn't want to advance to the 6-8 grade group).

We were miffed because Aubree didn't even get to play, at all, in the final game! They do have a lot of kids on the team and she is clearly not the best kid on the team but a little playing time would have been nice considering the two plus hour drive!

Back in Bradenton, we enjoyed some hot tub time.

Winnie trying to help Colby get his shirt off.

A highlight of our stay was this ping pong table. We had many tournaments and I'm proud to say that Duncan and I beat Shawn and Camille!

On Sunday morning while we were at soccer, the MacDougalls came over with their boat and they all went for a cruise in the gulf. Duncan drove the boat that came with the rental.

Dad and Dewey

Looking for dolphins. This was later in the afternoon.

Spotted one.

Also got in some "indoor" soccer.

Monday we hit up a nearby beach on Ana Maria island.

Cute couple.

Tuesday we headed south to Siesta Beach. Great beach!

Old friend, Gloria Cardona, came by to see us.

If Papa's around, you know we are stopping somewhere for ice cream.

I just love his little face.

The MacDougalls came by one evening for supper.

Calleigh with Kenzi.

We got back from Bradenton on Wednesday afternoon. Thursday morning we did some canoeing at Wekiva Springs. We saw about 10 gators! Some were VERY close to us.