April has been a fun-filled month. The weather has started warming up with fewer rainy days. It’s been nice to take walks around the block and play in the backyard more. We returned to our previous bible study “life group” from the fall that we had joined. It’s been nice to reconnect with the people there and meet some new people too. The girls had an Easter celebration at school. We took our Spring Break to visit Mimi and Papa in Arizona. Tim and Alicia had their 12th anniversary. We’re continuing to work through our family dynamics and find ways to focus on the positive and encourage each other.
Cordelia has been doing well at school and participated in the elementary speech competition. She’s having a fun time baking new things both at school and at home, and working on making jewelry and knick-knacks with modeling clay. We’re continuing to work with her and support her as she navigates the complexities of growing up with the emotional and social changes that she experiences.
Anthony’s PE class finished track and field and is now moving into fencing. Anthony’s pretty excited about that, as it is teaching him how to “sword fight”. Anthony continues to enjoy soccer and swimming for his other sports activities. In school, Anthony has been doing really well. He’s learned at lot over this year. He’s also continuing to improve in his piano and is moving into the next level of books.
Lydia can do a pretty good job of reading now and it’s one of her favorite things to do. She likes reading her own bible verse from her Cubbies book each week. She enjoys doing gymnastics and is slowly improving in swim class. She’s continued practicing riding her bike without training wheels. She’s doing well once she gets going. The hardest part is stopping smoothly. She also enjoys riding the scooter around the cul-de-sac.
Natalie has developed a bit of “stranger danger” but it seems to be reducing a little bit. She’s very talkative and does her best to say what she wants. She’s polite and usually says “Please” and “Thank you.” She certainly can have attitude too, like the rest of our kids — yelling, screeching or flopping herself on the ground if she doesn’t like what’s happening. But we’re teaching her to use her words instead of those undesirable methods.
Alicia finally got over the cold that she’d been nursing. It lingered around for quite a while. Work has been going pretty well. Alicia’s boss is interested in her being back to work more frequently and is pushing for more hours next school year. Alicia has enjoyed working with Anthony this month on his school. AWANA is being maintained, although Alicia feels she should probably be giving it a bit more attention.
Tim’s been doing a lot of landscaping this month. He’s shoveled a lot of mulch around the front yard. We bought more plants to fill in the front yard, which Tim planted. He’s also digging ditches to place the irrigations pipes through the yard. Slowly, the front yard is starting to come together. At work things have been more on the blah side this month; a project that he thought he had finished is just dragging on.
We all had a fun family time in Arizona visiting Mimi and Papa. We took several bike rides and the kids went to various museums. Tim’s dad took Tim and Alicia to a live theater comedy play, which was a lot of fun. That counted towards a pre-anniversary outing since Tim and Alicia didn’t really do an anniversary celebration. We’ll be taking a longer trip in June. This month we’re looking forward to Tim’s birthday and Mother’s day, as well as the end of AWANA and the school year. It promises to be busy, but very interesting.
