Why April Is Rad

April is Rad because that's the month I was born.

The end.

But this April was especially rad because I felt like I was celebrating ALL MONTH LONG!  

GLORIETTA SCRAPBOOKING RETREAT

The first weekend, I went on a scrapbooking retreat with some really great friends.  We stayed in a cabin and ate yummy food and scrapped our little hearts out.  Here are a few of the layouts I finished while I was up there:  

And of course, watching General Conference was wonderful, as always.  It's another reason April is such a great month.  

TIME OUT FOR WOMEN 2014: INEVITABLE LIGHT

The second weekend, I got to go to Time Out For Women with my dear friend, Tamera.  There were so many great messages and such great music shared during the day and half we spent together.   Tamera is good friends with one of the ladies who presented in Albuquerque, and as a result, we got VIP seats right in the front, and got to have lunch with the presenters on Saturday.  It was my first TOFW and I loved it!

Here I am with the Beautiful Tamera Shepherd and the Beautiful Sandra Turley.  Sandra was one of the presenters.  She is a mother of 4 and played Cosette on Broadway for 3 years (I think?).  She had a really inspirational story to share about her experience with infertility and adoption, and how their experience took a very heart wrenching twist.  She has a gorgeous voice, and it was very fun getting to meet her and hear her sing and speak at the ABQ TOFW.

This special lady is Kris Belcher, another of the presenters.  She lost vision in both her eyes after 2 battles with cancer.  She was hilarious, and I fell in love with her positive attitude and sense of humor with which she has responded to her devastating loss.  She told some pretty funny blind jokes and went around offering to take pictures for people, clicking the camera at anything and everything and rarely ever getting anyone's face in the pictures.  What an incredible lady.

EASTER EGG HUNT AT THE PARK:

Sydney has made a lot of progress.  This year, she happily went out to collect eggs, instead of putting her basket on her head and freaking out.  Bennett didn't really figure out that he was supposed to get eggs and put them in the basket, but it didn't take him long to figure out that there was good stuff in those eggs, and then he was opening any egg he could find regardless of whose basket he took it from.

ORLANDO

The third week we went to Orlando, which I've already written ALL about.  Major party week!!

PRESCHOOL FIELDTRIP TO WALKER'S POPCORN:

Sydney's preschool took a field trip to Walker's Popcorn that was really fun.  Mr. Walker was totally hands on, taught the kids songs, played games with them, let the kids try lots of different flavors of popcorn and made them cotton candy.  (That was Sydney's favorite part.)

Obviously, this is not Sydney.  

This is our fun friend, Nate, and I just LOVED this picture of him, so I had to post it too.

Playing the funny game, "Don't hit Mr. Walker's nose!" 

(the game where everyone hits Mr. Walker's nose with a bag of popcorn.)

These flavors are Orange Dreamcicle, Strawberry Lemonade, Green Chili Caramel (tastier than you might expect) Butter Pecan, and Cinnamon.  Pretty tasty stuff!

HOLY COW BURGER AND "INTO THE WOODS"

The 4th weekend we went with our friends, the Shepherds, to eat at Holy Cow Burger (home of the delicious salted caramel and pretzel shake) and then to see MTS's production of "Into The Woods."  It was so fun!  We took Dallin, Daphne and Hayden.  Sean didn't want to go, and Hayden really said he did, so we got him a ticket.  But when it came time to go, he decided he really wanted to stay home with the babysitter instead.  Well too bad, because we already had a ticket for him.  He donned his red polo shirt under severe duress and the only thing that made it better was drinking half of my salted caramel pretzel milkshake!  I think he actually did enjoy the show, but it'll be just fine if he's a little older the next time we buy him a ticket.  

MY BIRTHDAY

And of course, the main reason why April is so rad:  My birthday.  (kidding, kidding . . .)  I am so blessed to have wonderful friends and family who make me feel so loved on my birthday with cards and messages and phone calls and treats left on my porch.  That night, Arthur and I got to go with Dallin to do Youth Temple Baptisms for Dallin's first time, which was a neat experience, for sure.  Then after we got back, and while I took the babysitter home, Arthur quickly blew up balloons and prepared for our cake and ice-cream celebration!  

Athur got me this for my birthday:

I'm so excited to have a real camera, and can't wait to figure it out!!!

Seriously, what a great birthday month.  I was spoiled all month long!  

How can any of the rest of the months hope to compare?

Here's to being 34 years old and very, very blessed.

The Florida Aquarium

Monday, April 21
The Florida Aquarium
Tampa, FL

Since our flight didn't leave until almost 6 p.m. we slept in, went swimming at the hotel and had the pool all to ourselves!  And then we checked out and headed over to the Florida Aquarium in the Tampa Bay.  It was right next to the port where the cruise ships leave from and we saw one of them as it was departing.  This aquarium was pretty cool.  And our ABQ BioPark pass got us in at half price, which was awesome.  (And BAM--our biopark pass just paid for itself!)

The aquarium had several touch pools, with rays, horseshoe crabs, starfish and anemones etc.  They also had lots of turtles and birds and a cute penguin show that was fun.  But the favorite thing was this fun splash park outside.  We'd packed our swimsuits so they could change and be dry for the flight home, and the aquarium was totally equipped with dressing rooms outside by the splash park to make it easy.  Anyway, pretty much all of the pictures we took there are of the splash park.  Our last hurrah before the long/late journey home.

The journey home was fine.  We had so much fun at the aquarium, that we didn't have time to get dinner before our flight left, so we ended up eating dinner in Las Vegas at 10 p.m.  Sean was so tired, he was falling asleep at the table in the restaurant.  

In Las Vegas we had another delay on our layover which put us home about 1 a.m.  The kids did pretty well traveling that late despite the really long day, and the most exciting event of the flight home was Hayden losing his FIRST TOOTH on the plane!   

And just so I remember--this is how I feel the day after a vacation.

Sometimes it's totally lame being a muggle.

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday, April 20
Orlando, FL

We had to check out of the house this day, so we had sort-of an unorthodox Easter Sunday.  We went to church at a ward close by the temple.  They were so friendly and we met 2 couples with family or friends in ABQ, and coincidentally, family and friends that we know from our ward and the neighboring ward!  So funny.  After church, we ate a picnic lunch in our car and went to the Orlando temple for a little Easter devotional and a walk around the temple grounds.  It was lovely, even if we didn't get a ham dinner with funeral potatoes.

love that little boy.

After our walk around the temple, we headed over to Tampa where we were staying the night since our flights were in and out of Tampa.  Our flights, by the way, were completely paid for by Arthur's frequent flier points, which is why we were flying out of Tampa--it used less points than Orlando.  All I can say is HURRAY FOR FREQUENT FLIER MILES!  There's no way we could have taken that trip if we'd had to pay for 7 round-trip tickets.  

This picture makes me smile.  I'd started to fill the tub to give him a bath and he just climbed right in while I'd turned my back to take care of something else.  Guess he was READY for his bath!

Gatorland

Saturday, April 19

Gatorland

Orlando, FL

After the cousins left, Sean skulked around the house for a bit and said, "All I feel like doing is walking around doing nothing now that the Reed's went home."  Well we couldn't have that.  So after some time in the pool and some lunch, we decided to go check out Gatorland.  

Gatorland is a zoo of sorts, with lots of animals including some crocs, and TONS of gators.  They have big open swamp areas with gators, that all get along, and smaller areas with rare kinds of gators, and exhibits with mean and cranky gators that can't hang out with the other ones because they are too mean and cranky.  They also have a famous TV star gator that has been in documentaries and one gator who lived in a small bachelor pad because he developed a nasty habit of knocking baby birds out of the trees and eating them in front of the horrified Gatorland patrons.  Luckily we didn't see him exhibit that behavior.   They also have a zipline that goes right over their big gator breeding swamp (wonder how much they paid to insure THAT attraction!)  

There are also a few fun shows.  We caught the Gator Jumparoo show where they put out dead chickens on lines over the water and the gators jump out of the water to snap them off the line.  The other show we saw was the Gator Wrestling show where a guy gets up close and personal with a gator and actually does some pretty cool tricks with him.

The kids' favorite parts were the exhibits that were interactive.  Daphne paid $5 of her own money to feed a giant tortoise.  She was allowed to bring one other person into the exhibit with her, and Hayden was the one who got to go.  Sean said "I'm not spending 5 bucks to feed a giant turtle."  Which I thought was a great lesson in how everybody values things differently.  What is totally worth $5 to one kid is definitely NOT worth $5 to another kid.   

There was a petting zoo with lots of goats that made Bennett laugh and Sydney's favorite part was the aviary where they could feed the birds.  She and Daphne would have stayed there all day if they'd been allowed!  She still talks about feeding those birds with a stick.  

When we first got there, Hayden said, "What?  The alligators are behind fences?  I thought we were going to some random swamp to find wild alligators!  I like a little danger."  Unfortunately, we didn't know where any random swamps were, but despite his disappointment I think we all had a pretty fun afternoon!