What happened in April?

I obviously didn't do much blogging!   So here are a few of the exciting things that happened around our house during the month of April. 

Peezy hung out with the Ender Man.

 The boys and Molly went camping. Sophie had Basketball so she and I stayed home and watched Jane Austen while the others roughed it in the hills above Oakland with the ward.

 There were lots of kids there to play with and enjoy campfire songs, skits and smores.

 And lots of trees to climb. The boys and Molly all thought it was a really fun place to camp.  I think the fun was really getting to hang out with all those friends from church. But Henry officially finished his Camper adventure in Cub Scouts so he is done with his Arrow of Light. As his Webelos Leader that makes me very happy!

 Peezy was photographed quite a bit. When I went to look through what pictures we took this past month there were lots of our cat! Sophie calls the one above Peezy's Selfie because it looks like she is reaching out holding the camera. I think she was actually just telling Sophie to leave her alone!

 She is a beautiful kitty!

 There was lots of jumping on the trampoline. It is used at my kids fort. They spend a lot of time jumping but often I look out and they are all just sitting or lounging out there talking. Sophie says the topic is usually about video games but since she spends so much time out there too I think there must be more discussed than just video games.

 Here is another one of Pezzy. This time she was attacking the rug.

 For one of Ian's classes he watched a video of a man who stacked rocks and made rock art. So the kids went outside and gathered rocks and bark and such and started making stacks.  Balancing rocks on one another.

 This one was Molly's creation I believe. She stacked a few buckets in there too I guess.

Peezy again! This time she is at the back sliding door looking out at the back yard. Lots of birds visit our yard. They must love the tall weeds that we just couldn't keep up with. We are waiting for the sun to bake them. We just keep getting just enough rain to keep them green and growing.

 Here is Peezy with her favorite person. When he comes home from work she is aways right with him begging to be rubbed and pet.

 My kids love to take selfies' of themselves.

 There was a lot of Lego play!

 Some Juggling.

 My Webelos den visited the local fire station to talk to some First Responders.

 Here is Henry's lego creation. He made a "google". That was the name of one of his Webkins toys that is now lost so he made it out of Legos to help him remember it.

That about sums up our April. We did a lot of stuff. I just don't get around to posting about any of them.  Mostly we hung out at home, did a lot of school work and had a few outings scattered throughout.

Artwork!

There is always a lot of artwork going on around our house. The neighbor girls often come over here to paint because they never paint at their house. We seem to always be painting, drawing and coloring here. We go through a lot of paper, pencils and markers as well as paint. Here are a few of the things we have been doing.

 We have been listening to the Chasing Vermeer book and so of course had to get out some of his artwork to look at. I decided to try to draw the milk maid picture.

 Here is a closer look at my sketch.

 Here is a sketch Molly did of her Dad sitting on the couch.  She did this one while we were all sitting around talking with some guests.

 Here is Ian's artwork. He did this one for class. It was supposed to explain something about Mercy and he made a little comic strip about him going babysitting for his sister when she wasn't feeling well.

 Usually Ian's drawings are much more mechanical in nature. He even breaks out the graph paper and rulers when he draws.

 Here are a few of Sophie's Egyptian art pieces. She has always loved this style!

 Even our History coloring pages have a little creative twist to them. Here is Alexander the Great with a Rainbow Dash flavor.

A few of Molly's paintings. She uses the whole page and lot of colors!

 She loves empty boxes. She cuts them up and uses them as canvas' to paint. She used these as backgrounds to her pony play.

Henry likes to cover the fridge with pictures of Minecraft animals and things. 

Sophie doesn't let me take pictures of much of her artwork. She has been going through a large sketchbook about every two months. She draws all the time but is very leery of showing it off to many people. She is getting very good at drawing princesses, dragons and ponies! One day hopefully she will let me take some pictures of her artwork.

Our Minimal Easter

I have to admit our Easter was rather subdued this year. I just never got around to planning anything that extensive. In face Sophie was the one who planned our Easter morning Scavenger Hunt this time. I only provided some eggs to boil and dye the day before and some bubbles and candy for the "prize" at the end of the scavenger hunt that morning. 

 Sophie spent some time the day before Easter coming up with scriptures that she could use as clues to send the kids around the house gathering clues until they came finally to the end and the basket of prizes. It turned out really nice and the only problem was that Molly really wanted to find eggs but was never quick enough to get the clue before one of her brothers.

 Part of the issue was that for the past two weeks I have been suffering with allergies and have had a headache, stuffy nose, and sore throat. I didn't want to do much of anything and planning something big just wasn't going to happen. I did make three pies to take to Grandma's house for Easter Dinner.  Two chocolate pudding pies with graham cracker  crusts (way easier that the usual pastry) and then a Lemon Meringue pie (because that is what Ian wanted and lemon just sounded good!)

A few more butterflies pictures

 Here is the cat very intent on keeping an eye on the butterflies.

 In this picture you can see the two crysalis' that I superglued onto a napkin. They are the only ones that didn't ever emerge.  The others that fell off due to Peezy's zealous interest in them came out but were damaged. So I guess we learned that once those crysalis' are hanging you can't knock them about too much or else they won't form correctly.

 Here is Molly releasing the last of our butterflies. She was sad to let them go but they seemed excited to get out into the warm sunshine.

 Here is one of our crumpled wings ones.  We let it go anyway. We placed it in a bush of flowers. Hopefully it enjoyed the freedom it had.