Easter, AYC and all things April

I guess it is okay that I was out of blogging mode in April because it was quite a busy month. 

Here is our walk down memory lane 2012 April style....

Big Boys Kade and Ryne continued in their goofy ways.

Tyce and Tesa kept us busy chasing them around as they were in full on crawling fast mode...

Most of the time I felt like all I saw of them was their rear ends as they were speeding off to new adventure in baby world.
They had a hat adventure....

And didn't quite seem to know what to think of the other one sporting this head hiding contraption.

The hats were for our sunny trip to the park...

As soon as the weather starts to get nice around here it is time to get outside and let the boys play.

Even if that does mean they spend most of their park time digging in the dirt.  It is just so nice to get out of the house after a long rainy season.

Got an Easter package from Granna and Paw in the mail....

Dyed and decorated Easter Eggs...

Of course there were Easter Baskets on Easter morning....

Kade and Ryne were excited about their Easter basket loot.

The big hit treasures were baseball gloves, giant box of crayons and an entire ream of copy paper for each of them to draw until their heart was happy.

Tesa and Tyce weren't quite sure what was up but they were sure happy to get some prizes of their own.

And even Daddy got an Easter basket...

Yep, Kade and Ryne were picking what they wanted out of Daddy's basket.

An Easter Egg hunt with our Life Group was lots of fun...

 

Well, Kade didn't have a whole lot of fun because he slid down a rope at the park and got a pretty bad case of rope burn.

Poor guys said he couldn't even pick up eggs with his hurt hand.

So, the hunt started without him.

But he didn't stay out of commission for long.

He had to get some eggs.

Apparently there were some eggs hiding under the tree there.

Found one!

It was a fun Easter egg hunting kind of day.

Yep, you know they came home and started chowing down on Easter chocolate!

And we tried to get some Easter pictures before we headed off to church...

This was obviously before the babies were into crawling too much because they actually stayed somewhat stationary on the blue blanket.  Boy, I sure do miss those days for picture taking purposes.

Made it to church all nice and matchey for Easter...

Church is a pretty busy place for us and this is the best family shot we were able to capture.
Maybe we will do better next year???
Or maybe we were just all distracted because we knew we had to get home and start packing for our big trip....

On a plane

TO ARKANSAS!

Now isn't that a crew to be traveling with?
First we went to Grandaddy and C.G.'s house...

Had a lunch date with Monk Monk...

And paid a visit to her optometry office....

We were actually here on official business because Kade had failed his eye test at his 5 year check-up.
While Kade was waiting for his eyes to dilate to allow Monk to look deep inside, Ryne was determined to have his eyes checked too....

He loved every minute of it and was actually a pretty good patient.
His eyes were good.  Now back to Kade....

With all the tests and checks complete the verdict...glasses!  Yep, our Kadester needed glasses.  I am so glad that we have the best eye doctor in the universe!
In fact we like her so much we went on a double date with her and her fella Josh.
Down in Louisiana and I had this to eat...

Fried crawfish tail salad!  Yum!

Spent some time at the park the next day...

even had a picnic there

It was a fun day.

Then came some more fun!  My parents offered to keep the kiddos while Kyle and I went to Little Rock to attend Arkansas Youth Conference.  AYC is a big meeting that happens every spring and when we lived in Arkansas Kyle allows helped out with making it happen.  AYC is a big supporter of mission work and each year they choose a mission point to raise money for.  This year they chose us!  Wow! What a huge honor and giant blessing!  That meant that Kyle and I got to go to the conference.  And since we were kid free we really tried to live it up.
So we visited a place that we never took the opportunity to see when we lived there....

Clinton's Presidential Library.
It was cool.  And it was hosting a cool collection of St. Louis Cardinal memorabilia.

I have to admit that we felt a little guilty being there without Kade because he is a big Cardinals fan.  He changed teams when the Cardinals won the World Series because he says that he always wants to cheer for winners. Ha!  I'm curious to see if he changes again this year after the World Series????

Oh, yes, there was also all the presidential stuff to see there...

And we did enjoy it.

Even  the view coming back out of the library was nice.

There sure are some things I miss about living in Arkansas.

Things like this.....

While Kyle and I were hanging out in the Rock, Grandaddy and C.G. were taking Kade and Ryne on their first fishing trip.

 complete with snack break of course

They had an absolute blast!!!

And so did we!

AYC is always lots of fun and it was extra fun for us this year because we got to see people that we hadn't had a chance to see since we moved to Washington almost four years ago.

Have to show you this really cool missions area that they set up highlighting our church planting network. We got to hang out there and meet people and answer questions that they might have about our mission work in WA.  Lots of people signed up to pray for all the different pastors working to plant churches up here with us.  It was amazing!

I wasn't close enough to get a picture of Kyle on stage when he was telling about Life Church so I just took a picture of him on the big screen. Cheesy, huh?

Cheesy enough that I did it again when they showed our video.

And again when Pastor Paul was praying for Kyle.
I can't say WOW enough!  AYC was a huge blessing to us in so many ways.  So, so, so thankful that we got to do that.

And thankful that our kiddos got to do this...

Hang out at Grandaddy and C.G.'s getting to do all the things the like to do.

Like have their snacks in bed while watching tv.
And since they were having room service C.G. style....

We had room service too!
And then AYC was over.
Mom and Dad loaded up the posse and met us in Little Rock and we all headed towards Oklahoma.

Where we met up with more family.

To celebrate something super duper cool.

See how cool everybody looked?

There is a reason for everyone looking so cool

and driving for miles and miles to get together.

We were celebrating Paw's 50th year in the ministry!!!
Isn't that awesome?  Now that is something worth celebrating!
And I wish that I had all of the cool pics from that celebration to share with you. But they are all on a flash drive that is not in my possession. Maybe I'll remember to get Kyle to tell me where that is and I can do another post dedicated just to that celebration. It is certainly deserving of its own post.  And had I been on the blogging ball back in April, it definitely would have had its own post.

After the celebration we got to hang out with Granna and Paw for a bit.
We did the park there, too....

Happened to capture my new favorite pic while at the park...

I know Tesa and Tyce will be so happy when the park means more than hanging out in the stroller watching everyone else play.

But they are awfully cute in their stroller.

And not near as sweaty and dirty as their big brothers.

Love this with Daddy playing along.

And we had fun with Taylor, too...

Ryne always has to stop for a drink...and really likes to have a snack to go with it.

Mrs. Laura came over to meet Tesa and Tyce...

And we enjoyed playing in the back yard....

Isn't that sweet?

Guess who likes to swing!?

And the big boys really thought they were cool just hanging out.

Oh, yeah, we also got to celebrate Paw's birthday!

This trip was just one big celebration!

Nothing like a cookie cake!

And I love these pictures that I got of brother and sister

and with their dad.  I think they certainly cannot deny that they are related.  One of the reasons I love that is because I think our kids are going to be the same way....look so much alike that there is no way they can deny each other.

Kade got to share his comic books that he had with Aunt Kim and Brandon.  Yep, making comic books became one of his favorite past times.  He would illustrate the entire thing and then come back and dictate the words that went with each picture for me to write down.  He's pretty creative.

While we were there the babies and I got to make a quick trip up the hill to Fayetteville to see some of our favorite people...

Billye and Frances!  Or Aunt Bib and MawMaw Frances as our crew calls them.
It was their first time to meet the babies!

And it was a success!  Tyce and Tesa loved them!

It was a good time but over to quickly. 

I miss these gals so much!
Thankful that we got to pay them a visit.

Kade and Ryne were thankful that Uncle B has a four-wheeler...

And a tire swing...

And a trampoline...

Tesa and Tyce enjoyed the plethora of new toys for them to play with....

And it would seem that Tyce had some nice conversations with Uncle B.

We tried hard to get a picture of all the kiddos with Granna and Paw....

Seriously, I probably have thirty of these on my camera

But there was always somebody with a crazy look on their face or not looking at all.
Such is life with six wee tots...okay so Brandon isn't so wee anymore but the other five still struggle to pose when the camera comes out.

Having cousins is fun!
Then you have to leave and start missing them all over again.

On our way back to the airport we got to meet up with some old friends...

Quite a few of our friends had never met the babies...okay...any of our friends outside of WA hadn't met them because this was their very first trip out of WA.  So we planned to have a giant lunch date with anyone who could meet us before we hopped on the plane headed back home.  It was great!  Here are Ashley, Carly and Carson with the twins.  Cannot even begin to explain how much I miss this crew.  So since I can't explain it I will move on...

we got to see Woody!

And Phyllis and Katie

Oh, dear and a whole bunch of other people not even sure I can remember everyone now...Granny Di, Papa Keith, Ronda, Todd, Cameron, Nathan, Ben, Katie, Karen, Keith, Gordon and I am certain that I'm forgetting people.  So nice to have friends who don't forget you when God moves you clear across the country.  We are blessed.
When I looked back at this picture I almost cried...

Kade and Carson were supposed to be friends for life.  Carson's mom, Ashley, and I dreamed of raising our kiddos where we would have play dates and sleepovers and they would be like brothers and sisters.  These boys have only seen each other probably three times since we moved and look at that! When we left they hugged and looked at each other and said, "I really miss you.  I really miss you, too."  I'm believing they will be friends for life....even if it is long distance.
Oh, hurry up and move on to the airplane pictures before I start to cry all over again about how much I miss people...

There we are.  On the plane.  We did an overnight flight on the trip in so we didn't take any pictures of Tesa and Tyce's first plane ride....we were really just wanting to keep them asleep.

So we tried to make up for it on this trip back and snapped a few pics.

Kade was loving this trip because he had a window seat and really enjoyed the views below...

In fact he kept asking me to take pictures over and over so I finally just gave him the camera.

And here are Kade and Ryne patiently...or maybe not so patiently, I can't remember now, waiting for our last plane to take us home to WA.
It was a great trip!  Lots of memories!

When we got back to WA we got a new Kade...

 A Kade who wears glasses!

He wears them well, don't ya think?

While we were gone the babies turned 9 months old so we tried to have a quick catch up photo shoot....

I think this is the only shot I got with the sign in front of them.

Tyce kept taking it away.

Those nine month old babies were cute, even if they were in their night-nights for the photo shoot.

Wow, April was busy...and it's not over yet.
There was a birthday party at the Little Gym for Nicole....

Waiting patiently for their turn to take Nicole her present.  I love that my boys enjoy giving gifts.

They also enjoy eating cake!

One thing Kade learned he did not enjoy...

Spending the night in the ER with a broken arm.  Yep, our first broken bone.  Kade fell off of the monkey bars playing on the playground after church and broke his arm.   No fun!  He is no longer a fan of the monkey bars.

Tesa discovered she was a fan of having the blinds up...

She spent a lot of time standing up in the pack-n-play keeping an eye on the outside world.

We made a new friend.

This is Hayley!  And she is super cool.  She is in the Coast Guard and lives a few hours away from us.  She had made plans with some friends to come over and stay the night before she had to be at a super early prayer breakfast near here.  Only thing....those friends ended up not being in town when she was scheduled to come.  Her friends are our friends and so they hooked us up with Hayley for the night.  You can tell the boys took to her quickly.  We hope to have her come back and hang out again sometime soon.

In our spare time in April we just played...

I mean, what else would you do with spare time, right?

Hope you enjoyed our journey through April 2012.

May is next...fasten your seatbelts.