April 2019

April was a fairly quiet month, we were mostly kept busy with Emmett's soccer schedule and starting some big home improvement projects.  We waited for a big paint sale and started in on our red wall in the living room.  After 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of a soft gray paint, you would never know it had been red.  We shopped around a lot for ideas and materials, trying to make good decisions for countertops, flooring, and other changes.  We also started in on painting our oak cabinets, starting with the laundry room.  Through lots of research and some trial and error we came up with a routine.  Jim installed shiplap above the fireplace with the help of his favorite new tool, a laser level.

Prepping the red wall for paint

Flooring choices

On good Friday Elliott was home with Jim and I while we worked on house projects and his brothers were at school.  Elliott said that he wanted to ask Jesus to be his Savior so we got to pray with him as he recognized his sin and accepted that Jesus, fully God and fully man, died on the cross to give him eternal acceptance with God.  His brothers were very excited to hear his big news when they came home!

We colored our Easter eggs with cool whip and food coloring, same as last year.  We all liked it so much we decided to do it again this year.

 Our church held an Easter Egg hunt and we had our own hunt in the basement at home.  Elliott also got to do the daycare egg hunt and Ezra participated in one at school for all the second graders.

 The school had a special reading night with lots of activities.  Each grade level had sponsored and activity, and you got a stamp for completing an activity. If you filled up your stamp sheet, completing the activities from every grade level, you were entered into a prize drawing.  It was a challenge to get to all the stations, but the boys wanted to do it all and we did.  They didn't win a prize in the drawing, but we had a lot of fun.

 We had some fun outings in April like on National Grilled Cheese Sandwich day (April 12) we stopped by our newly opened Crumbl Cookie shop for a free HUGE cookie and then went to Reed's Dairy for grilled cheese sandwiches.  A different day we had an errand to run on the West side of town and we took the boys to ice cream at the other Reed's location that has the farm animals.

Piglets at Reed's Dairy