Jill's Smith Family Adventures: 2010 April Fools

I read in March that Easter is quickly becoming a non-holiday for a lot of people. And that the number of people attending church on Easter has significantly declined. Most of the older churches no long do the sunrise service that I remember so fondly attending as a kid. And churches are saying they are seeing fewer C&E Christians. And I am proud to say that I am a C&E Christian this year for the first time in close to 20 years! Not that I really blame people, it is tough after a long week of work to get up early on one of my two days off. I think before, maybe the women who stayed home during the week looked forward to the opportunity to socializing with the ladies on Sunday at church and having some free child care.

Easter snuck up on me this year. I felt like I was rushing around to get eggs and cramming in egg decorating with the kiddos. We had tons of fun doing it though. This is the first year the Easter Bunny actually hid eggs at our house. Since Chloe doesn't wake up at our house on Easter morning, the EB usually just dropped off a basket of goodies. So the EB hid two dozen eggs around the house and outside for Cadence to find. The only problem was that Cadence's eye line is also near the dogs' nose line. I was pretty excited we only lost 3 eggs. I might suggest to the EB to hide plastic eggs, but I know my dogs too well and I think we would lose more candy filled eggs than real hard boiled ones.

At around noon, Chloe came over to join in the festivities and then the Householders and the Smiths came to look for eggs and eat lots of food too! My Dad, Mom, Aunt and brother then took their turn at the house and we all sat down to a nice relaxing dinner. It was a really nice day!

The rest of the month was busy as usual. I had a handful of sorority alum events and meetings at Cadence's school. We had the annual spring fundraiser and ended up raising approx. $8,000 to be used to support the school and the families at the school. Special thanks to all my peeps who donated auction items and who bought raffle tickets. I am pround to say that our family sold the second highest number of raffle tickets!

Ben is continuing at ATK and has been settling in to his new routine with work during the day and school work at night. I am excited that he is making progress in his degree program. And I will be excited to relax in the evening with my husband again when this is over!

We were most grateful to get through Wednesday, April 28th. On this day, Ben went to court over school selection and custody for Chloe. Unfortunately, when Libby moved from Mesa to I-10 and the 101, they couldn't agree on where Chloe should go to school and when she should spend her time at our house. So on Wednesday, the both pled their cases and it is up to the judge now. I am grateful that the hearing is over. I am certain that the judge will come back with a ruling that is fair to both parties. And now we wait! I hope to find out soon so we can begin to plan the year to come!

Can I just say that Chloe is amazing? I am so blessed to have this little girl in my life. I cherish every day she is here and our house truly feels empty when she is gone. Chloe had her Spring Sing for school this month and has made a lot of progress in her gymnastics class. Now that Cadence has graduated from SWIM and GYM with Chloe watching, she is anxious for her turn in the spotlight. So she has been listening better and as soon as she can do cartwheels both ways, she'll be good to go! Ben has continued to join Chloe at lunch at school regularly and even got a chance to accompany her on a school fieldtrip. They had a blast!

Cadence has continued to become even more independent as she has spent more time in the Primary class at school. There are no more tears at morning drop offs and a lot more "I WILL"s in our house. Parent teacher conferences are coming up, so I completed an observation of the class. I stayed for 20 minutes and for the first 10 minutes, she didn't even notice I was there! She was so intent on learning her numbers with her classmates. Love seeing her in action and anxious to learn how she has progressed! The other thing Cadence has started this month is responding "Daddy said!" everytime I say she can't do something. And when I discussed with Ben, he is getting "Mommy said!" too! What a little smarty pants! Seems like everthing is a negotiation these days!

Now that he has mastered crawling, Brody is pulling up on everything and cruising a little. He has NO fear and has taken a few steps from the cough to the coffee table. Ben has witnessed and school has witnessed him stand up in the middle of the room by himself without holding on, but not yet for me. It will be soon enough! I know he just started crawling at 9 months, but he seems to be progressing so fast that I am sure he'll be walking by 12 months! Hard to believe he's almost a year, isn't it! Oh, and other than clapping for all done while he is eating and at other times just to show he's happy, he has started to do this responsive head nod thing. Basically if you nod your head sharp and talk to him, he will copy. If he's in the right mood, we'll do it back and forth about 5 times. So cute. So fun to connect with him this young. It feels like we are having an important conversation in our own, strange way! We've started making some important transitions with Brody too. We are using a lot more sippy cups (when they are clean) and are trying desperately to move him along to solid foods! Brody is a very picky eater and so far solids are not his thing. Anything not runny in his mouth gets immediately spit back out. And any purees he doesn't like, they don't last long either. I am not sure WHAT I will do if he ends up being a picky eater like Chloe. Hopefully the social eating at daycare will help this along!

Well, it's 12 and now May is officially here. My weekends are already loaded with weddings and birthdays and all kinds of celebrations! Including Cadence's 3rd birthday (really, 3? already?). Can't wait to live it up!

April 3rd - Preparing for the EB arrival. Focused on the task at hand!

Cadence organized her eggs by color. Love.

Mason already beginning to teach his cousin bad things!

April 4th - The EB's loot awaits!

The hunt begins!

Found one!

And the hunt moves outside...

Chloe joins the fun! Look Fancy Nancy!

My boys!

The kiddos!

Love.

Takin' it in with Uncle Bryan!

This is SERIOUS!

Hunt #2 - Found another one!

We told Reiley there was another egg on top of the Sandboat. Turns out it was just the top of the posts. Ooops.

Gang's all here!

Easter baskets from Aunt Janet and Grandma Cathy!

Grandma helps Brody with his goodies!

April 8th - Cadence in her true form.

April 12th - Trying to take a cute picture of Brody playing with the dryer...turns into a close-up shot of his face. And he's ONLY crawling now!

The quilt from Ms. Smita's Primary classroom. For the Spring Auction and Dinner at Tempe Montessori. Coordinated by mois. :) Sewn by a co-worker of my madre.