April

 The past couple months have been a whirlwind! Here's the month of April, in chronological order (thank you iphoto for automatically dating and organizing my photos). 

 Kyah gauged her face during one of her temper tantrums. She does this ALL the time, and bangs her head on the ground! She has what I call a perma-bruise on her forehead and usually some scrape around her ears when she claws at them. The sad thing is, she wakes up screaming and acts like she's still tired. I try to snuggle her, give her milk, food, ANYTHING, but she just needs to scream... for like, 30 minutes or even an hour sometimes! I try to lay her back down and occasionally she'll go back to sleep but that's rare. Who knows what to do about it? She is the happiest girl in the world though which is why I get so concerned when she wakes up like this. It's like she's possessed!! Anyway, look at the cute little message she wrote me when i left my laptop open! Genius.

Conference weekend. Jason had some huge end of the term projects due in April, so we just met him at the park so he could take a short break from schoolwork, then he was right back to it! 

This is how I watched conference this year. I find it pointless to even try to watch it live when the kids are awake, but it's kind of hard to catch up on all 5 sessions in the coming weeks. So this year I just took a lazy approach and made my kids watch tv while I watched conference on my ipad : /

And what do we do with our spiritual uplift?? Why, attend the Dave Matthews Band concert of course! IN my defense, Jason is obsessed with Dave and I've been trying to get him tickets since I've know him but they ALWAYS perform on Sundays (at least in Denver). So I was thrilled when we found out they'd be playing in Birmingham on a Saturday. We bought tickets a long time in advance, completely forgetting about conference. Oops. Of course we could have sold the tickets, but we're not that righteous : (

 Just some pictures of Kyah being adorable. 

 

And no post would be complete without adorable sleeping pictures of Eli : /

Perhaps my favorite of all time.

 Eli and Finners :)

 We went to Airwalk (the indoor trampoline place) which is all the rage in Birmingham. But, the website says children 2 and under are free, yet they tried to charge me $18. Not cool Airwalk, not cool. We ended up leaving because I'm too cheap to pay and Eli was devastated. Too bad so sad. 

Jason and I have had the family plaque for two years now. But alas, all good things must come to an end. Adam won the bracket this year and now our precious plaque resides in Utah :( we'l get her back next year though. 

Eli was stoked about his own grocery cart at Whole Foods... and lounging in some chairs at Toys R Us.

Nona came to town! She babysat the kids while Jason and I went to Houston for a few days to find our future home. It was the first time Jason and I have ever been away from our kids! It was rough. On the rare occasion Jason has time to travel, I hate for the kids not to be able to spend that time with him, too. But this trip would not have been productive with the littles. In fact, it was barely productive without them! The Texas housing market is CRAZY! We went to look at a ton of houses but they are literally flying off the market as fast as they come on the market. I mean, we'd be searching listings online, the page would refresh and a new listing from that day would suddenly be "pending contract." After a LOT of looking, we just couldn't settle on anything, nor could we even think about anything long enough to settle on it before it was gone. So here we are again in an apartment. It's actually kind of nice, house hunting intimidated me, there's so much that goes into a house that I didn't think about until we wanted to buy one. And, it sure did make me appreciate how easy an apartment it! 

 We took a little break from house hunting to attend the beautiful Houston temple together. It was lovely. 

Jason has been raving about Rudy's barbecue since I met him. When it came to Colorado we meant to go to it, but for some reason never mustered up the energy to drive the long way... it was only about an hour, but still. So I finally had Rudy's. In fact, it's only about a mile from our house now, and thank goodness, because it is SO good!

While in Houston, my mom sent me this picture of Eli's feet to me... nice, Mom. 

Eli trying to "walk" Kyah with his leash.

 When we got back from Houston my brother came to town for a visit :)

We went to my favorite restaurant, Mugshots! 

And the zoo.

I didn't think the splash pad would be open in April so I didn't bring their suits... so I let Kyah run around in her diaper. A little red neck but oh well. It was like 90 degrees out!

Instacollage!

Homemade splash pad with Eli's buddy James. 

My kids are obsessed with these veggie fries. 

On the prowl for a tool box for Eli. No luck, we got one online. As for Kyah's nose, that wasn't actually a tantrum, she just face planted on the concrete for no apparent reason.

 Eli playing put put with a baseball bat and paper mache astronaut helmet. Totally normal.

Bridget's 30! This was a very carefully orchestrated surprise party, weeks in the making that went off without a hitch! She had no clue! It was awesome. Bridget, Amanda and Joni (from left to right) have been the best of friends in Birmingham, I spent just about every day of the week with at least one of these girls. Our kids are all best friends, too. I am dying in Houston without them! And Eli is devastated that he doesn't see his friends anymore. So sad :(

Kyah's first day in nursery! 

She went right in and didn't look back. Not quite the way Eli handled the transition! Now I'm all by my lonesome in church, my babies are growing up :*( Let's be real though, church without babies is glorious!

18-month appointment. Kyah's 19 pounds and 28 inches. 

 

Bud's Cookie Factory! Fresh vanilla wafers, yum! But I do wish they let us sample one of the more delicious cookies...

I suppose that's all for the month of April.