April

I definitely teared up as I reviewed the pictures for this month. April was full of so much work, so many really hard and beautiful goodbyes, and so many new things. This first picture shows a purse Lucy made all by herself. She felt inspired, asked to borrow some supplies, and made this!

I spoiled the kids with a little frozen yogurt.

At the start of our month, we began our trip to Forks. . . only to have my lights all start flashing on my dash as I was trying to leave Olympia. I pulled into a gas station, my car got towed, and i got to continue the journey in Brandi's sedan. It was crazy and so generous of her to let me drive her car. i couldn't fit everyone in the car so she took a couple of my kids. Crazy beginning.

Being stranded with all our stuff wasn't ideal, but we only got delayed by maybe 45 minutes.

The Olympic National Forrest was awesome. The woods looked pretty much the same as the ones in Olympia but the ocean!!!!!! Big, happy difference!

Peeking at the water was pretty exciting.

Ruby Beach was awesome

An awesome place to climb. Brook got all the way to the top

Cute Lu. The cabin was a disaster of lady bug infestations, dirt, doors that wouldn't lock and the smell of pot everywhere. The lady who owns it reimbursed us almost all our money so we ended up spending $35 a piece.

We hiked in the Olympic National Forest the second day and got completely drenched. Thes epictures are out of order, but this was lots of fun.

We spotted a huge elk

This was pretty special. As we were heading home, the coast was so beautiful. At about the exact same time Brandi and I pulled over to take pictures of how beautiful everything was

Brandi's suburban pulled over in front of my car

Forks signs from town to prove we went there

We brought such a delicious lunch for our beach day the day before!

One happy and unexpected event was having Doug come visit us during General Conference a few days later.

Brook tucked him in with Monkey Baby while he took a little nap.

Lucy did her amazing artwork with playdoh. I'm kind of thinking this is Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and the easter bunny lending support? Maybe what Easter represents?

And I'm pretty sure this is John the Baptist baptizing Jesus

This was cool. My neighbor Dori Brock asked if I would do her hair for a professional photo she was having done. I was happy to help. She joined the church a long time ago and hasn't gone back. I tried to help her get into Pathway, helped her with essays, invited her to church, and tried to be a great neighbor and friend.

This was my gorgeous view from my study in Washington with spring springing through the mists.

Cute littles on their toes--one in oven mitts.

I made sure to write don how I saw the hand of God each day because this month was pretty hard! I felt like I spent it packing and saying goodbye, then driving, visiting family, and getting everything operational in our new environment.

Doug stayed at Jeremy and Darcee's house most of the time before we were allowed to move to our new home.

Lucy's friend Brynn hosted a surprise birthday party for Lucy. It was so sweet.

I took Cason to his five-year-old checkup and he had such cute things to say.

Our last trip to Priestpoint park

My cutest on their last beach trip there

I love seeing Isaac being a great big brother

The crazies by the boxes I was packing. Several friends came to help me including Cheyenne, Sandy, Marji, Tami, and Amy.

Lucy's awesome Dragons team. They gave her a soccer ball they had all signed and took lots of photos that Joy said she would send me. Coach Joe wrote her a sweet card.

Brook's team was also so sweet. They gave her a huge hug after Brook's final game in the pouring rain

And they gave her this picture as well. She said she would save it forever and bring it with her on her mission. I don't know that we have seen it since we moved here but I know we packed it.

This is how I watched a lot of my kids' soccer practices and their warm ups before their games.

I also got spoiled at a going away party that i cast as a Come, Follow Me girls night. Such great women.

And Amy with her Hogwarts survival kit for me. She is so thoughtful!

I of course locked my keys in the car as I was getting my car loaded to move.

We had scheduled our move so Lucy could go to the battle of the books with her friends.

Roman and Chad came to say goodbye and give us some snacks for our tri. I hope I can be as good to others when they move as my friends were to me.

This is our car with everything packed. I couldn't open one side door, which is a huge bummer when you're moving and need to somehow get out of the car around a lot of bags.

We stayed at a hotel that night.

Then we got Doug from the Provo airport, had an Easter egg hunt at my mom's house and drove to Arizona starting on Easter morning. We had gifts from the Easter bunny before we left, I think.

Corban's showing one of his two best faces in the car here.

Here's the other one I love so much.

I was pretty excited to see the amazing weather forecast in AZ! Interestingly, I'm writing this at the end of September, and we have just a little bit cooler weather than that now--about 84-90. But ever since the end of April, it has felt really hot. Except one cold week of swim-lessons outside, of course:).

This is my bedroom the first night we got there. We had an air mattress and I remember freezing because we didn't have a blanket. Our household items wouldn't come for almost a full week. I started teaching school the next day!

Funny kids shielding workbooks from me at the bookstore (I did buy them workbooks for the summer, of course)

My kids had to wait for school for four days after we moved to AZ. They all got to go to Wildfire for one month.

I took these darlings to the YMCA on that first day of school for the big kids.

At the pool

And this is a happy selfie of me loving that I could run outside in shorts and a t-shirt. It soon got too hot for that to be very enjoyable, but it was awesome at the time.

More kids enjoying the pool

And then we had a million boxes to deal with in a home that was at least 700 square feet smaller than our home in WA.

I'll end with this awesome experience. One of the realtors I worked with held an event where families could come see the new Avengers movie Infinity War for free. It was so AWESOME!!!!! And there ends one of the most enormously full  months of my life.