April Recap

Hey, it's still May and I've got the April Recap done... not bad! [Especially since I didn't post the March Recap until May.] April was insanely busy. I looked at the calendar the other day and realized I was gone for 15 days last month! Between Seattle, Easter, Ethan's birthday, family, work and the Utah trip it's no wonder the month went by in a blur!

* Date-night-movie-of-the-month: First of all, YAY!!, we actually got a date night. It was kinda last minute, so we ended up seeing:I'd already seen it on DVD at my family's house, but Sean hadn't seen it at all, plus it was fun to get to see it on the big screen. That, and all the May blockbusters hadn't started playing yet! It was really good. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law were great as Holmes and Watson. Downey plays a very convincing brilliant, but borderline-crazy, hero. It was a very similar character to Tony Stark/Iron Man - just set in a totally different time period. Anyway, it's one I wouldn't mind owning.

* Taxes... Ugh. Yet again I waited until the last minute to file. [Can you blame me? Four W-2's between us from 2 different states, plus some unemployment, plus daycare, etc, etc. - it was a little more overwhelming than most years!] My dad convinced me to e-file them through Turbo Tax which made it both harder and easier at the same time. Mostly easier, but I had been doing them old, old school - by hand, with a calculator - so it was very foreign to me to enter information at random times and be able to go back and edit stuff and have the program update everything automatically. It was pretty cool to watch the state and fed amount to pay or refund totals change. And, of course, in the end we had to pay Oregon state a little - no surprise there! Seems like we always end up owing something, even though they tax the heck out of each paycheck!

* Once again, despite April's lacking in posts, I have covered many of the main events:
Easter
Ethan's Birthday
Seattle Trip
Utah trip from the end of April with Ethan, my mom and sisters is still to be covered... later this month!

* Grandma SandyShe is just one of my two fabulous grandmas... the day before Easter she competed in a 1/2 marathon and got 1st place for her age group!!

* Spring has sprung! Our first Washington spring has not disappointed. Here are a few pictures I captured around our yard:

The neighbor's apple tree.

Glad I got a picture of the blossoms while I could.... they are all gone now.

Blue belles [I think] edge one side of our backyard.

First dandelions from my little boy! He insisted on de-stemming them all!

Ethan "watering" our tomato plant by first taking a swig of water from his cup, then drooling the water down the leaves. Nice.

* Ethan's sandbox was delivered! The day after Ethan's birthday [a Saturday] my Toftdahl grandparents came up to visit and drop off the sandbox they had made for Ethan - complete with sand! Once we decided where to put it and filled it with sand, my grandparents went to go visit some friends that live close by then came back for a BBQ! It was really fun to get to spend the afternoon with them. Ethan has been loving his sandbox [on the sunny days] ever since! I can tell, because I sweep up sand almost every single day... put another tally mark on the good side of having hardwood floors because sweeping is a lot quicker than having to vacuum every other day.

They were also smart enough to get beach sand, which makes for much better building of sand castles and things. Ethan has already gotten pretty good at convincing Sean to go out and build him a volcano.
* New friends: It has been better than I anticipated getting to know the people in our new ward. I can be so shy sometimes around new people, but we've already had a few invites over for dinner, so it has been fun doing that. One of the families, the Colemans, has a daughter about a year older than Ethan. We went over for dinner one Sunday evening and all four of their kids played so well with Ethan! We also did a baby-sitting swap one day [this is how we got to see our movie in April] so Ethan got to play with Maddy twice. Several times now he has told me he is ready to go to "Sister Coleman's house!" Here's a couple pictures from when Maddy came over - this was at lunch time while they were watching Princess and the Frog.
Well, that's about it. And now that we've had our fill of April and May showers... bring on the sun!!