April 2023

Boy howdy, was this month busy! We started out by celebrating Carmen's birthday early, like we do every year because we are always gone on Spring Break. She manages to talk us into it every year. 

And she also announced her decision to attend BYUI in the Fall. Very excited for her!

We escaped to the Outer Banks for our Spring break this year and managed to get double lucky having both Jeff's family and my parents come with us for the week. 

It turns out April is way too cold still in the OBX and everyone ended up renting wetsuits to stay warm in the water. I opted to sit on the beach and stay warm, but it was still too cold for me! 

Then we celebrated Carmen's birthday on her real birthday! I can't believe my baby is 18. It's really a crazy feeling that one can prepare you for. But we are so proud of her and the goals she is making for herself. As tradition goes, we eat Mexican on her bday. And she opted for cheesecake for her cake. 

We've been to the OBX many times, but this was our first time getting a house directly on the beach. It was pretty great and we loved the view right from out house. I loved being able to easy head back to the house if I needed to. 

Most of the kids wanted to try out this giant ropes course that I thought looked way to hard and scary. While it was a good challenge for them, they all managed to complete it. I was really impressed with them all. 

Carmen, Charlotte and Dallin with their cousins Benson and Owen all completed the entire course. 

And we sadly had to say goodbye to Jeff and Carrie, but we were headed to Virginia to finally see the Richmond Temple that was announced when we lived there. 

And it was absolutely stunning inside and out. I felt so much love for the House of the Lord and knowing that now it was so much more available to so many people we know and love. 

Then it was home for Easter Sunday. I managed to get two cute pictures with the family!

Then I had a birthday, #43. I take a birthday selfie every year and this is me at 43.

Carmen was invited by her friend Owen to the prom this year. Her dress gave me all the trouble! It needed hemmed, and I thought I could do with some fabric tape, but here it was very late the night before prom with me trying to fix the dress. All was well, until she actually wore the dress and had taken pictures. By then the entire hem had fallen out and she was tripping over it the rest of the night. But she did look gorgeous and she had the most fun time with Owen and his friends. 

Every Senior at Mattawan is required to write a graduation speech and give it to an audience. It was held during the day and parents and classmates could just come and go throughout the day to listen to the speeches. They were all graded on this. Carmen's speech was so great using a lot of lines from Taylor Swift songs. I wish I had a copy of it to paste in here, but I don't. 

David had a birthday, turning 44 this year! I love getting to celebrate him every year on his special day. 

The Young men are all preparing for a big 300 mile bike ride this summer and one day as prep they all took a 40 mile bike ride to practice. Even though Dallin isn't old enough this year for High Adventure, him and his friends still went. Dallin's here with Clark Christensen, Sarger Weimer and Jared Betzold in the the back. I'm super impressed by them for doing something so big. Three of them have the same school teacher and she heard about it and told the entire class how proud she was of them for doing something so challenging!