I don't know what it is about the month of May

Or April for that matter, but it is so incredibly busy. I think I say that every month when I find myself, once again, significantly behind in my blogging efforts.

Here's the first installment of my summary.

We went to Dutch Joe Ranch (my dad is part of the development team) the first weekend in April with my parents and my older sister and her kids. Everyone else who was invited either lives out of the state, at least two hours away, or had to work.

So these pictures are a bit out of order, but for the sake of time, I'll not rearrange them, but rather just explain as I go.

This is Jared, my sister's third child. He is one of three blond and blue-eyed cousins on my side of the family. Mostly they have brown or hazel eyes and dark hair. Jared is spunky and creative and when he smiles, he has dimples in both cheeks. He is also a wild man, and when we went on our little nature hike, he had to have one adult (me) supervise just him while the others managed the rest of the kids.

This is because rather than nice little gnarled twigs or thick stubby tree branches, Jared finds sticks like this:

There was a big rock along the way. All the kids had to climb it. Evan was the spotter for anyone who might decide that jumping off the back of it seemed like a good thing to do.

Here is Dylan not lovin' the backpack carrier. If we ever relent, when he says he wants to walk, we always end up carrying him anyway.

My dad spent the hike asking various queries of his duckling grandchildren: "Why do you think this tree grew sideways like this?" "What kind of animal made these droppings?" "How did this huge boulder get here?"
It was not just any nature walk, but an exercise in critical thinking from Grandpa Ed.

Or should we call him Socrates?

This was my dad's job while we watched General Conference (a worldwide broadcast of talks from our church authorities). He was the official Mark holder. And Mark stayed put.

My dad should include this job on his resume.

Then there were these huge, dusty plastic horses in the corral. My dad warned that they were definitely not for riding, unstable, unsafe, not to mention the fact that they were really expensive and if we broke them, we'd be in big trouble.

Here was Mark's reaction to his diatribe:

Everyone else chose not to heed the warning:

Amelia wanted to get off, but since no one was listening to anyone else, it took a minute to figure out what was wrong.

And maybe one of the highlights of the weekend, was getting to ride in the back of a truck to take a tour of the ranch and its lakes.

To some of you, watching eight to 10 hours (over two days of four to five sessions with large breaks between them) of church talks may not seem that exciting. Our kids were ecstatic though.

See what I mean? Totally captivated.

Actually, we had them play conference bingo with candy for the first half hour of the first session. Then we gave up and turned on some animated, brain-numbing cartoons.

We tried. I hope that counts in heaven.

Keep checking back for further installments of our spring recapitulation.