April Adventures

- 1 - 

Spring Break

We had a nice quiet Spring Break. Michael spent all of his break (a few weeks before the girls) working on his dissertation. It's been slow going, but he's plowing along. I'm so proud of him!

On the kids Spring Break, we had a few fun adventures. We visited our sweet friend Joanne in her new place and made mud pies one day...

Another day we found a beautiful, sandy "beach" on the banks of the Kentucky river and played with friends. Conrad ate sand (and liked it.)

The weather was cold and rainy several of the days. We played with chickens, watched movies, and got a package FULL of fun old dress ups from Grandma. The kids loved playing with them!

Another day we met Michael for lunch. It was a nice week to just slow down and play!

 - 2 -

Awards

Michael was honored with an award at EKU for excellence in teaching critical thinking skills! This was a student nominated award which is really exciting.

Also, Eliza had her artwork chosen to display at the district wide art show! She has become such a great little artist this year. She even wrote and illustrated a three chapter book about art in class. Great work EE!

- 3 -

Chickens

We finally finished the coop and got the chickens outside! I was SO glad to get them out of the living room. They make so much dust! Not to mention one day we came home from church to find them ALL over the living room haha! There was even one perched on the piano...

Michael built the coop mostly from pallets and lots of recycled materials like old cabinet doors, random shingles from the garage, etc. It was a huge project and we both learned a lot. I think it turned out great!

The kids still love the chickens. Especially Eliza. She's always playing with them. One of my favorites was her chicken ballet...

- 4 - 

Black Violins

Michael got free tickets to a Black Violins show. We'd never heard of them, but the show was incredible! They mix classical violin with hip-hop. It was so much fun and almost more like a concert than a symphony. I LOVED it!

We went with two of Michael's co-workers. I hadn't met either of them before because they both work off-site sometimes. They were the sweetest ladies.

- 5- 

Keenland

One of the ways we got the kids excited about moving to Kentucky was by showing them the movie "Dreamer." Hazel loves horses so she made us promise to take her to a horse race after we moved. The races at Keenland are a big deal here. They only happen twice a year for a few weekends and are a stop for Derby and other big race hopefuls.

So one Saturday we dressed up (hats and all) and headed to the races. The kids looked so cute!

The races weren't quite what we were expecting. We just did general admission tickets which meant we didn't have a seat which we thought would be fine. But, we picked the first nice weather Saturday of the races. There were SO MANY PEOPLE! It was stressful for us moving through sardine like crowds with five little ones. After a long time, we found a place to stand where we could see the races. 

The horses were incredible! 

We didn't stay long though. It was just too hard to make sure we weren't losing any little ones. In the future, I think we'll go to watch the morning warm up instead of the actual races. There we'll get to see the horses more and fight the  crowds less.  It was fun to experience once though.