april in pictures

and now, for a brief moment in time, i am caught up on my blog. i'm trying to be on top of things before the baby arrives. 

jonathan found his birthday present "hidden" (not very well, obviously) in the garage a few days before his birthday. he's been on a strider bike, so he has great balance, but needs some practice with pedaling.

these are from his actual birthday. our baby is four years old! good thing we have another one on the way. jonathan is so tall that i've felt like he's been four for a while now, so it's nice to have him actually be the same age as i imagine him to be. he is at a really fun stage right now and we sure love our four year old.

he got this umbrella (which is already broken), and some construction legos, which he is playing with under the legos, along with his sisters. 

 

he went through many choices for his cake previous to his birthday (a puppy cake and a panda cake, to name a couple), but thankfully, settled on strawberry shortcake for the actual day. no complaints from me, both from the prospect of making and eating it. 

my friend, kenton, from law school, and his family were in town for a few days, so we met up with them downtown and went to ivar's for lunch. it was so fun to catch up with them. they were really great people in law school and still are. i can't believe how big their kids are (some of the kids pictured are their nieces, too). it's been nine years since we've seen each other.

 

jonathan loves to strike strange poses when i try to take his picture. 

out for a family walk one evening: 

 

these are my favorites: 

 the kids had spring break this month, so we spent a lot of time at parks. they loved this merry-go-round.

this boy loves digging in our backyard. 

he informed my this is his workbench. 

we had several abnormally warm days in april, including one day where it got up to 90. our kids had a couple of big waterfights with the neighborhood kids and some other friends, which jonathan thought was the best thing in the world. here he is taking a break with me for a few minutes:

i am notorious bad at taking pictures of myself during pregnancies and have tried to be a little better this time around. here i am at 29 weeks: 

jonathan with his tools and books of "instructions:" 

randy and i celebrated our tenth anniversary this year. we went to san francisco as a couple in october and counted that as our ten year trip, so we decided to celebrate the actual day as a family, a kind of family birthday party, with a staycation. we rented an airbnb in edmonds that looks out over the puget sound and spent a couple of days/nights there, hanging out as a family, eating fun food, and playing at picnic point beach, which was a two minute walk from our place. it was just what we needed. 

we started out the weekend by going out for pizza:

an attempt at a family picture. unfortunately, jonathan was not cooperative and we were pretty backlit at this point. 

this was our view. we had beautiful weather for the weekend, with a couple of gorgeous sunsets. 

the airbnb had a little firepit, so we had s'mores both nights and roasted hotdogs one of the nights. 

here are some pictures from the beach: 

we attempted a hike at meadowdale park, but abandoned ship about a half mile in. the kids were cranky and i am big and pregnant. can you spot jonathan in the picture?

we also played lots of cards during the weekend. it's fun to have my kids be old enough to play games that i actually enjoy. our current favorite is five crowns. 

after ten years, he's still my favorite and i love him so much more than the day we were married. we make a pretty good team.