a p r i l

april was pretty laid-back. we kept working on the house, went to soccer practices & games, threw another party, and went to CA again for some R&R.

here's ruthie's first try at soccer

ruthie had a love-hate thing goin on at the games. she was so excited to play and would get right out there and kick it down the field, and would usually score 2-3 goals. but any set-back, like kicking the ball out of bounds or hitting the goal post would send her into the depths of despair. she spent half of the first few games on the sidelines. but most of her team was struggling to keep their spirits up because the coaches were so bad at preparing them. practices were a joke!  i know, they're just 3-4yr olds, but the coaches were useless. so games were really hard on the kids. by the end of the season, it was just ruthie & 2 other boys that would show up to play and the boys were usually too shy to kick the ball. so it was ruthie against 5 or 6 other kids. but she got the hang of it and sloan taught her how to 'get wrestly' and not give up. 

ruthie's groupies

three of sloan's good friends at school had birthdays in april so we partied it up on the last day of the semester. here's brett & casey

 amanda & sheena

 brent, sheena, aimee hawkes

 ruthie!

nick, brett, casey

ruthie & tyson and tabby's daughter maddie

the next morning i did my first tri-athelon!  it was only sprint distance, so about 45min long sections. first swimming, then bike, then run. the water was a freezing 50 degrees and i just had a short wet suit, and i'm not an experienced swimmer, but i got through it (and swallowed about a gallon of lake water - gross). i rode this bike, not built for speed but very comfy, and the run was fine. (because i took a wrong turn and it cut the run in half :)  it's mostly about the training anyway, which was a lot of fun. it was great having an event to work toward and mixing up the workout with swimming & biking.

go me  :)

home improvement projects this month:

dig up part of the garden for a huge sand box
go sloan!

patch and paint the man cave

get 2 tonnes of sand for sand box

haul it

 find a trampoline and ping pong table on craigslist (only $100 for both!)

ruthie self-portraits

sloan lovin on his velvet dog. is this normal?
 


here's Easter in CA

 last day at Disneyland for the summer - woop woop!

sloan has yet to catch on to the disneyland vision, but we were glad he came, if only for a half day. ruthie loved goin on the rides with him

 ruthie's idea

tickle tickle 

this is an Easter carnival in Santa Margarita. The llama was the highlight. 

and finally we played in san diego for a couple days