First picnic and more snow

The first picnic of the year is always an exciting day for me.  And this year was no exception.  When Ken got home I was almost all ready with the fixings for tacos, but it still took us forever to gather up people, drinks, and baseball gloves and get in the car.Dinner was tasty, but it had gotten a little chilly since the sun was well on it’s way down.  But that still made the last day of March special to me.

Abbie brought home her report on Kinkajous.  I didn’t even know there was such an animal.  The neatest thing about this mammal is that it turns it feet around backwards to climb up trees.  She had so much fun writing and so much to share that she couldn’t keep her report to just one or two pages…Jessie had a blast teaching Neil how to pretend sneeze and how to make himself laugh when others are laughing.  It’s so funny!  When he notices everyone laughing, he’ll throw back his head, scrunch up him nose and squint his eyes and give a little giggle.While Ken was at the Priesthood session of Conference and Jessie was playing with her cousin, the rest of us used Mark and Abbie’s Fat Cat bowling coupons from school at went bowling.  Everyone did really well, which made it fun.  Spencer's poses after he threw his ball were priceless…Sunday morning of General Conference we woke up to 5 inches of snow.  I LOVE spring snows – they are here and beautiful and gone in two days.  Most of the time you don’t even have to shovel the driveway.Unfortunately the snow wasn’t great for packing and this was the biggest the kids could get it for a snowman.Jessie took this picture of the lilac tree.  So colorful.With Ken’s help Spencer made a mini-snowman family.Mark wasn’t interested in building only stashing snowballs…does that sound like a Calvin thing to you!Abbie made a little snowman and then she and Jessie decorated it.  I’m sure it really wanted to eat it’s Hershey Kiss eyeballs.A short snowball fight followed between Ken and Mark until Mark got on in the side of the face and then everyone came in a got ready for Conference.A few of my favorite talks from Conference that I’m looking forward to reading are Presidents Uchtdorfs: Waiting on the Road to Damascus and What Manner of Men Ought Ye to Be by Lynn G. Robbins.

One of Neil’s FAVORTIE “toys” is the remote to the light and ceiling fan in the living room.  He can even turn them on and off from downstairs…that is sometimes a little surprise waiting to happen.We did fancy hair on Jessie for Conference.  The little braids even stayed in well enough that on Monday for school I just redid the twists around the back.And last night Neil signed his first word.  HOT!  We went swimming yesterday after noon and Ken stayed behind to pick up Mark and bring him.  While he was waiting he decided to put some potatoes in to bake so we’d have dinner mostly ready and he was telling and signing to Neil that the stove was hot.  He got it!!  It’s so exciting.