April 2023

It's hard to believe we're already a week into May! It feels like our calendar is bursting at the seams with all of the end-of-the-year festivities and concerts with a few TDY's thrown in for good measure on top of all of the regular life stuff. The end of April brought us lots of melting, which was super exciting! Without further ado, here's a look back at the past month...

The girls' school has a late start time + Shelby sets her alarm fairly early so she's not rushed in the mornings, which has led to a lot of bonding time for these two lately. In the first picture below, Shelby is reading aloud to Brady while he eats his breakfast.

Hadley was writing a poem in her bed one night when we came to tuck her in. She wrote this poem a couple of days after Easter when we got about 6 or 7 inches of fresh snow. It's kind of hard to see the text in the picture below, so I will type it out:

Ever-falling snow,
When will it stop,
Falling for hours,
40 hours actually,

Perhaps, maybe,

I don't want it to stop
It's so pretty

Oh don't stop snow

Falling to the ground

Five inches, six inches, seven

Ever-falling snow

Will it ever stop?

I really, really hope

It doesn't

{Brady finishing his new puzzle from the Easter Bunny} 

{so crazy to see Hadley in short sleeves with all of that snow still on the ground!}

{it was sunny & 50 degrees on this day, so we spent all morning outside!}

{the kids experienced their first Kona Ice at the girls' school Spring Fest}

{playing basketball on the driveway...something we haven't been able to do in a very long time!}

{Brady's share board on sea turtles}

{the girls made our Saturday morning pancakes when Derek was in San Diego..they did a phenomenal job!}

We are eager for what May has in store for us...hopefully more sunshine & warmer temperatures! We didn't really notice the extended sunlight too much last summer on our move here because it happened so gradually for us as we traveled. But it has been fun to watch the days get increasingly longer this spring. As of now, the sun is rising around 5:30am and setting around 10:30pm. Hard to believe that at the height of summer we'll be getting 22 hours of daylight! We're also eagerly awaiting the street sweepers to show up in our neck of the woods. In Alaska they don't salt the roads in the winter because it draws the moose. So they spread gravel on the roads here instead of salt. Well, as you can imagine, by the end of winter the volume of gravel left on the roads {and in yards from where snow was plowed/shoveled} is truly indescribable. It is so thick. It makes it extremely difficult in some areas for the kids to play or ride bikes safely. We experienced our first Alaskan snow plows and snow removals this winter, and hopefully we'll get to watch our first gravel removal in the coming days!