April summary

It's hard to believe that April is over already. We packed it to the limit with fun activities! It's been too overwhelming to blog about, as I saw that I used my only three April blogs to get away from our hectic month! But as some are interested, I'll make a nice, clean list of the things that demanded our time.

• We added a fifth person to Clearly Vocal. Don is a super second bass and doing a great job. We sing tomorrow night for the first time as a five-person group, so we've been rehearsing once or twice a week all month to get ready for that. We also recorded a few sound clips for our Clearly Vocal website. You can also click on the player on this blog to hear them! We're hoping to take some group and individual shots tomorrow night when we sing to update the website pics, too.
• The spring Children's Clothing Consignment Sale was the second weekend in April, so I spent a lot of time gathering together things to sell and going through the painful process of rummaging through the attic to gather up things to sell and then ironing, safety-pinning, tagging and labeling each of these items. The fantastic part is that you just drop the stuff off and you never have to think about it again! If it doesn't sell, you can either go pick it back up or if you don't, they'll donate it to Goodwill! We get 70% of the selling price, and I received my check in the mail just this past weekend. :)
• Kreg and Keleigh came to visit that same weekend, so we got together with Danny and worked on some of their wedding music. We also got to get out and ride the horses a little bit as well as enjoy a yummy dinner and Danny's entertainment at Pico de Gallo! We're excited to head back to CO for their wedding in just a month!
• John finished up the taxes--yea, Honey!--and we got that refund deposited into our account just recently. I'm mostly excited because that finished up our saving up money for paying for the baby delivery! It's going to be so great to bring little Jonas home and not owe a dime for it!
• Our last Ladies' Bible Class meeting was on the 15th. Our study focused on the bride of Christ relationship, so we had a wedding ceremony of sorts with a reception to follow, complete with vows, a unity candle, "the kiss" (okay, it was a Hershey's kiss), punch, cake and finger foods. I made three cakes, but they didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. They sure tasted good, though!
• A friend from church owns a weight-loss center and hired me to scrap and frame 5 12x12 layouts featuring her top five before and after pictures of her clients. She wanted to put them on her main wall in her clinic and title it "Wall of Success," so of course, she also wanted me to scrap and frame a title to go over the other 5 frames. This was a bigger job than I expected, but I really enjoyed stretching my creative limits and thought that the project turned out well. Apparently, she liked them, because she hired me again to scrap two poster-sized layouts of before and after pictures so that she could set them on easels and take them to conventions with her! Those were "due" the day after the Ladies' Bible Class last day!
• Our praise team had a Vocal Aerobics seminar on a Friday night and Saturday morning, the 18th and 19th. It's exactly as it sounds: exercises for the voice! We learned a lot about the different ranges and how best to sing in each range, how to find your different lifts and a great way to determine voice part. It was great! Our dear friends, JC and Terry kept our children overnight for us, so after the seminar Friday night, John and I caught a late movie!
• Johnathan's school had Rodeo Roundup, the annual two-day event where we celebrate Texas and all the western stuff that goes with it. I was in charge of getting the petting zoo and pony rides there and making sure we had plenty of volunteers to man the stations. No problem. Then, as I did last year, I made a PowerPoint thanking all of our sponsors and ran it on a continuous loop throughout the event. Thanks to John for helping me set up the projector! As if that wasn't enough excitement, on day two, the gym started smelling like smoke so badly that we had to evacuate and call the fire department! Thankfully, there was never any smoke or fire. The firemen said it had something to do with overworked heaters, but that there was no threat of a fire. And the day went on as planned.
• And we had a ladies' night out that night and laughed and laughed until my already stretched tummy tendons were hurting!
• The youth group's annual auction was just this past Sunday, and I was on the decorating committee. So we met once to divide out responsibilities, and basically mine was to get the appropriate announcements in the bulletin and to help decorate on the Saturday before. I succeeded at taking care of the announcements, but failed miserably on the decorating part, which leads me to the next activity ...
• Last weekend, John and I went to the Denton Arts and Jazz Festival. The kids stayed at Dad's house and had fun while John and I were able to enjoy the festival kid-free! There were some amazing groups that performed and some beautiful artwork from jewelry to pottery to watercolors to photography. I walked over to a pottery booth and out of instinct picked up a pitcher. The potter grinned and said, "Now you look like you need ANOTHER pitcher to add to your collection!" He totally hit the nail on the head! I reluctantly, but stubbornly put the pitcher down and picked up a pie plate instead! I have it on display in my kitchen. :) While in Dallas, we were able to take home my new nursery bedding that I had won on eBay and that Dad had picked up for me! I can't wait to set it all up, but I think we're going to have to wait until sometime this summer before we kick Kalleigh out, I mean, move her into her big girl bed and share a room with Johnathan!
• My most recent project was a diaper cake that I made for one of my good friend's baby shower coming up the Sunday. Now you know I really wanted to do that project, since it is already done. Otherwise, I would have probably stayed up all night the night before. Hooray for doing ONE of the projects this month ahead of time!

Okay, the list was not as neat as I intended, but as you can see, we did have a few thing going on. In no way am I complaining about having too much to do! I agreed to or volunteered for each of these, and it's been a really fulfilling month! No, I wouldn't want every month to be quite that crazy, but every now and then, it's nice to know you're still alive. :)

Here comes May ... !