April 2023

Family Fun
R. and I were pretty preoccupied with getting ready for the remodel, since we had till May 1 to move literally everything out of the downstairs of our house. The POD came, and will be staying on our driveway till after it’s all done; we started boxing up and moving furniture and sorting through 12 years’ worth of buildup, which was totally exhausting. But! We did have time for some good stuff: All four of us went to see the Dungeons & Dragons movie with the Blade Team & their families; we dyed dozens of hard-boiled eggs and then had a fun Easter, with about a million plastic eggs hidden around the soon-to-be-destroyed house; and R. and I went out to the movies (The Big Lebowski special 25-year anniversary showing on April 20, lolll) and to a school fundraiser party (taco & margarita night) while the kids stayed home, ate takeout, and watched their own movies. 

Spring break
We didn’t have any family travel planned for spring break, mostly because we knew we would be moving out of the downstairs (which, as I mentioned, took up nearly all of our time). But: Annika got to go to Disneyland! Her friend Sydney invited her and another friend, Elise, to go with their family on a short, 2-days-in-the-park trip. It was waaaaay different than the way we do it (stayed offsite, rolled into the park around 11:00 a.m., didn’t work the Genie+ like madmen, etc.) and I think that adjustment was pretty hard for her — but she did get to ride lots of rides and had a good time; it’s her beloved Disneyland, after all! I tried to make things fun for Lukas; we went biking with Sam, went out to breakfast and then took Sam with us to the big skate park, and in the evenings, R. joined the two of us on the couch to watch episodes of The Brady Bunch, The Twilight Zone, and Magnum, P.I.; Brady Bunch was his favorite, but he liked all of them.

School Days
Turkey legs gonna turk: Lukas got into April Fool’s Day with a number of little tricks, but my favorite was all these insects he made out of paper and stuck all over the house. He was busy with other stuff this month, too — he and Manir did a weekly after-school chess club being held on campus, finished up the Los Alamitos Band season with a concert in the cafeteria and another at the Multicultural Faire (he’s honestly really good, especially for a guy we couldn’t get to practice at all; it’s a shame he doesn’t want to continue, but at least he gave it a go!), and showed us all his stuff at 5th Grade Open House at school — another last-time thing at Los Alamitos, awww! Annika was busy with school and — for the first time — sports; she ended the badminton season on a high note: She and CJ finished 7-5, the only duo on the team to have a winning record!