We had our usual April visitors last week. I love that I live where they come through my yard every year.

Reagan was also an April visitor. He came up for conference weekend. He had his biggest sale ever this month!

Levi got picked to run in the Oregon Relays last weekend. It’s a HUGE meet at the University of Oregon in Eugene. They ran in a massive stadium. The morning of his race when he first saw the stadium he sent us this video:

He was the 800 anchor in the 1 mile sprint medley relay. We got to watch at home because it was live streamed. It was super exciting! It was like watching your kid run in the Olympics!! Levi was in the second slowest heat out of 5 heats-just to give you some perspective. He could see himself on the jumbotron so he was smiling the whole time. You’ll have to watch the video to see if he won or not. This is just his part of the relay.

Here are some snapshots of the race.

Another highlight for him was watching a world record breaking race in the Distance Medley Relay live.

This week (in ONE week!) he qualified for Districts in both the 2 mile and the 800!

My wins this month were not quite as exciting, but it is very gratifying to look out my window and see some of the plants I planted last year doing so well!

Last Thursday, we woke up to find this boy in our guestroom! Surprise!

He and a friend drove all night to surprise their families. Liberty got the biggest surprise when she went into that room at about 3:00 AM because she couldn’t sleep. She was going to try sleeping in a different bed. But there was a body in the bed and it told her “Don’t tell mom!” over and over. She went back to her room and went to sleep. When she got up that morning for school she thought maybe it had been a dream and did not tell me anything. I went about my day and was gone for much of it, having no clue that he was even home. When I got home that afternoon I heard Reagan’s voice upstairs and assumed Levi was playing computer games with him over the phone. When I walked into the room, there was Reagan! He got to have a home cooked meal, watch Levi’s 2 mile race and I sent him home with some of my homemade oreos when he left the next morning. What I didn’t know until I opened my blinds later that morning was that Reagan had spent all night digging a hole in the backyard to plant the replacement cherry tree that I bought for the backyard. I looked out the window just as I had the day I found the old cherry tree tipped on it’s side, totally confused as to what I was seeing. I couldn’t find the tree in a bucket that had been there the day before. It took me a minute to realize it was in the ground!! I don’t know how he did it in the dark, but he managed to dig a perfect hole, plant that cherry tree, and surprise me yet again! Thanks, Reagan Dean for keeping me on my toes. And for giving me such a nice gift. My back, especially thanks you!

Not the basketball kind. Though Levi really got into the basketball kind this year with friends. The madness we had here was with the weather. We bounced from 70 degree days to snow to massive wind, hail storms and floods in the street behind our house in March. I put the following quote on our porch chalkboard at the beginning of March not knowing how prescient it would be! “Our life is March weather, savage and serene in one hour.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Since our Spring Break is always so early and this year was even earlier, we planned to go skiing up at Brundage. Ironically enough, it was gorgeous and sunny in the high 60’s down in Boise that week which meant that we had Brundage to ourselves but it also meant that it was too warm to keep skiing by 1:00! It was a fun day, though. Beautiful, warm and great snow…till it wasn’t. We ended the day eating at our favorite Mexican restaurant in McCall.

Track started and Levi is in Varsity and getting PR’s with almost every race. He’s never happy with his times, but he’s having a solid season.

This year some moms got together and decided it would be a good idea to shower Levi’s group of friends with a fancy lunch twice a week. They call it lunch bunch and the moms rotate feeding about 15 kids. Don’t get me wrong, they are a great bunch of kids, I’m just not as into spoiling my kids as some moms are. Nevertheless I am in the rotation. Anyway, there had been a lunch bunch on the day of this meet, and Levi ate too much. Running the mile was a little rough and this brand new track, never before used, was christened by Levi because there were NO garbage cans anywhere on the track! Warning: graphic photo to follow. 😉

Reagan did something totally cool this month! In addition to making his biggest sale ever, he also took not one, but two introductory flights in an airplane. The kind where the pilot lets you fly the plane! He’s been thinking about going to flight school and did this as a way to test it out. He had a blast but hasn’t decided on flight school yet.

Cade is now on his 3rd transfer and is still in Sterling, CO but is now done with training. He’s learning the typical lessons of a new missionary; how to love your companion when you disagree and how to love the people you teach. I love seeing his spiritual development. Here’s a fun picture taken while we were talking on the phone one day.

For Easter we had everyone over for dinner and an Easter Egg Hunt. Liberty, Levi and Lincoln hid them for the littler kids and it was a little weird having those three be the oldest now of the bunch. Old enough to be hiding the eggs instead of finding them. Liberty (and Rock) made this awesome carrot cake for us all to enjoy for dessert:

And that was March!!