April 2026 memories

It is April 22 and I’m just now starting to type up April. I kind of got behind as I started to write it and then got busy with other things.

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Week 1

April has been insane! We started the month with replacing the windows of our house. It’s amazing how quickly they can do that. The guys who did the work were also wildly amused at what Leezard can sleep through. She slept through all of the demolition as they took out the windows and the reinstallation. They woudl just step over her as they went to go to the different areas. So the big picture is them working on it, and the smaller picture is a shot of the new windows.

The most amusing part of the whole thing was one of the workers was an older guy, looked like your stereo-typical construction worker and he asked me if I made quilts, and I told him I did. Then we had a 20-25 minute conversation about sewing and quilts and he showed me all fo these pictures of quilts he had collected and told me about this one his grandma had sewn, and how he was working on a crazy quilt, and it was just the most adorable thing ever.

While they were busy installing the windows, I took Leezard for a walk and we hung out at a park, that’s the top picture. That was the last day of pretty weather. The next day it started raining, then the weather dropped and it got cold.

Easter Sunday was SO cold. It was around 40 with the wind chill which was exciting with our church meeting outside for Easter Sunday. Superman was in shorts and a t-shirt, and insisted he wasn’t cold, but about halfway thorugh he did admit he was cold, and used the blanket I had to help keep me warmer. In front of us there was a mom and her 5 kids. As the service progressed the younger 4 kids took off their shoes, and then their socks, then their coat, and then the out layer of long sleeves as they did somersaults back and forth in front of us. It was pretty awesome to watch.

The really amazing part (and we didn’t stay for this because poor Superman was just that cold) but there were 45 baptisms after the service and part way through the heater gave out.

And after church we had our traditional Easter with the cousins. We have figured out three new rules for hiding the Easter eggs:

1. No putting eggs in the exhaust pipe of cars.
2. No completely burying eggs.
3. Some part of the egg must be visible.

This adds into the already established:

1. No hiding eggs inside of the car.
2. No hiding eggs so tall someone has to climb the tree to get the egg.

The cousins decided to hide eggs so well they couldn’t be seen, so to this point we still cannot find all of the eggs they hid.

Books Read:

These are all out of order for the month because I really didn’t keep it at all straight.

• Charming Charlie– This is part of a series of boooks set in a magical village where the people with magic hide that they have magic, and the main character is just obsessed with getting married and having kids and constantly talks about her ovaries and I was just blah about this book 3 out of 5 stars
• Sanctified-This is 3 out of 4 books in a series which means it has to set up all the things for the final book and make sure you haven’t forgotten all the characters necessary for the final book while also completing the storyline for this book. This means it’s a good book in its own rite, but it is not as good as the others in the series, and will probably be better once I’ve finished the series and I’ve finished all that set-up
• Dating the Supervillain’s Daughter– I beta-read this and it’s got super cute and fun characters, the poor floofs go through so much
• Blood and Buttercups– So, I got book 1 of this series as a freebie, along with about 3 or 4 other books in a similar vein, actually I think that’s when I got Charming Charlie. It was a cozy urban fantasy books. Pretty much all of the Charming Charlie series was available and I know why, because I would not buy all of that series, but this series the author wisely only offered book 1, because I finished this and got the rest of the series which is wisely only $3 a book. But it’s a gardening vampire. It was just a fun silly idea. I spent like half of my monthly Zoom call with my high school friend talking all about the concept of this book of a flower seller who gets infected with the vampire virus by a vampire stalker, yes it’s a thing.
• Vampires and Violas– So, I kept reading because it was just kind of funny and silly.
• Hunters and Hydrangeas– And then I read the last one. I actually don’t know exactly when I read each of these books, so I just shoved a bunch in each week.

Games played:

• Stuffed Fables– This is the expansion, which I’m hoping to convince Jeff we should get. He is being quite nice and playing this with me. It’s a fun storyline game of stuffed animals protecting their human and I’m loving it. Jeff is tolerating it. He is tolerating so much for me. Seriously, like one of the stories is the first night in your big girl bed without a diaper…

Week 2

Okay, these pictures probably are very weird, but they do tell a story.

First, Leezard has a new diet so I had to get her a bin to hold her food that she can’t get into, so this is part of the new “Plan places and ways to keep her stuff together.”

And then the giant picture is the remaining half of the focaccia bread I made after we had eaten it for dinner, and oh my goodness, it was DELICIOUS. I had to throw out the first attempt at the dough because it wasn’t working right, but the second attempt was amazing.

Then, we went up to Dallas to visit Jeff’s Mom and just hang out with her, and while we were up there, I saw this hilarious tagline from whatever sub shop we were at that made me laugh.

I know there was other stuff that happened this week, but I don’t remember what all it was because I forgot to write it all down here.

Books read:

• Magic Forged
• Magic Redeemed
• Magic Unleashed
• Crown of Shadows
• Crown of Moonlight
• Queen’s Crown- okay, I’m pretty sure I read some other books I wrote down for week 3 before this, but reading those urban fantasies got me in the mood to read this series of trilogies, especially since the author has a new book coming out in the world at the end of April

Week 3

Okay, this week was a whole whirlwind, and most of it is not covered in pictures. First, you can see the game Jeff and I have been playing a bunch this month, Stuffed Fables.

There is no picture for why this week became insane. Here’s what happened, my sister-in-law sent me a text saying, “What floor guy would you recommend?”, and I said, “Hey that’s my next thing I should do look up that information since I’ve finished most of the painting.” So i signed onto Angi and requested people contact me with quotes for flooring and within 30 seconds, I was getting phone calls. As I was on the phone with the first place, my phone was constantly beeping with incoming phone calls from the other places. I set up an appointment for the next day for the first place, texted another place to come later that afternoon. Then I had a guy say he could come that day.

Okay, this was a young go-getter. He showed up and tried to convince me we should put laminate upstairs and that we should cover our tile downstairs with laminate and then he gave me a link to get a discount for paint at Sherwin Williams and also said he could represent me as a realtor.

In all of this, he never gave me a quote for carpets, and he left the laminate samples at my house.

The first carpet person didn’t show up, the second person came and sent a quote later on. I ended up deciding to contact a friend who is a realtor who I know sells houses in my area and size range to find out if the advice that first guy gave was any good and what we should be doing.

Then, I had two more appointments for later in the week.

I had Academy 4 and I remade all of the experiments so the kids could review their results since I knew many of them did not write down what they observed in their notebooks. This time they got a chance to review the experiments and see all of the information together.

So, that ends that week. I think around now is when I started realizing I might have been doing a lot of reading again to distract from the “Oh my goodness, there is a lot going on.”

Books read:

• Hunted
• United
• Fated
• King’s Captive

Games Played: Stuffed Fables

Week 4

To continue the house story before I have the collage made because this is just so weird. So we have the next carpet guy come on Saturday, we spend an hour, really like him, he offers a price match, and are fairly sure we’re going to go with him.

Then we meet with the final carpet guy, his price is almost $2000 cheaper and he doesn’t tie that cheaper price to doing both parts in a certai timeframe, so we go with him.

Then we meet with the realtor, and he is just like, here’s all the great things about your house, and we could totally get your house on the market end of May.

And Jeff and I are like, “Wait, back up, we are nowhere near ready to do that. We’ve got a lot of life things going on that will make that nowhere near possible.”

So, the new plan is we are going to move out in July and rent somewhere. Then we’ll put the house on the market in September/October. Also, we’ll hire someone to come in and paint the whole house. So all that work I’ve been doing slowly going through and painting the house? Useless.

And then I also cried when he suggested painting the guest bedroom because that is the room I painted when I was pregnant with the twins that was the nursery originally. I just looked at him like he was betraying us. There is no way I was going to paint that room, what kind of crazy person was he.

So, we’ll paint the house once we have completely moved out so I don’t have to emotionally deal with that.

But, it’s a lot to think of moving, I’m both emotionally weirded out and excited at the same time.

I leave for the airport in 5 minutes, and I need to update the publish date. So I won’t get the picture for this week or the books I read, but these last few weeks have been insane.

After that there was a women’s retreat, which was awesome, a crafting night with friends, and then my niece was in a play, and packing books and figuring out which I really want to keep and which I’m solely keeping for emotional support books.

Okay. I’m off.