Monthly Recap--April 2021
It’s no secret, I adore fall more than all the seasons, but I think April might be my favorite month. We’re usually celebrating Easter, the air is not hot or humid here yet, the grill gets fired up for the first time in awhile, and there is just nothing better than a dinner of grilled hot dogs, chips and cut up veggies. I don’t feel like I can get away with that in November, but in April? Absolutely.
I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to share the highlights of each month more in a monthly post instead of individual photos on social media, so without further ado here is what we’ve been up to and what’s made this past month just a little bit more fantastic!
FAMILY STUFF: We had a great month, with several visitors! Chuck’s folks came down for Easter weekend and we enjoyed time with them at Top Golf and dying Easter eggs on Saturday and then did church and Easter lunch at our house with them Sunday. The boys started Easter morning with a scavenger hunt to find their Easter baskets (they finally found them, one in the bath tub and one in the dryer) and had a great time following the clues I’d left around the house. Sunday night we had an Easter Egg hunt and pizza dinner with friends which was a great end to the Easter weekend.
The following weekend Chuck’s sister and husband came down with their ten year old and the boys had a great time playing with Jane and taking her to the beach one morning. They did lots of time on the trampoline and with water balloons and of course they loved her nintendo switch that she brought with her.
We taught the boys how to play Mexican Train dominoes this month , I had a delightful mom’s night out with my life group (we go out once a month, it’s absolutely worth it to put it on the calendar and commit to that night away!), we checked out the new Jeremiah’s Italian Ice spot in Jacksonville Beach, and had many snuggle parties on rainy weekends. I got my first covid vaccine and Chuck gets his tomorrow as we prepare for travel this summer, and we had a couple of beautiful beach days with friends.
Our favorite outing of the month was dinner with a family we adore from church. We went to a Japanese steakhouse and watched the Hibachi chefs cook in front of us, which after some initial fear the boys thought was so cool. (And of course the food was amazing, Asher inhaled a plateful of shrimp faster than I have ever seen him eat!) The best part of the night was time with our friends. Noah and Kaleb are two high school brothers who have been Aidan’s life group leaders on Sunday mornings every week for 3 years now, and now that Asher’s in elementary school he gets to hang with them too. They’ve loved our kids ridiculously well and their parents have loved us so well over the years too—taking our kids when Chuck lands in the hospital, showing up with food, inviting us to dinner with them, and sharing their boys with us over and over again. Every time people ask me why I believe so strongly that people need to be in church in person with their kids instead of just watching from home on Sunday mornings this is my answer. Because if we weren’t there on Sunday mornings we wouldn’t have a Noah and a Kaleb in our kids lives, and that would be absolutely devastating. We wouldn’t have a Bob and Julianne in mine and Chuck’s life to encourage us along the way, to model for us what it looks like to have a family that loves and serves the Lord together. They’ve blessed us more than we could ever communicate by how they’ve taught our boys about Jesus and modeled what it looks like to serve others, and that is a gift that will leave a lasting impact on our family.
WATCHING: I don’t exactly remember when the obsession officially began, maybe right before Christmas, or maybe the first week in January, but my boys got sucked into The Masked Singer on Hulu and we watched all 4 existing seasons between January and March. Now we’re into season 5, but it’s happening live so we get one new episode each week and the boys are having a blast rooting for their favorite contestants and asking us who the celebrities are that get unmasked each week. Chuck and I love that there’s a show that is not a cartoon that everyone is loving! We haven’t watched much else this month—Chuck is sucked into some show called Gotham that I think is about Batman? I don’t know, I always go to bed when he turns it on. We got stuck in a rut of scrolling to find something to watch never actually deciding on anything, so I finally made a list of all the shows I want to see someday on Prime, Hulu, Netflix and Disney and sent it to him to pick one. He finally made a choice and we’ve started the Netflix dark comedy Dead to Me which is bizarre and hilarious and thoughtful all at the same time. I’m just grateful to not be spending evenings scrolling millions of options!
COOKING: It’s grilling season again! My most favorite cooking time of the year! Well except for maybe soup season. I really really love soup. But my kids don’t. We ALL love grilling season though, and you can count on it being fired up every couple days around here in the spring and summer. I love throwing hot dogs on for a quick lunch after church, teriyaki burgers on for friends who have come over, or any kind of kabob. My very favorite recipe I’ve discovered in the last year is for grilled shrimp kabobs with the lightest marinade. They are so easy and everyone in my house will eat these. The recipe is here but I don’t usually make the dipping sauce (I have, and it’s good but I actually prefer these just plain with the marinade on them).
LISTENING: I actually have a bunch of specific podcast episodes to recommend this month that I adored.
If you want to laugh, The Popcast with Knox and Jamie did an episode on April 7th called The Nos of Engagements and if you want to hear ridiculous stories of real people proposing in very bizarre ways this episode is for you—I laughed so many times!
If you grew up and have been part of one political party your whole life and then have made a shift in the past couple of years, the ladies of Pantsuit Politics interviewed Laura Tremaine on April 13th about her experience leaving the republican party in the last few years after being a die hard life long republican. It’s not a hugely political episode, but it was a fantastic conversation about leaving anything you once held dear—a church, a marriage, a school, a political party or a way of seeing the world. She talked about grief, how it’s so hard to say “I don’t think I believe this anymore.” I resonated with so many parts of this conversation and recommend it to anyone because at some point in our lives we will all change in some way. And that can be painful.
And on her own podcast 10 Things to Tell You, Laura Tremaine interviewed my absolute favorite person on the internet, Shauna Niequist. I loved everything about this conversation and will listen anytime Shauna is interviewed anywhere.
Finally, in the podcast world I’d recommend an episode of The Bible Binge (a podcast Knox and Jamie from the Popcast also do) on Leaving Church. This episode was such a thoughtful conversation on churches, on how to find one, what questions to ask when you’re looking for one, how you know when it’s time to say goodbye to one and what happens when our beliefs no longer line up with what we’ve always been taught. I found this to be a wonderfully thought provoking conversation full of grace for the fact that churches can be amazing and also painful at times.
BOOK CORNER: Has anyone else read the Louise Penny mystery series? So here’s the thing. I used to hear the word “mystery” and immediately think those weren’t for me. I assumed they’d be super scary, gory, violent or just cause me nightmares. Yet my favorite book podcaster, Anne Bogel, and my favorite writer, Sarah Bessey, have been singing the praises of this series for years now. Neither of these ladies like things that are super scary or gory. I finally heard my best friend talking about what a delight they were and put book one on hold at the library. Oh my goodness these books are my new favorite! Each stars the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and take place in the small village in southern Canada, Three Pines (so small it’s not on maps). I cannot tell you how much I love her writing and the way she gets into the heads of characters to unveil motives. I’ve read the first 4 now (there are 17 so far) and am so excited to have a new series to dive into. It takes me a few weeks on the library hold list to get each new title so it will take me a bit to get through all 17 but I kind of like having to read just one a month to make them last longer. I would highly recommend if you need a great series for your summer vacation!
This month I also read In a Book Club Far Away by Tif Marcelo which was cute but maybe not life changing and an excellent new release called What Comes After by Joanne Tompkins. This book was really good. In the first chapter you learn there is a single dad living next door to a single mom, both with high school boys who have been best friends since they were born. In the opening scenes you learn both boys are now dead, one killed the other and then committed suicide leaving both families shattered in their grief. One night a 16 year old girl arrives at the home of one of the boys, alone, destitute and pregnant. It’s a story of family, friendship, grief, jealousy, and how what we think we know of people isn’t always true. It’s also a bit of a mystery, the adults know this girl has something to do with the boys, but they don’t know what. I flew through this one in one weekend.
The boys and I finished reading aloud Ramona Forever and while we wait for Ramona’s World (the final installment in the series) to come in to the library for us we’re reading aloud Flora and Ulysses. They haven’t watched the movie on Disney Plus yet, but we definitely will after the book! Other books I have been working on this month include two non-fiction books, one on Co-Dependency in relationships and one called The Preacher’s Wife by Kate Bowler, a fascinating look at the history of female Christian celebrities in an environment that typically says women shouldn’t preach or have authority over men.
That’s it for this month! I’d love to hear from you, what has made this month pretty fantastic in your corner of the world?
