~ Masons ~: From Tricks to a reTreat

This post will be a bit on the wordy side, as I try to capture all the happenings both with pics and without, so be warned! :)

Last month began with lots of silliness, as Steve and I love doing some April Fool's Day practical joking with our girls. Maelee got yogurt on her toothbrush in the morning, a plastic toy egg in her lunch box, Lilee surprised me with her hairdo, and Steve had all sorts of fun with Parker...

Breakfast shenanigans

Not part of April Fools, but more yogurt shenanigans none-the-less.:)

No foolin' here either!

Here we go- look at me, mommy!

Poor cat.

After all that tomfoolery, Steve and I got to enjoy our monthly "dinner club" that night at some friend's home from our church. Their cat was happy to join in behind me. :) We've been rotating since January and have loved making friendships through food. We're planning to host next month- should be fun!

It was a weekend off to a big start as the next morning, we decided to enjoy our proximity to D.C. by taking in the Air & Space Museum! We originally intended to go to the zoo, but the forecast suggested otherwise. Apparently, everyone had the same idea as we waited over an hour just to get in!!! And of course, there ended up being not a drop from the sky... sigh. But given Lilee's love of the moon, it was a great choice. And Maelee especially loved all the airplanes and was super excited to hear about Too-daddy's flying experience as we saw various fighter jets!

Her expression says it all.

With my mom at her Potomac Harmony Chorus' competition down in North Carolina for the weekend (where they won several awards- yay!!!), we were happy to have Pop-Pop over for dinner that evening.

The girls loved their dinner guest. :)

Then more weekday fun with Chloe!

Fun with Logan!

And fun with that little imagination... :)

I came into the kitchen to discover Lilee had gotten blankets and pillows (i.e. toy oven mitts) for the dolls, then laid down next to them.

The 2nd weekend of the month, Steve and I got to take turns attending an awesome Fri/Sat "Empowered to Connect" live webinar, in preparation for our adoption. A lot of the information from our January training was presented again, which served as excellent reminders and encouragement. And we loved that there were several other families from our church there! We are in the very beginning of what will be a very long, demanding process, but we are excited for what God has placed in our hearts and the clarity He continues to provide. Our big application is almost complete! So we are excited to move forward once we get that submitted.

After I got back from Friday's training, I had the treat of seeing dear friends from NYC, Nate & Lauren, as Nate had a conference in D.C. They came over for pizza and we loved our time reconnecting and catching up. How we miss this sweet couple!

Couple more sweet Lilee shots...

Looking for the moon!

My little helper...

I had apparently left the scrubber a little too close to the

edge of the counter and found her washing the already clean cups :)

With Maelee's birthday falling on the Friday of our church retreat in West Virginia, we held her party the weekend before. As she really wanted a "tea party," we decided to have it at my parent's place, which would serve as a much "fancier" back drop than our place and my mom was gracious to pull out all the stops with her beautiful crystal. So, it wasn't really the place for Lilee... but she spent some time with daddy at the playground across the street. I'll save more of the birthday details for a post of its own but here's a sweet pic of Lilee having fun of her own!

With friends Nam & Sana (who used to live in our building in NY!) who live in Arlington- we met them in Old Town for dinner after the birthday party. Busy, but super fun day!

And I don't have a picture of this, but since this blog serves as a little "memory journal" for us, I can't forget to mention the other major event of that busy day! As I was finishing clean-up at my folks, Steve headed back home to put the girls to bed. Given our new fascination and deeper love of space (thanks, Lilee!), Steve has really started to learn more about that big, black expanse and as he happened to look at the stars with the girls, he noticed one of the brightest lights slowly moving across the sky! Low and behold, it was the International Space Station! Then we saw it again a few nights later! So surreal. Thus, it shouldn't come as much surprise that we ordered a telescope a couple days later... :)

Birthday celebration weekend continued the next day with Laney's 6th birthday celebration, Maelee's best friend from Pre-K! Her folks generously took these four girls to the National Harbor for pizza, ice cream, and Build-a-Bears! Needless to say, she had an awesome time.

The arrival of the telescope!

Happy girls.

I didn't get any pics of our first telescope experience, but we had a clear night the day it arrived (and have barely had any since! Sigh...) and we were amazed at the details we could see on the moon. It was incredible. And Steve realized not only could we easily see Jupiter, but we could see four of it's moons!!! Pretty phenomenal. We were pleasantly surprised at how affordable that piece of equipment was, and quickly found it was money very well spent!

As I mentioned before, Maelee's bday pics will come in a future post (hopefully not too far behind!), but we arrived at the beautiful Capon Springs resort right on the border of the lovely West Virginia on the night of her birthday to rainy weather but cheery spirits. She happily told everyone she saw that it was her special day and we took in some toasty marshmallows, despite it being hours past bedtimes. We were placed in a building filled with more families from our church and the parents sat out on the patios and balconies into the wee hours of the night while the kiddos slept inside. And Steve loved showing off the views from our telescope to anyone who was interested. :) It was a wonderful weekend filled with encouraging talks, great music, and mostly, great conversation.

Ending the day on a sweet note!

Despite getting WAY less sleep than usual, the girls woke in good spirits and enjoyed the pancake breakfast Sat morning.

Steve was sweet to go on full-time daddy duty for most of the afternoon while I took in a talk on hospitality and a ladies' coffee. He took the girls fishing with equipment he had since childhood and they were thrilled to catch a fish with the fishing pole and a frog with Maelee's net! :)

A bullfrog in the pond then a cute little frog in the grass by the playground...

She was a happy girl!

The girls also got some fun playground time while daddy had some time "off" for a nice run in the woods.

Running free!

We loved getting to know so many people from our church community so much better through that weekend! And it was great to be so far out, passing the beautiful, green hills and mountains along the way. Nature can sure do a soul some good!