April embodied all the worst traits of Northern Michigan, with a few spots of bright sunshine and beautiful weather. I think it’s actually much worse to see-saw back and forth between warm sunny days and snowy days, because after you get a taste of spring it’s much harder to go back to snow.

Okay, grumblings about the weather aside, I think our kid started being a ton more fun this month and it’s been really entertaining to watch him take in the world…and then take on his world. He’s conquered climbing and now nothing is safe.

But maybe we should start from the beginning.

We have been in desperate need of a vacation. I started getting very itchy feet around the beginning of March. However, we’ve also had a couple “errands” to run in the Carolinas, and we were hoping to combine those. So we didn’t book anything, because we were waiting for those plans to come to fruition. We did a lot of dreaming though, especially while it snowed a couple times in the first week of April.

In the meantime, we tried to ease our lives at home. We bought a dishwasher! I cannot believe what an amazing improvement that has been. There’s just no good time to do dishes, when Atlas is awake he needs supervision and when he’s asleep the dishes make too much noise. So it was a constant problem, until we bought the world’s quietest dishwasher. Life-changing! (Side note: WHAT HAS MY LIFE BECOME?!)

We’ve been socially isolated (bad weather + work-from-home is not a good combo), and Kyle’s been itching to get take our VW bus for a ride. When our friends said they would be outside boiling sap down into maple syrup, we jumped at the chance to go for a drive and see the process. This is it, this is the whole process:

I joked that the big kids did big kid science (learning about garter snakes, since there seems to be a nest of them nearby) and our little baby did little baby science (feeling the texture of this tree bark!). It was cute.

We have a small public access at the lake near us, and we walk there whenever the weather allows. On the 13th, the lake was still frozen solid. On the 15th, we went for a drive to mollify a cranky baby, because the weather was too crappy to take a walk. We were shocked to see the whole lake was open water! All except the north end, where the last remnants of ice were piling up due to a very strong wind. It was so strong I could hardly breathe while taking this photo!

We celebrated baby’s first Easter with my parents. We really lucked out with these bunny ears, because just a few days later that Atlas learned how to take hats off and now he won’t wear anything on his head. Also peep that carrot shirt, what a great Easter outfit!

It snowed the day before Easter and the day after. My poor daffodils got buried. At least, I think they’re daffodils. They still haven’t blossomed. There are so many spring flowers coming up in the flower beds here! We’ve never seen this property in the spring, so everything that pops out of the ground is a surprise!

Another sunny day, warm enough to wear a tank top!

On April 26, more snow. We were pretty depressed about that turn of events. On a happier note, the gas company arrived to extend the natural gas line to our house that day!

The deer are looking pretty scraggly right now, but we’ve seen several of them. This is the first one we’ve seen in our backyard recently!

More walks to the lake with the kid.

Finally, we ended the month at the Blessing of the Jeeps. Well, we missed most of it (they weren’t even taking admission anymore by the time we arrived). But the Jeep shenanigans were in full force.

There was a bitterly cold wind, and we were about to leave, but we managed to find a warmer spot (and a blanket!) and got distracted by all the Jeeps crawling up rocks and sand dunes and getting stuck and generally breaking expensive things for fun. There was always someone to watch, the course was busy!

We had some fun this month, but it was very challenging to keep morale up. The cold weather dragged on and on, and we were hoping to plan a vacation but the timing never quite worked out. The landscape is still drab and gray, and the sun is a rare sight. While the forecast looks much nicer, we need a break from these four walls. It’s non-optional at this point. Big things to come in May!