A few pics from April

Hey! Yep, I'm still alive ;) We've been pretty busy lately but I was still at a loss as to what to blog about. So here's the first of several posts giving the quick view of the happenings here. :)
It was decided toward the end of March/beginning of April that we would start Pizza Night again but, instead of doing it every Friday like we did last year, we're doing it about once a month. The first of the season was scheduled for April 2nd (which "just happened" to be Dad's birthday!). We had a pretty big crowd, including some folks who'd never been before.

Eating and talking...

And more eating and talking...

And more, of course ;)

And then, of course, the younger kids convinced a substantial group to go outside to play "Capture the Flag." Unfortunately, that never happened. Instead we played "Sardines" during which several more of the "older kids" joined us. Then, as the majority of the people still here all enjoy dancing we added that the evening's activities... despite the mud in our yard which made it a bit harder to stay afoot.



Next morning we all (including Luke, an overnight guest) piled into the van and went to introduce him to some of our favorite places in Joplin. Yes, that castle really is here though we'd never really found it before, we'd just been able to see it from a bridge a ways away. This time we were able to get almost right beneath it!!!

Several months ago some of us kids and Derek had discovered this little cave. We couldn't see how far back it went at the time because we didn't have flashlights or anything so when Luke was here we decided to explore!

The only bat we found in the cave. We called it the "lonely, unsocialized, homeschooler bat" :)

Me with my beautiful sisters!

"See, it's not that far down!"

"Oh yeah?!"

Luke... and Luke at the Falls



Mister Ben

And Daniel :)

So there you have a few pictures from that first weekend in April! Stay tuned for some more pictures from the last few weekends!