April Mendez News

Hey all. This month's post is going to be a pictorial quick post.

Spring came to Fairhope early, and so did the tulips. . .

Playing in Papa Joe's yard.

 And Mardi Gras! This is the afternoon parade in Perdido Beach.

And this is just a cute picture.

 And more cuteness.

And guess who we made this for!

Here we are at Arts & Crafts.

And our girls being our girls, we spent a lot of time at playgrounds.

Do you think someone is having a good time?

 (This is the look of pure joy that is so hard to capture on film!)

Here we are feeding the ducks. We had to climb on the bridge because the geese were freaking out Lily.

 At the Bay.

 The girls' new favorite thing to do is ride their bikes, so we did that a lot. And they have gotten so good on them!

 

At the bouncy house place. Another preschooler favorite.

And Mommy's favorite because it wears them out.

 We also went to the Gulf Shores Zoo. Don't ask me what Joel is doing here because I don't know. I really hope he wasn't feeding them the animal food because it looked like dog food. It certainly looks like it in this picture though!

Joel decided to kiss a donkey. Not sure what that was about.

And here we are on the "Bunny Train Ride" at Wales West.

 Aaah, the elusive perfect family picture, where we all look at the camera at the same time, with our eyes open, and smiling. As you can see, it didn't happen that day. (This was the best of the lot.)

 My sweetie.

 Finding Easter Eggs.

 Since we went on a Sunday afternoon, no one else was there. The conductor let Abby blow the whistle.

And just to end it all, here is the best picture of my two sweethearts.



So, Joel has left and is back in Afghanistan. The girls and I are trying to re-adapt back to "normal" life, and it's been quite rough on the girls (well, Mommy too. But I can deal.) They just miss their Daddy a bunch. We're trying to keep busy with my work, the girls' preschool, church, ballet for Abby, Easter preparations, and Lily's potty training. I've completely resorted to bribery, and when I've picked a good enough bribe, Lily agrees to use the potty. Otherwise she just refuses to go at all, which makes it really important that I pick a good bribe! So far, we've used M&Ms, ice cream, jelly beans, and painting her fingernails. Right now we're on Little Debbie cakes. Soon though, we'll be doing the hard core tossing all the pull-ups. I don't really look forward to that battle.

So, that's the Mendez news! I'm very sorry if I've not been good at getting back with you all, I'm attempting to get better at that!

Love,

Julie, Joel, Abby, Lily