The Casanova Family: April

Hi Everyone,

April is almost over and if not for Coronavirus and working/teaching from home, it would be a pretty nice spring. Grass is getting green, leaves are coming out, and flowers are blooming. We've been spending tons of family time together, which is nice. We take lots of family walks and bike rides too. For not really going anywhere, we sure took a lot of pictures!

April Fools Day started with Elsie accidentally leaving her book of schemes out. :) She put red food coloring up our sinks so it looked like blood when you turned them on! They thought she could get away with it, but I wasn't going to let them off that easy...

I covered Elsie's door with wrapping paper (somehow it didn't wake her up)

This was waiting across the hall

And ALL of Owen's clothes disappeared!

Bike rides and walks have become our pastime. A few weeks ago I took the kids over to Kill Creek Park to go for a bike ride. The park that is hardly ever busy was actually pretty busy because everyone is now trying to find ways to get outside.

We had a nice ride and of course the scenery was pretty.

This is pretty typical of our lunches during the week. We try to "walk the loop" which is about 1.5mi.

Owen has been starting to use his bike "off road." He loves it.

Look at her go! Look at that hair!

Family ride a few weeks ago. We did 13.5 miles!

We took Millie for a hike at Big Bull Creek Park. This is one of the mountain bike trails I've ridden. I think we walked about 3.5mi. Millie loves the woods.

We ran across a nest of baby racoons. They sounded like they were missing their Mommy. Maybe she was out scrounging for food?

One day when Sarah was out walking, she and the kids discovered a gigantic dirt lot next to the new middle school. You can't see it from our house because it is hidden. Owen and I decided it was a good place to try out our mountain bikes. Nice soft dirt in case you fall.

It was so windy that Elsie almost took off!

We did Kill Creek again a couple of weeks ago.

Last weekend we did the Mill Creek Streamway. Lots of hills, but it was fun. Also quite crowded.

We've been eating all of our meals at home, so we've been baking things and grilling a lot.

My birthday dinner!

14lbs of pork shoulder. YUM! We ate pulled pork for the next week and shared some with Sarah's parents and we still had to freeze a bunch of it.

We put the pizza oven attachment for the grill to work.

Pulled pork pizza!

Sarah made this all from scratch. It's beef boulonnaise and it was delicious.

Easter happened, but it was weird not going anywhere. Grandma and Grandpa Cox stopped over and we talked while keeping our distance, and we called Grandma Cas, but it just wasn't the same.

My birthday was kind of melancholy. The weather was dreary, but we went for a drive and then decorated the house which helped a lot.

Elsie made confetti poppers. WOOHOO!

Grandma Cas got me a new license plate cover. GO CHIEFS!

Sarah and I celebrated our 16h Wedding Anniversary too. What a weird time it is...but we had a nice Chinese takeout dinner and a nice evening at home with the kiddos.

To celebrate the last day on the pulled pork, we had a Luau. Shredded pork is what they serve at a Luau, but they cook it in the ground. Mine was better :) We had fun. We put on our Hawaiian shirts, played Hawaiian music, and made Hawaiian fruity drinks. We even video called Grandma Cas so she could partake.

In school news, the kids have been getting "some" weekly work from the school, but it only takes them a few hours to do it. So we've been doing other things to keep busy and learn at the same time. They did an egg drop the other day.

Botany 101

Mechanical Engineering

Climatology (he's making a tornado)

Both kiddos have started to have Zoom class meetings. It's nice they get to see their friends and remember some semblance of what their class was like.

And they both made the honor roll (before school shut down).

We have also been playing outside a lot and of course, eating ice cream.

I've never seen a 175ml of hand sanitizer but desperate times...

My desk is in the front room. I had to make some changes after being home a couple of weeks to make it more comfortable. Like getting my keyboard and mouse from work.

WrestleMania was a few weeks ago. Owen likes wrestling, but the rest of us are noobs. It was a two night event so we ordered in on PPV and really played it up. It was fun!