It's Been Real, April

I'm trying to get better at not taking forever to write a blog post, so I told myself tonight after Nate left for work, I would sit down and crank out a blog post in an hour. The problem with that has been I keep hearing noise in the baseball game on tv, so I keep running out to the living room to see what's going on and Daniel Descalso just hit a triple and the Dbacks are now in the lead. Plus, one of my guilty pleasures is to cruise Dodgers twitter whenever they're losing and see all the LA fans melt down. I hate to use the word "fun" to describe it, buuuuuuut it's kind of fun (don't hate me Fleishman's, if you're reading this). So it's been well over an hour and so far all I have to show for this blog post is a folder full of photos I pulled and this paragraph. So I'm off to a good start, obvi.

So it's been a month since I last blogged and that's because April was an interesting month. There were high highs, and low lows. I had a lot of fun, but also cried a lot of tears. I picked out anniversary cards and sympathy cards, and I tried to gift the best bouquet of sunflowers in a brighter shade of yellow than the darkness of grief and the unknown. We celebrated birthdays - the beginning of life, but also the passing of life. I watched Nate carry the casket of one his best friends, and saw him grieve.

There were tears in April, but also laughter.

We took my in-laws out to the Angry Crab for my MIL's birthday.

Sherri ordered a bag of mussels (the seafood kind, not the human kind - this is the Angry Crab, not the black market mmk) and Carl ordered gator nuggets that surprisingly, were very tasty. Try as we may, we couldn't get Carl or Nate to wear the bibs. The bib is part of the Angry Crab experience if you ask me. Men.

Nate and I saw nine years of marriage come and go. NINE. Don't ask me how that happened I don't have a good answer for you.

I saw the Ocean in April.

It had been a while for the ocean and me. I came, I saw, I played a little air hockey on the Santa Monica Pier and enjoyed the peace and serenity brought to us by the sweaty, shirtless, over-tanned dude on the boardwalk performing what seemed to be a variety of jazzercise numbers to 80s one-hit wonders songs being played through a loud speaker.

We also made a stop at Dodgers Stadium. It had been a while since I'd been there too but contrarily, has in fact not been a while since I've watched the Dbacks beat the Dodgers. That happens often this year and it was just as enjoyable an experience watching it in real life, as it is on tv.

Sorry, I'll stop with the shit talking. I'm not a good shit talker. Actually the truth is I just can dish it out but I can't take it. Keepin' it real on that one.

K sorry I'm really done now.

I made my first visit of the year to Chase Field in April. Sarah and I waited in line for the Archie Bradley bobble head on a giveaway night. We love giveaways. And we love Archie. And we also don't mind standing in line for a high-demand bobble in April vs. the middle of July so thanks for lookin' out, Dbacks.

April was also the first camping trip of the year and a good one it was. It came at the perfect time; after a long month of riding an emotional rollercoaster we loaded up the boat, the side by side, and the dogs and drove north.

One of my favorite parts of the weekend was both the dogs, and my niece and nephew got to take rides in the side by side for the first time.

I am happy to report that all children and all animals thoroughly enjoyed the side by side and no one tried to jump out (lookin' at you, Maycee and Gunther).

My nephew Noah is having more fun than he looks, his helmet just squishes his cheeks together which is both adorable and also kind of funny, but I know he's smiling on the inside. 

Also, I need to share the following photo sequence with you. Noah had a shirt on that said "Ladies, I'm single" and I said "Noah I like your shirt can you show it me?" And this is what I got:

If that doesn't beam you up and carry you through the whole month of May on a cloud I dunno what will.

April was good and bad. It was warm. It was eventful. 2018 keeps rolling on.