Moving into April. Oh yeah, THIS happened.

April is always an incredibly busy month with spring break, Easter and Jake's birthday. This year was no exception. The first week was filled with 2nd trimester award assemblies and I attended a 3-day long training session to help me better serve students who are struggling with reading. It was both eye-opening and exhausting and by the first Friday of the month, this is what I looked like:

Talk about keeping it real!



But amid all the day-to-day activities, I was so, so, so happy to be able to take the time to see THE Laura Case and family while they were out visiting family. In my book, Laura is the original blogger/internet friend. She is the reason I started my blog and connected with so many other moms from our May 06 birth club, many of whom I have since met in person (remember Vegas??) and talk to on a regular basis.  I am so grateful to her for showing me how to use technology to create a personal/family journal and make it into a yearly keepsake AND for proving to me that my internet friends were even better in real life.

We took them to our favorite place, Joshua Tree National Park, which I knew Laura would love photographing. Their timing could not have been better as the spring wildflowers were in full bloom. Since it was our first hike of the spring, I focused on taking photos of all the beautiful colors of the desert.









I left most of the portrait-taking up to Laura and you can see what she captured here:

http://jonandlaura.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-joshua-tree-and-az-legs-of-trip.html

But I did get a picture of the kids all together. Her two boys Nate and Alex got along great with Jake and Jadyn. They hadn't seen each other for years but they got along like they were long lost friends:





And of course, it isn't real unless you get a picture of it so here is the shot proving we met up:



While it was a whirlwind afternoon visit, we packed a lot into the time we had. After having boasted about Joshua Tree to Laura on several occasions, it was nice to have our families together exploring our favorite trail and showing them the beauty of the desert.