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The girls and I again had fun at the Legos with Dad event at their school, as we have the past couple of years.

Mother’s Day was a busy one. It started with going to the 9:30 service at church where the girls choirs were singing.

Leah sang with the Cherub Choir for the last time on Mother's Day. When choirs resume in the fall, she'll be moving up to join Molly and the other big kids. Apologies for losing her in the shot for much of the video. It’s tough to get a good angle on these.

Next up was Molly’s choir.

Then I led kid’s worship at 11:00 before heading to East Moon Asian Bistro for a fancy sushi lunch (the girls had Salmon Teriyaki) with the four of us and Grams.

Eventually, we made it home so Jen could open her presents.

With a little bit warmer weather at the beginning of May, we were able to get out on the tennis court as a family. Yes, even Jen joined us, and we all had a great time.

Molly had her spring concert for both chorus and orchestra, and she did great. Here she is all dressed up for her spring concert.

Molly’s loved being in chorus this year. They do such fun songs, as you can see here.

I’m still so impressed with how well the Advanced Orchestra (4th and 5th graders) at school plays. They’ve come a long way, and are performing some complicated and long pieces now. Molly was excited that someone got to even play a solo this time, and she did a great job at the front of the viola section.

And pay attention to Molly’s feet in the second song. I think she needs to learn to sit forward enough so her feet touch the ground.

Great job, Molly!

Leah continues to be a serious tennis player. And now that it’s warm, she can dress the part as well. Leah got a couple pair of high socks at Easter, and now she wants to wear them whenever she plays tennis, just like Bethany Mattek-Sands.

I posted that picture to Twitter back when I took it and was surprised to get a response for Leah from Bethany herself!

ADORABLE!! Tell Leah she is looking fabulous and I approve #HighSocks https://t.co/9MDnOhpRvI

— Bethanie MattekSands (@BMATTEK) April 30, 2017

Here are a few action shots of Leah at her lesson.

Back in April, Molly tested for her purple belt in karate. Here she is doing a kata.

And sparring.

She did it! Congratulations, Molly!

Molly was done with her green belt.

For Staff Appreciation Week (way back in April) at the girls’ school, families were asked to “adopt” a staff member. The girls chose one of the GT teachers and worked together with Jen to make a poster for the classroom door.

Molly participated in the county-wide Rube Goldberg machine competition this school year. Her team was called the Mind Masters, and they had to build a complicated Rube Goldberg machine to raise a banner.

It took many weeks of work designing and building, and quite a few runs to get it to actually work, but they did it.

The before picture.

And the after picture.

We made sure to get back home from our trip down south in time for Holy Week activities. Grams was singing with the choir in the Good Friday service, and we all got to go (Aunt EA joined us as well). And then, of course, there was Easter.

Like last year, I led music at the sunrise service at church. The weather was much nicer this year, though still just as early. And my family again passed on joining me that early.

After a lovely service, I got home as the rest of my family was getting up - just in time to check if the Easter Bunny had struck again.

Leah likes to do Sudoku puzzles with me, but now she’s got her own book of them.

The girls each got two pairs of tall fun socks. Leah especially loves them, and wants to wear them as much as she can.

There wasn’t time to sit around with these fun treats, though. In addition to leading music at the sunrise service, I also led music at the 11:00 service. So, I needed to be at the church at 9:30 to rehearse for that service. And I wasn’t alone.

We decided to turn the solo that each girl had done in the past month into a duet for the both of them. They did a fantastic job. And yes, that's me singing without a guitar in front of me (feels really weird).

After church, we headed back to Grams’s house for some lunch and family time. We were all excited to see everyone, though I think Charlie was most excited to see Beau.

Here we all are.

The girls then got to change out of their dresses and play. They were excited to play with the new bubble wands the Easter Bunny brought them. Charlie seemed less sure about the bubbles.

Happy Easter!

Clemson is only a couple hours away from Charlotte, so we thought we’d add some extra fun to the trip by stopping off at Carowinds amusement park for a day on our way home. Jen and I had actually been to Carowinds once before on our honeymoon. Sadly, this was before I took pictures of everything, so I don’t have pictures of us at the park.

We left Clemson early so we could get to the park relatively close to when it opened. We were fortunate to have perfect weather for the day.

Carowinds is on the boarder between South Carolina and North Carolina, so the girls made sure to spend some time in both.

We first headed to Planet Snoopy, the area of the park aimed at smaller kids. Our first ride was Snoopy's Flying Ace Aerial Chase, a fun little roller coaster for the whole family. Sadly, the restraints block you from seeing Leah next to me.

Snoopy was everywhere in the park.

Our second ride was Snoopy’s Flying Ace Balloon Race. Jen doesn’t handle these rides well, so I hopped on with the girls.

I volunteered to go backwards so the girls could face forwards. This turned out to be a bad decision, leaving me queasy. I guess I can’t handle these as well as I thought. Thankfully, Jen had extra Dramamine for me.

The girls then rode some rides by themselves while I recovered.

Snoopy vs. Red Baron

Woodstock Gliders

At that point I was ready to try again. We rode the Woodstock Express, a fun family-friendly wooden roller coaster (I love wooden coasters). It was great.

We got lunch at Chick-fil-A. Yes, they have Chick-fil-A in the park. We were very happy with that, despite the fact that the prices were jacked up like most food service inside amusement parks.

We did Boo Blasters on Boo Hill, in which you ride in slow cars with little toy guns and shoot ghosts, racking up points. We tried to do several other rides (e.g. Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare), but they were closed.

The girls both wanted to ride the Do-Si-Do, but were both too short to ride without a parent. So, Jen and I both got to ride it. Jen looks excited here before things got really going.

I think Molly liked this ride.

Jen even put her arms up for a bit (though that didn’t last long).

The Ricochet was a mouse coaster with four people per car - perfect for our family. And even better was that everyone was tall enough to ride it.

There were a lot of quick turns on this one.

Molly and I then road the Carolina Goldrusher, a mine train coaster which was fun. Leah could have handled it as well, but was not tall enough to ride. Sadly, that was the story for much of the park. Leah was too short for many rides (requiring at least 48 inches), and Molly was too short for a lot as well (requiring at least 54 inches). The Planet Snoopy area is aimed at little kids, but I was surprised how much of the rest of the park was inaccessible to our (admittedly short) 7 and 10 year olds.

Because of that, we then headed back to Planet Snoopy to ride Snoopy's Flying Ace Aerial Chase and the Woodstock Express again. They were our favorite rides from the kids area, and we enjoyed riding them again to finish our day.

The girls always want to buy a toy when we go places, and we usually refuse. We figured getting them a memento from the trip wouldn’t be awful, so they each got a Snoopy plush on our way out.

We then headed out to get some dinner and end at our hotel for some much needed rest before driving home the next day.