Catching Up

Did you know that I have a blog? Yep....but apparently I've forgotten that I have a blog from the looks of it. Did you know that it's almost the middle of April? How did that happen? I guess it's time to catch up. Might as well start with the April pictures of the day.

April 1st - Molly lounging in the open window. The weather has been so nice.


April 2nd. A lava lamp night light in Billy's room. I found it when I was doing some spring cleaning. Part of my reason for not blogging....had to find the floor in Billy's room.


April 3rd - a blue scilla blooming in my mom's yard taken on Easter weekend. Beautiful, delicate little flowers scattered around the yard.

April 4th - Easter morning sky at the farm. The picture didn't quite capture how beautiful the clouds really were.

April 5th - a silly female duck in our front yard. We don't live on a pond. I took the picture through the screen of an upstairs window. Quack.

April 6th - the new rug in our basement. Another reason for not blogging...we've been cleaning and re-organizing the basement. It's about half done, I ran out of steam.

April 7th - Bright blue sky and red buds...spring has sprung. Last week the boys were on spring break, we mostly hung out around here. Another reason that I didn't get much blogging done.

April 8th - we had a very sweet little visitor last week. Baby Avery and my niece Stephanie came and spent part of the afternoon with us. What a treat! She was cute before, she's even cuter now. Such blue eyes! She's going to give her daddy some sleepless nights when she's about 16 and the boys are calling. :-)

April 9th - Molly napping on an unmade bed.

April 10th - Billy was excited to have his trampoline set up after the long winter. How did he get it full of leaves so fast??

April 11th - the bluebirds were busy at the farm on Sunday...such a beautiful bird.

April 12th - a confused chickadee in my back yard....sitting on top of a shepard's hook pole that holds one of the bird feeders.

With that I think we're all caught up. Spring break is done, things should get back to normal....and maybe I won't get so far behind. It feels like I've been busy, but I don't know what I've been doing. When I feel that way I always think of my old neighbor Martha....she would sweetly say...."I sure am busy, but I think it's because I move so slow!" So true.

Easter Eggs in a Nest

We're scurrying around today getting ready to celebrate Easter, but I wanted to take a couple of minutes and share a cute recipe today. I found it on The Pioneer Woman's Tasty Kitchen Blog. The Tasty Kitchen blog is a fun place to find recipes. This one is called "Easy Easter Egg Bird Nests". And they are easy, but messy, to make. You can head over there for the full recipe, but the basic ingredients are Chocolate chips, Almond Bark, peanut butter, Chow Mien noodles and malted Milk Ball eggs.

You melt it and mix it and drop them onto wax paper, then add the eggs and voila, Easter Egg Nests. Cute and tasty....and fun to share for Easter.

On a different note, my friend Tonya has started a new blog. One of her jobs is working for the Minnesota Twins baseball team. She is planning on sharing stories about the Twins and their first season at the brand new Target Field. I made the header for her. If you are a baseball fan, check out her blog...I think you'll like it! It's at http://www.twinstidbits.blogspot.com/

Now, back to scurrying around and trying to figure out what everyone is going to wear tomorrow! Have a wonderful Easter.

Out Front and Molly

The view out front hasn't changed very much, but the weather sure has been unseasonably nice! Upper 70's both yesterday and today. It's been warm and dry...so dry that the flood warnings have changed into fire danger warnings. Crazy. Things are trying to get green...a little rain and I think things will take off! A month ago it was boots....today it's bare toes.

The delphiniums are coming up. It would be nice if this weather would stay, but it's supposed to start turning tomorrow.

For now, Molly has been enjoying the warm breeze coming through the opened windows. She sits, she looks, she naps, and then she looks some more.

Molly....what do you see out there??

....oh, it's a red bird in the tree. Hello mister cardinal.

Molly....hey cat...you can't get that bird, there is a screen between you!

Molly, I have some more bad news for you....you know that nice opened window you are sitting in??

Tomorrow it's going to be closed! No more window sitting for you....

.....NOOOOO! Hey cat, no crying....and don't yell at me, blame the weather guy! Sheesh.

Girls Night Out

There was a lot of excitement in the air...and on Facebook. A group of us were going on a "Girls Night Out". Our destination was "The Melting Pot" in downtown Mpls. for an evening called "Flowered Frocks and Flip Flops". It was a fund raiser at a fondue style restaurant to provide stuffed bears for hospitalized children.

I'll start by saying that most of the girls are quite a bit younger than me....and a bit more energetic. There were plans of pedicures and shopping and new dresses and...whew. I decided that I could maybe at least paint my toe nails. I did early in the afternoon on Monday. Monday night we played volleyball. I had a feeling my pedicure wasn't going to look so good when I went to take off my shoes and my socks were stuck to my big toes. I wasn't cut out for this. Guess I'll be wearing closed toe sandals. Then there was the what to wear dilemma. I'm too cheap to buy something new for a night out. But then I started thinking about how young most of them are, and how fashionable, and how out of place I was. Oh well, I dug in my closet, and dug in some of my stored away summer clothes and found something that would do.

The weather has been crazy warm in the 70's...I didn't think I'd need to be finding summer clothes for March! When I was looking for something to wear I remembered something that had happened back when I was in my early 20's. I worked with a gal that was about 10 years older than me. She had been losing weight, she was so excited to fit into some of her older clothes...one day she came into work wearing a sundress that was pretty out dated. I remember thinking "I'm not even old enough to have anything that out of style!" Not nice, I know, but I was young and thought I was in the know about fashion. 25 years and a couple of kids later and I've found out that I don't know anything. But it made me nervous all over again about the big night out.

I didn't need to be. Most of these gals are good friends, a couple I hadn't met before but they were nice and fun too. It was a good evening. Here is most of the crew...taken with my camera. A couple of them ducked out of the picture....

...but that's ok....I snagged this one from facebook. It's like those "what's different" puzzles. Can you see what's different?? :-)

The fondue place was fun. The only down side was that they divided the 11 of us into two groups. The tables were plugged into outlets in the floor and they were not moving! Our first course was cheese fondue. One was a spicy Mexican kind, the other was milder. I don't remember which ones we ended up with....the margarita's were 1/2 price. We had breads, chips, veggies and apples to dip in the cheese. It was gone in a hurry!

The next course was cooked in boiling broth....I had never had that, we've always used oil. This was so much healthier! Steak, chicken, shrimp, veggies, and even pot stickers. Yum. The pot stickers got a little mushy though.

Dessert was chocolate fondue. This one is the ying yang, with white and dark chocolate. We dipped rice krispie bars, cheese cake, other cake and strawberries. Double yum.

When they first brought the dessert out they caught one of them on fire and we toasted marshmallows. The flames don't show in my picture. I think it was during the marshmallow roasting that the suggestion of a girls weekend at the cabin came up. Hmmm....could be fun....
especially if someone brings the marshmallows!

In the end, the pedicures didn't matter, the outfits didn't matter....the only thing that mattered was getting out and having a nice evening with a bunch of fun women....and you can't go wrong when chocolate fondue is involved!

Feeling Old

Today was the Women's State Parks and Rec volleyball tournament. It was really fun to play, but right now I'm feeling sort of old. And tired. Our team didn't do very well, but it was still a lot of fun. A couple of the gals are my age, the others quite a bit younger, and one of the gals that is my age has a daughter that played with us. Two generations playing together means that some of us are old. I'm mostly joking around, but I'll admit it takes a little longer to bounce back afterwards. Soaking in the tub never felt so good. And yes, my feet felt as ugly as they look.

Speaking of old, one of my favorite people sent me an email about old people that had me laughing out loud. Thanks Dawn! It was funny because all of it was true. Here it is:

Games for Old People
1. Sag, you're It.
2. Hide and go pee.
3. 20 questions shouted into your good ear.
4. Kick the bucket
5. Red Rover, Red Rover, the nurse says Bend Over.
6. Musical recliners.
7. Simon says something incoherent.
8. Pin the Toupee on the bald guy

OLD IS WHEN:
1. Going bra-less pulls all the wrinkles out of your face.
2. You don't care where your spouse goes, just as long as you don't have to go along.
3. Getting a little action means you don't need fiber today.
4. Getting lucky means you find your car in the parking lot.
5. An all-nighter means not getting up to pee!

Yep...too easy to relate to! On another note....our little Billy has his permit now and drove us to Lion's Tap for supper. I think I sprouted another gray hair just thinking about it! Oye.
Have a Happy Weekend!

Random Stuff

There isn't anything big happening around here, but there are a lot of little things. So I thought I'd do a little post on some random stuff.

Random stuff # 1. Brian is a junior this year. He hasn't made any big decisions about what he wants to do after High School, but will be going to college somewhere. After he took his PSAT test late last fall he started to get emails and then all of these college informational mailings. Ads I guess. It's crazy. There are so many that we haven't even started looking at them yet. I suppose we better get on that. It's a little overwhelming to think about.

Random Stuff # 2. Billy has completed his drivers training, passed his test and now just has to have his eyes examined to get his permit. I think I should have my head examined for allowing it. Not really, he's a good kid...he's just growing up too fast.

Random Stuff # 3 . I'm playing in a volleyball tournament tomorrow. We play at 9:10 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and 12:30. Depending on how we do in the pool we could be playing well into the afternoon. The good news is that it's a one day tournament, I'm afraid that being able to get out of bed on Sunday might be a problem. Oh...and I designed the shirts. :-)

Random Stuff # 4. A few weeks ago, at a volleyball match, I said something to one of the opposing players that I shouldn't have said. I knew that I needed to apologize, but didn't get a chance to until last night. I sucked it up and said that I was sorry, no excuses. He was very gracious. All was good. Then after the match, a gal from the Monday night league came up to me and apologized for the way one of her team mates had acted at that match. It was very kind of her, I tried to be as gracious as the man I apologized to was. Very strange that harsh words were exchanged at all, stranger that one was by me and a separate one was directed towards me. But very nice that apologies were made and all is well. It's supposed to be for fun after all!

Random Stuff # 5. I've been battling my weight for a while, finally the scale is inching down. Walking more and watching what I'm eating is actually working. It doesn't sound that hard, but sometimes it's impossible. Sheesh. Anyway, isn't it funny how much better a number on the scale can look when you're on your way down instead of moving up?

Random Stuff # 6. One of my friends is thinking of starting a cool blog. I offered to help make the header for it. While we were emailing back and forth, I got an email from blogger announcing their new blog templates. Cool timing huh? I've been planning on changing this blog a little bit, I'm glad that I waited.

Random Stuff # 7. This is Molly. She likes to sleep on which ever unmade bed she can find. She has a couple of options...hmm. One of the advantages of working from home means that I can find the cat, give her a shake and say "wake up cat!" I'm just getting even for all of those times she wakes me up at night. She doesn't like it much....

She usually gives me the crabby cat look, then starts grooming herself. Then I pet her in which ever spot she's just groomed, so she has to start over. I just want to show her what it would have been like if she had kids.

When she's not sleeping, she's looking outside. I'm not sure what she's thinking about....it looks serious though. Maybe she's planning on some sort of revenge. Hmmm...I'm getting an uneasy feeling about this...

...maybe it would be better if I just let sleeping cats lie. Have a happy Weekend!

Thinking About Flowers

I've been thinking about flowers, and green grass, and sunshine, and warm days. Spring keeps teasing us this year, unusually warm one day, cold the next. It makes me wonder where I'm at. Lost. Confused. Cold. In honor of my confusion I think I'll spare you and stick to sharing some song lyrics today. It's one of my favorite Greg Brown songs. Most Greg Brown songs are my favorite...it depends which one is playing. But today, this one is my favorite.

"You Are A Flower"

Your smile makes me smile

I can always see your face

You help me make it through every day

You're with me every place

You left so much here with us

Your love is all around

Your children's children will smile that same smile

and say "oh look what I have found"

You are a flower

shining for a while

You are a flower

What a life, what a woman, what a smile.

And I will laugh and I will sing

and I will go on through

To let this love just come on out

that's what I learned from you

Your heart went out to everything

a field of stones, a field of flowers

and when we form that magic ring

we feel your hand in ours

You are a flower
shining for a while
You are a flower
What a life, what a woman, what a smile.