I can’t help but think that Ol’ Mother Nature got March all mixed up.  This has been an amazingly balmy winter.  (Relatively speaking) So when the snow advisories started coming in, I just scoffed.  It’s already Spring, why on earth would we get snow? Besides, everyone knows that the month is supposed to go out like a lamb…even if it did come in that way.

When I glanced out the window this morning, I had to laugh at myself (and mutter under my breath about weathermen being lucky about finally getting it right) I happily watched the fat, fluffy flakes float lazily down from the skies.  I knew there was no chance that they would stick, so I was free to enjoy the snow without worries.

A few hours later, I noticed that the snow was still coming down…and sticking.  You’d think that I would be accustomed to our random snow storms by now…but I’m not.  I have to confess that I still get a little panicky when I see snow sticking.  (And Shaun thinks we will be perfectly happy retiring in a little cabin nestled in the Colorado Mountains…I guess I’ll have to gently break the news to him that I’ve just realized I need to be a snowbird.)

Fortunately, for my sanity the snow has pretty much melted.  Now all I have to do is stay away from all those media sources that insist we could get an accumulation of two inches by morning…and focus on the fact that one week from today I will be in Columbia, SC where it is currently eight-one degrees….

Even though it’s only been a week and a half, it It seems like I haven’t blogged in so long that I’ve nearly forgotten how!  But what a busy time its been…let’s see…KT got her license, we celebrated a birthday an anniversary, St Patrick’s Day and of course,  Easter.  Whew!

So…where to begin? Um…oh…I know, let’s talk about Easter.  The holiday at the end of the week that snuck up on the Easter Bunny.  Did you know that if you go to the store the night before Easter you will find nothing but wiped out shelves and hoards of desperate parents? Yeah, I didn’t know that either…but now I do.  So, I had to get a bit creative.

Like our chocolate bunnies? They remind me of a Halloween costume my mom made me when I was just a wee girl.  They brought back fun memories, so we had matching “baskets”.

(Yes, I know they are cheesy, but they make me giggle!) 

One thing that the stores had plenty of were those little plastic eggs.  Growing up, we only had real eggs.  We would decorate them and Easter Bunny would hide them for us.  So, of course that’s what we did when I had kids of my own.  This worked great until that first year we had dogs.  Apparently dogs like searching for eggs even more than kids do!

This year, KT didn’t want to search for eggs. She said she was “too grown up because she could drive now”.  Then she went on to complain that they knew where all the hiding spots were so it wasn’t any fun.  Hmmm….that girl should know better than to challenge the Easter Bunny…they still haven’t found them all!

We didn’t decorate eggs because our resident vegan was opposed to using unborn chickens in that manner…and besides the rest of us didn’t really want to do it.  Well, except for Mimi.  She needed to keep her traditions.   So, being the inspired mother that I am, I came up with the idea of decorating egg-shaped vegan sugar cookies.  After careful consideration of the taste of a hard-boiled egg against that of  a cookie, Mimi decided that would be alright.  Only she ended up getting sick and not wanting to decorate anything.  Poor Mimi….

All in all, it was a very quiet Easter.  We spent the day all by ourselves (which makes Shaun very happy and me very sad) just hanging out together. (which is always a good thing).

I think we are all special occasioned out now!

Ish.

The ever delightful Mrs. G of Derfwad Manor has featured me today! (And if you aren’t a visitor of Mrs. G you have been missing out)

So go see me HERE.  Except Shaun.  You don’t want to go there..you can go and um…Oh look! Your elekk is hungry…or something.  You better go deal with that…

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Bit O Life

The joys of texting…

The party post is down here, but feel free  to read about our exciting new project!

I’m very pleased to tell you about a new project that I am working on.  First of all, I should introduce you to my partner, Lissa .

OK, for the purists among you, this isn’t really Lissa.  This is my cat, Lucy.  (Isn’t she beautiful?) I don’t really have a photo of Lissa, but as their names both start with the same letter, well…I thought it maybe it would work. 

Anyways…Lissa and I “met” through the SheWhoBlogs group.  (If my sidebar were up to date, you would see the cool little thingy about it.) Lissa was looking for someone that didn’t live near her to do a semi-daily posting of things that are happening in both of our lives at the same time. 

I immediately thought it was a great idea.  I have a camera or two…Seattle is pretty far away from New York… We’ve been spending a lot of time getting to know each other and trying to decide exactly how we want to work this project. 

And the result is a blog called Two Lives

Lissa gets full credit for doing all the techie work and making the blog beautiful.  I just send her a photo and she makes it work.  (She’s amazing!)

Come visit us HERE! Bookmark us and give us lots of bloggy love!

Every once in a while, Shaun will do something unexpectedly wonderful that reminds me why I have kept him for so long.  Something really marvelous such as getting up early to take KT all the way into Seattle for her work at the aquarium and letting me sleep in.  Ah…bliss!

When Shaun came home from his excursion, he proudly announced that he had gotten me a cinnamon roll as a treat.  Now, I’m sure you know what  cinnamon anything is right up there with chocolate and coffee in my Book of Delights.   But, to be perfectly honest, when Shaun stops for treats he goes to a local grocery store which is the one place that we know of that has crullers.  (which Shaun adores) While the crullers are perfect, the cinnamon rolls are rather mediocre. 

To my complete delight, what Shaun brought home was not a grocery store cinnamon roll.  I had no idea where this little bit of perfection had come from…it really didn’t matter.  I was too busy savoring it.  I seriously can’t recall having something this wonderful in all of my life.  It was pure decadence.

When I had completely licked my plate clean (Oh yes I did!) I realized that it did matter to me where the rolls had come from. Not wanting to simply ask Shaun where he had gotten my new favorite treat, I went snooping.  In the trash can. 

I found a box (No, I didn’t lick the inside of it!) that said COBS.  Hmm….how interesting that Shaun would stop in some uptown bakery.  Intrigued, I decided to read the box.  (Oh that delightful aroma…I swear I didn’t lick the inside of  hat box)  It turned out that Cobs is a  Canadian bakery!  Now, my sense of direction is a bit wonky, but  even I can figure out that the Canadian border isn’t on the way home from downtown Seattle!

Ah well…it’s probably best that I don’t know where that decadence came from.  Although I have to admit that I’m going to try to get Shaun to take KT to the aquarium as often as possible…

Welcome to all you party animals!

The gals at 5 minutes for Mom are once again throwing the Ultimate Blog Party! I had so much fun last year that I had to come again this year.

I have to admit that I was a little caught off guard this year though.  (You ever have guests show up at your house unexpectedly when you were wearing your grungy old sweats and the house was a huge mess? No? Um…well, um…me either….)

I’m going to go put on a pot of coffee (You do drink coffee don’t you? This is Seattle, it’s kinda like a rule that you inhale the stuff! I think I’ve got some herbal tea around here somewhere…) While I do that, go ahead and click on some of the tabs at the top of the blog.  The “about us” will tell you all about our family of four.  (Anyone else have teens? And they always talk about the Terrible Twos…huh! Those were a cakewalk!).  The “Why I blog” tab will tell you all why I do this crazy thing called blogging.  

Feel free to snoop around the place, there’s no secrets around here!  Just be careful where you walk so that you don’t step on a cat….goodness knows we have enough critters around here.

Wait! Where are you going? Oh, I’m sorry to hear that you’re so allergic to dogs.  I hope you’ll be back soon! 

I’ve only admitted to a hospital once in my life.  (Nope, I didn’t bother going to a hospital to give birth to my girls…that’s for sissies!) The whole experience was pretty much a blur.  The only thing I really remember about it was a very flirtatious male nurse and a mylar balloon that Shaun had brought me. 

I’ve always thought bringing balloons to sick people was a silly thing to do.  Balloons are for parties and celebrations.  Yet that one balloon floated right up where I could see it, reminding me that I was cherished in a way that the flowers and cards couldn’t.  That balloon was oddly comforting to me.

When I spoke to my dad this afternoon, I asked him to bring my mom a balloon and let her know that I was thinking of her.  I can only hope that she will find a strange comfort in her balloon too.  Dad says that she will be in the hospital for four more days. 

She had been suffering a side effect of the bypass surgery she had done a few years ago.  She’s been to the doctors several times in the last couple years with intense abdominal pain.  It was usually written off as a bladder infection and treated with antibiotics.

Apparently, what she had was what the the surgeon referred to as an internal hernias.  Her intestines were balling up and cutting off the blood supply.  Mom was told that if she hadn’t come in when she had, her problem would most likely have been fatal.  Scary stuff…

Thank you for all of your prayers, thoughts, good-vibes, emails and phone calls.  Although I haven’t even met most of you, all the wonderful support has been oddly comforting just as that balloon was a few years back. 

Thank you again…

Shortly after six this morning, the phone rang.  Assuming it was one of KT’s friends or the lady I carpool with, I just grabbed it up without looking at the caller ID.  (As if my eyes are even capable of focusing that early).  To my surprise, it was my dad.  He wanted to know if he had managed to hold reveille on me.  (Reveille, for those of you that didn’t grow up in a military household, simply means waking you up) He sounded a little disappointed that I was already up.  For some strange reason, he seems to like to wake me up.

Then Dad proceeded to tell me that there was good news and bad news.  He said that the good news was that she was out of surgery and was recovering nicely.  When I started breathing again, I realized that he was telling me that my mom had started having severe abdominal pain after dinner last night.  It had gotten progressively worse as the evening went on. 

A quick trip to the emergency room had my mom admitted to the hospital for observation.  When the pain couldn’t be managed, they took Mom in for exploratory surgery.  I’m not really clear on what the problem was, but they’ve fixed it.  Mom is currently still in the recovery room.

I’m used to worrying about my girls. I need to know where they are, who they are with and what they are doing.  I’ve been slowly loosening the apron strings to give them more freedom as they are getting older.  It never occurred to me that I would have to start worrying about my parents now that they are getting older.  How can I possibly know what kind of trouble they are getting into when I can barely keep track of where they are off to in that RV of theirs?

Please think good thoughts towards them (and me!)  Sigh….

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Bit O Life

kt getting ready for her garden

A few months back, KT and all her friends took the PSAT.  Eventually, it was scored and the results were mailed back to us.  (Of course, our KT did quite well).  Not too long after that, our mailbox started getting crammed with information from various colleges from around the country.  Shaun and I merely groaned, but KT got excited…and competitive.

Everyday KT and her friends would compare which colleges were interested.  At first there were only small, local or barely heard of colleges.  Then came the day that KT came home and wistfully told us that “Patrick* got one from Cal Tech”…

A day or so after that, KT got one from Cal Tech as well.  (Take that Patrick!) She also started getting interest from other stellar schools such as Columbia, Stanford, Harvey Mudd, Smith (just try getting one from there Patrick!),Brown, UW** and my personal favorite Saint Olaf.  We think the one from Harvard must still be in the mail.  (Oh Jaaaaaammmmmes???)

So far, KT has received about fifty letters trying to entice her to return the “send more info packet” form.  Now the logical thing to do here would be to go through all the brochures and decide which ones are of the most interest to her.  However, KT loves getting mail…so she sent them all back.

Yes, we are perfectly aware that our mail man will soon hate us.  Sigh…

*We’ve known and adored Patrick since first grade.  In fact Shaun and Patrick’s mom arranged the marriage between them.  So far, the kids aren’t cooperating with that plan.

**UW is the only one that really counts here.  Shaun has decided to brainwash KT into going here as a way to keep KT close to home, yet going to a good school.

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Bit O’ Life

After many frustrating hours of trying, my brilliant child has finally managed to touch her nose with her tongue.

Have I mentioned that she takes after her father?

It’s been pointed out to me that I haven’t been blogging very much.  What…once a week or so isn’t enough for you? 

If I’m completely honest with myself, I’d have to admit that I’ve been a very bad blogger.  I haven’t been posting or visiting my wonderful blog buddies hardly at all.  Not that my job is to entertain you guys or anything like that.

So, for the month of March, in honor of Shaun’s birth month, and our Anniversary month, and of course St Paddy’s day, I’ll commit to start blogging again.  And I’ll try to talk about the little every day things more.  I seem to have a tendency to skip over things. Happy now?

Oh yes…I’m going to be moving soon. Well maybe.

Shaun got me my own domain name for my birthday.  Yay! For reason unknown to even myself I’ve been wanting one for quiet a while.   Only somebody stole already seems to own the two names that I would want for my domain name.  So I will have a new name. 

But first, I need to figure out how to post my own blog.  I need to find a host,  figure out a banner, move everything over….it may be a while.  Anyone have any suggestions on how to do all this?

Nag nag nag…

Note: For some reason the magic 8 ball is clearer if you click on it…