One Year Older....

....and wiser too.....
Happy Birthday
...to me. I'm 34 years old now. Yahoo!

Here is how it started, and before I start I must say that on any other day some of this might have made me crazy, but it was all good.
Many years ago I was given a very old piano from a dear friend. We are the fourth family to own it and it still looks and plays beautifully. Its only problem is that long ago the bench was worn out and by the time we got the piano it didn't exist. So Layne got me a beautiful new piano bench that matched very nice. Well, as he was attaching the legs, some how it fell from his work bench onto the concrete floor. He came into the kitchen with a sick look on his face. He was so upset. But, one trip to Lowes (and because he is handy) he made it all better. This was on Friday night. Then Saturday morning, before we were up, our two youngest, Mitch(7) & Judd(3), got up and wanted to check it out (at this point I had already convinced Layne to give it to me since I knew about 'the problem') and they didn't know how to shut the lid after the latch caught to keep it up. So they laid on it to shut it. Now the hinges were broken and the lid was hanging off. One more trip to Lowes fixed that problem too.
Yesterday was wonderful. Layne and I went shopping and had lunch in Columbus at my favorite eatery, Noodles. YUMM-O! Then we went shopping and had a fun day together. When we got home the kids had the entire house clean as a whistle and laundry done too!
Today, my real birthday day, started out really nice. I opened gifts from the kids and family, had breakfast, and somehow we got off to early morning church meetings, almost on time. I popped into Primary for closing exercises because Mitch had a talk. As soon as I sat down in there Judd was on my lab whining. Before I could ask him what was wrong he and I had puke all over us. Thankfully only a little on the floor. So, I gathered up the rest of the family and we headed home to clean up.
While Judd and I were cleaning up Layne decided to go right past lunch and head to dessert, my birthday banana splits (because I don't like cake). They were perfect & yummy and just what I needed.
So, I've spent the day enjoying beautiful music, eating banana splits, doing sudoku puzzles, and enjoying all my other gifts. What a perfect day!
(btw - Justin is just fine)

Suppressing Spring

Does anyone else have this mess at their house on this fine March day? If you don't, you either don't have pigs for kids, or no snow. Right now I have both.

It may be my own fault. Last Tuesday I decided to wage a war against winter. So I pulled down all my wintry decor and pulled out anything I had that was flowery, pastel, or had a bunny on it. No sooner did I plaster the cute bunny wreath on the front door the ICE RAIN began to fall.

Can you even see it? Josie took this picture for me at night. We ended up with 1/2" of ice and yes it was beautiful, but not what I was looking for. Needless to say the kids were home from school.... again. I think after this winter we'll be having 'year round' school just to catch up on missed days!

By Thrusday the ice had melted and all was well. I was thinking I might be back on track for the arrival of spring. Then on Friday morning it started to snow (you guessed it, the kids were home early that day) and by Sunday it became this.

Yes, I've seen Justin since we took this photo. So he did get out...somehow.

So now I'm back to square one. Sorry for being so whiny here. I'm just way past ready for one of my 53 days of sun shine that we get a year, here in Ohio. I think I'll go buy myself some flowers.

Here I AM

So, I've finally caved in and set this up. Please don't expect too much out of me...I'm kind of lazy. Sometimes living 2000 miles away from family helps hide some of our craziness. YIKES Please still love us.