A Week's Worth of News and Updates!

The problem with only blogging once a week is that now I have tons to catch up on! 

Let me start by my beautiful Lillies I bought for Easter!

They were some beautiful buds on Easter Day and are now, a week later, blooming beautifully!  : )  Well, Easter is a season. . .

Speaking of flowers, my tulips and daffodils are finished but I noticed yesterday that I have several buds on my Clematis vines, buds on my rose bushes and buds on my Peonies.  It's going to be beautiful and flowery around here in a couple of weeks!  I really need to get out there and work in the gardens to make them even prettier.

Melissa, blog owner of http://themiddlethatcounts.com/ mentioned a few weeks ago that she had had her blog printed into a couple of books.  After playing around with the site, I finally had my first two years printed and they have arrived!!!



I will need to do 2010 later this summer, after I save my lunch money, but I'm so excited about the first two!!  The site http://www.blog2print/.com is really simple to use and allows you to upload whatever picture you want for the front and back covers.  You can make the title whatever you want as well: I did Bringing Aidan Home for the first one and Adventures with Aidan-2009 for the second one.  I will continue with 2010, 2011, and so on.  What is especially nice is that the pictures and blog posts really chronicle Aidan coming home, the cute things he has said along the way, and his subsequent growth.  I hope/think he'll like and appreciate this later in his life, especially because his Mama does not scrapbook!!  I plan to insert the hair, birthday invitations and award certificates I have saved and as they come along.  One thing I wish I'd thought of before was about the editing.  This site does not allow you to edit after you upload the blog.  So, any editing needs to happen before.

Speaking of books, I am about 3/4 of the way through Travels in Siberia.  I've really been enjoying it.  I have laughed over so many of the descriptions of Siberia that the author has said because it was exactly that way.  On Russia in general, he even mentions the strange custom of clapping the hands when the plane lands.  Other than the smell of Russia that he mentions, he also talks a lot about the monuments and the crumbling Soviet era buildings.  It is something to think about.  There is a lot of money in Moscow, but not much is getting out into the Eastern portions of the country.  He only spent one day in Krasnoyarsk but did enjoy walking along Prospekt Mira, a street Pat and I walked at least once or twice a day for nearly three weeks.  Boy did I recognize his descriptions of that street!!!  And the funny habit of the girls wearing skin tight jeans and stilletto heals everywhere they walked. . .how do they do that???

Our community had a yardsale yesterday.  A friend of mine and I set up our wares on our yard and did a little business.  A very little bit of business!  I made about $5.00 and she made about $10.  It was the first nice Saturday this spring, so everyone was at Home Depot, where we found them all after the yardsale was over.  I think we will try again right before school starts in August--we made a lot more last August.

I know Spring is really here, with Summer around the corner, because we got our pool pass forms last week!  I have filled out the form and sent it in to our HOA in order to get our 2011 sticker and guest passes.  Woo Hoo!

Another big sign of Spring are the storms we have been having.  Whew!  What a ride they have been!  Torrential rain, heavy lightening and thunder and intense winds.  Yes, even a tornado or two.  Easter Sunday afternoon and Wednesday morning were incredibly bad.  So bad that we have had to make a claim about our roof-storm damage.  Although our roof is only 12 years old, I think it will need to be replaced. 

Finally, we are in the final two weeks of preparing for Aidan's fifth birthday.  I can't believe he's going to be five!!  His party is all set for the 14th and so far we will have 10 children--although this number will likely increase by at least 10 or more by next Friday when the rest of the RSVP's come in.  The party will be at the Ice Rink again.  Pizza and cake followed by a 1/2 hour lesson and then an hour to skate.  It will be fun!  Shhhhh!  Don't tell!  We got him the inline Hockey skates so he can skate around on the pipe stem and play street hockey and Grandma and Grandpa got him the pads and shorts for his ice hockey lessons.  He will be soooo excited!!  The day of the party we will probably go to Roy Rogers for dinner (his choice) and then on his actual birthday, we will go to Blue Ridge Grill (also his choice!) for a nice steak and celebrate with just family.  It's going to be fun!

That's it for now.  I'll try to update ins smaller increments through out the week.  : )