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This little flower just showed up in my front yard this Spring. Does anyone know what it is? Maybe a hyacinth, but it is small. It is just such a burst of color among all that green. Maybe some more will show up. It makes me happy.

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The restaurant where Paul works, On The Hill, had a concert tonight. They do it about 4-5 times a year, always for a charity benefit, this time the Agawam Senior Center. There are two seatings, with three choices of food and they have some type of musical entertainment. Lately it has been the band Good Acoustics. They have had other bands, but the crowd just loves these three guys. They are just really good and a lot of fun. We don't make it to every one, but tonight Big Baba, Mark (Janelle had to work), Paul, Kris, Toby, Marley and I went. This picture is of Marley (with Toby's Red Sox hat on) singing along to Sweet Caroline, absolutely one of her favorites.

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First kayaking of the season. We went to Lake Mashapaug in Connecticut. What a beautiful day, high 80's at least. The water was cold but the air was beautiful. We were exploring around a little island and all of a sudden we came upon this beautiful site. A mamma Canadian goose sitting on her nest. I was surprised at all the feathers she was sitting on. She seemed a little nervous to see us, but she didn't budge. Good mamma.

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The ferns in my back yard have really sprouted during this heat wave.

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Today was Janelle and Mark's baby shower. This picture is of Mark holding up a sweater that Kristen knit. Isn't it adorable? She actually made them two sweaters and two hats (not to mention the many started but not finished for one reason or another). It was a fun day. More pictures on Debbie's Blog.

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On the way home from the Princess Sleepover this morning, Paul and I stopped at the hot dog cart near the train crossing. Much too early for hot dogs for me, but they have breakfast sandwiches (Paul had hot dogs at about 10 in the morning). It was so beautiful out, warm and sunny. A train came by and I got out of the car to take a picture, but found that the flowers were much prettier than the train.

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Tonight Marley and I went to the Princess Sleepover at our church. Last year was the first year and it was such a success that they decided to do it again. It is a whole night of pampering for girls (kindergarten to 8th grade)with pedicures, manicures, facials, jewelery making, a tea party, and Princess movie to end the evening. I went with Marley last year and stayed until about 10 o'clock. This year, since I am one of the Prim leaders, I got to sleep over (actually anyone who wants to help out can sleep over). So...Pat (the other Prim leader) and I were on feet duty. First, they soaked in foot baths, then we creamed and massaged their feet (!?!) and then painted their toes. I must have done at least 10-15 feet, 3 hours without a break! I have no pictures of this, since I didn't have time to take them. The picture for today is of Marley having her tea at the tea party (she actually hated the tea and asked me for water). All in all, although exhausting for all concerned, it was a fun, memorable night.

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This is poor Paul, waiting at Borders while I shop. Actually, this is the third time in less than a week that we have been at the mall. At least tonight I ended up buying something that (I think) I like. I only have three more days to change my mind!

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We have had Izzy for a whole year! So...I thought it would be cute to take a one year later picture. Well, it certainly was not as easy as I thought. First I had to get Marley to pose next to Izzy without her hair hanging in front of her face. Then I had to get Izzy to eat, which I thought would be easy. Well, I guess she wasn't hungry, even for fresh food. So, treats to the rescue (she loves treats). She doesn't love treats in her food bowl though. So, try to get the treats as close to her bowl so it looks like she is eating out of her bowl (not successful on that one). Then focus the camera; the batteries die....start over. Finally, I got the picture but by now we are all stressed. Hopefully it was worth it; I'm still not sure.

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April Showers Bring May Flowers. My day lillies are growing!

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Spring vacation for Marley. I had the day off and Marley and I went to the Westfield Children's Museum. Behind her, in this picture, is a big rocket ship. The aim is to shoot Nerf balls at the rocket ship or at a big yellow ball (the moon?) above it. There were bags in the room to pick up the Nerf balls. You could either shoot them or put them in a thingy that vacuumed them up to the moon. When the moon was full it tipped over and emptied out all of the balls. One of Marley's favorite things was standing under the moon with her bag open hoping to catch the Nerf balls. We had a fun time, and on the way out she said, "That was the funnest museum ever."

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This is Marley's new sundress. A little too cool yet for me, but as we always say...she runs hot. She's growing up too fast!

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Today was not the best day of my life. First of all, I don't really like working on Saturdays, but the worst part was that I needed to go to the Mall to shop for clothes. I wanted something new to wear to the baby shower. Oh my goodness, I really hate the styles out there. It reminded me of 60's clothes and maternity clothes wrapped into one. I shopped for three hours and came out with nothing. I was tired, my feet were killing me, I was upset that I had just wasted all that time. Then I came outside the Mall and saw this beautiful sunset (I couldn't find a place to take a picture without all the telephone wires). That was the best part of my day.

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On Wednesday night at church Marley took a tumble and landed on her hand, bending her wrist backwards. I knew she had really hurt it because she wouldn't use it all evening. On Thursday, Kris took her to the ER to have it x-rayed, just to make sure
it wasn't broken. It wasn't, just sprained and they put an ace bandage on it. She called me and told me she had some things for my scrapbook (how cute), so of course I had to take a picture.

The rest of the "stuff" was a different story. On Easter, after most people had left, for some reason Paul started pulling everything out of our hall closet (which goes all the way under the stairs). There were bags of what we thought were Mark's old stuffed animals and Paul thought Mark might want some of them for his baby. So...not only did I have all the mess from Easter, I also had all of these stuffed animals, etc. all over the kitchen. We also found all of Kristen's old cabbage patch dolls, some mini Strawberry Shortcakes and Barbies and Barbie clothes. It was almost like Christmas when Marley saw it all. Her favorite, by far, were the Barbies.

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Izzy is loving Spring. She is watching the birds in the backyard from my open bedroom window!

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This is my Prim class making "Creation" scrapbooks; working on our Creation badge.
(Marley is at the far end of the table)

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I had the day off from work today because I have to work on Saturday. We had wanted to go kayaking but this morning it was only about 35 degrees and the weather was supposed to be partly cloudy, so we decided to go for a ride instead. In Amherst, New Hampshire there was a scrapbook store that I used to like, and nearby a used book store, and we (mostly me) decided to go there and check them out. To my dismay both of the stores were out of business :(. We had a good time anyhow. We went to the LL Bean Outlet store, and got meatball grinders and ate them at an airport for little planes. It was quite a busy place; in the 45 or so minutes we were there we saw at least 25 take offs and landings.

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This is another one of Izzy's "beds". Underneath my scrapbook table I have three boxes of punches with a cover on the top one. She likes to lay on the cover (which she has totally collapsed in), mostly at night. Sometimes she sleeps, sometimes she has a bath, and sometimes she just watches us!

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Easter Sunday! This is a picture taken from the balcony before church began. There is always such an excitement on Easter Sunday morning - there are more people and everyone looks more dressed up than usual, the fragrance from the Easter lilys in the front of the church in memory of loved ones, and everyone celebrating what Easter means to us. I have always loved Easter Sunday morning.

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This is a very familiar sight in my family room lately. I think the birds are building a nest on the sides of the air conditioner in this window, and Izzy is very interested in them. Underneath this window are some containers with blocks, Legos, and Lincoln Logs. Izzy climbs up on them to get to the sides of the window. It is very precarious for her as things move around in the boxes, but she is persistent!

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A couple of weeks ago we dyed Easter eggs and Marley made one for GG. It said "I love GG" on it. I thought it would be nice to put it in a little basket and put it on Priscilla's grave. Unfortunately, it was raining lightly and my pictures didn't come out too good. We had two eggs in a little basket, but Marley wanted to put the one she made for GG right in front of her stone. So sweet!

P.S. Update for Saturday, the next day - something had taken GG's egg on the ground. I hope they enjoyed it! At least the one in the little basket was still there.

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Meet Zeus. He is my Aunt Dot's cat. He is such a good boy. Tonight we went over to visit Dot and he was so friendly. He sure loves his "bed" under the coffee table. I think Zeus and Dot are best friends.

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Tonight was the Awards Ceremony for the Girls Ministries at my church. It is a night where the parents and family of the girls come to see them get their badges along with their class, given out by their teachers (Lucky for me Miss Pat was willing to do the talking). Afterwards there are goodies to enjoy. All the girls seem to really enjoy this night!

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Tonight after work we went to LL Bean in S. Windsor, CT. again, this time to return a pair of boots that Paul bought through the catalog. Across the street is a restaurant called Johnny Rockets. It is like a 50's soda shop. It's really cute; the waiters and waitresses wear those little white hats and oldies are playing all the time.

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This was the book I was reading at Border's tonight. It is, hands down, the best photography book I have read yet. It not only explains how to take different types of pictures, it gives you the settings to use, how to pose people for portraits, the best way to take landscape pictures, etc., all in plain English. I eventually will have to buy this one.

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Paul's cousin Sheila had her annual Easter Egg Hunt today (Marley is in the front row, the first child on the right). What a perfect day. The weather cooperated, which was amazing considering the day before was almost like winter. Sheila puts so much into this egg hunt (and it helps that her house is right on the beach). Her house is totally decorated, there are eggs to color, the actual egg hunt, a visit from the "Easter Bunny" and each child gets a basket filled with candy and fun gifts. This year Marley got the DVD Marley and Me in her basket along with other goodies. The kids all have so much fun playing in the yard and going down to the beach. Marley actually had her feet in the water today. Thank you, Sheila, for such a fun day!

P.S. More pictures on Debbie's Blog.

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Today we took a ride to Brattleboro, VT. to go to the Carter's outlet. I wanted to pick up some things for "Baby Radtke". So many choices. It was kind of fun picking out boy clothes, since for the past almost 8 years I have been buying girl clothes. I'm getting excited to see him. Only two more months!

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Tonight Paul, Marley and I went to Bethany's Easter Presentation, The Easter Song. We sat in the second row, right next to the orchestra and I felt as though we were in the presentation. It was a wonderful musical portrayal of the Easter story. Marley wanted to be reassured that no one was getting hurt tonight, but it does make you realize what Jesus went though on the cross for us.

Afterwards, we went to Friendly's for ice cream. It is a tradition we have for the Singing Tree at Christmas and the Easter Presentation. She was so good tonight, so grown-up acting!

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It was such a beautiful evening that when Paul picked me up from work we took a little ride. It seems so good to see things "greening up." This was a scene in Southwick that I thought was pretty.

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Wednesday night dinners at my church. I eat with these ladies frequently; l. to r. - Avis, Betty and Cindy.