St. Patrick's Day

I always confuse St. Patrick's Day with the Ides of March. Oh well.

Dad came and spent the weekend with us...I guess he left a little before 3am this morning in an effort to avoid the storm that was heading this way. It started raining at about 6am and really hasn't stopped. For a while, we had some good thunderstorms but now it's straight rain. The weather radio went off around noon telling us that there's a flood warning. I can definitely see why. It's only been raining for a few hours now but I'm already tired of it. It's that nasty, cold rain. I hate that.

Last night, the kids were bargaining for new Game Boy/DS games. After some "negotiating," Daniel looks at Dad and says, "do you want a Game Boy? I'll give you this one for $35!" Amazingly, that's about how much a new DS game costs. LOL! We had a good, long laugh over that.

We braved the rain to get some groceries this afternoon. I decided to order Hannah's cake while we were at the store. We were looking through the catalog when the bakery manager asked if she could help. I told her that Hannah was looking for a cake and that she wasn't having any luck (princess cakes? No. Dora? No. This went on and on.). The manager asked what Hannah likes. I told her that she loves Littlest Pet Shop but I'm sure they don't have that. She says they do. When we found the photo of it, Hannah's face lit up and she started screaming, "yes! That's it!" So, we ordered her Littlest Pet Shop cake for Saturday and Hannah couldn't be more happy about it.

Wednesday Already?

Wow. Where has the week gone?

It's been hard for everyone to get back into the routine. It shouldn't be that hard after a little better than a week. I mean, it's not like it was summer vacation but it has been difficult.

The boys got their report cards yesterday. No big shock that Jacob is doing well in Reading. We were a little surprised that he got 2's (they are on a 1-2-3 scale...1=A, 2=B/C, 3=D/F...confusing because it's the opposite for Daniel!) in science and math but got +'s in most of the other subcategories. Daniel is doing better. His strong suit is math and managed to get several 3's (remember their scale is backwards) in some of the math areas. We got a report from the Reading Specialist but I'm having trouble reading it. We have conferences with everyone next week.

The grass is beginning to grow! I know that I've been completely obsessing about it...what sane person goes out with a flashlight at 11pm to see if anything's coming up?!? LOL! Seriously, though. I did that. And it may have actually been closer to midnight. Anyhoo...I was out watering the other day when Amy from the cul-du-sac (as opposed to Amy across the street) came over to tell me how much better the yard looks this year. I looked at her, looked at the yard, looked back at her and said, "really?" She then told me that the previous owners had pretty much killed off every blade of grass last spring. She said that for most of the summer, it was all mud. I don't know if they tried reseeding last spring or fall but I'm thinking that they did a fairly good job if there was nothing here last year. It's just so cool to look out and finally see little blades of baby grass growing where there was nothing two weeks ago.

I've been trying to divert my attention from the grass by working on the little garden areas around the yard. I've gotten two completely done and one has a few pansies planted (Jacob begged to plant a few) I've still got a lot of work to do on the flower beds before I can plant anything. Good thing nothing's set to go into the ground for a while because I really think it's going to take about 2 weeks, if not longer, to get everything ready.

Here is a picture of the Dora cake I made for Hannah's birthday today.
I'm pretty proud of it. I'm always amazed at myself when I make these and they actually look like what they are supposed to! LOL!