More Brain Lint and Loose Threads

Last Thursday evening, our older son was in a musical at his school. It was a patriotic play, and he had a leading role.

He did a great job and we were so proud of him, we could just bust.

That's him in between Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty.

This was a huge milestone and an answer to prayer for him, as last year at this time he had a leading role in a different play, but ended up being removed from it due to extreme stagefright.

The kind that caused him to call home during the school day the week of dress rehearsals claiming to be sick, and needing to cart a water bottle around for his cotton-mouth kind of stage-fright.

But this time around he did a fabulous job, and even the teacher that directed the play told us that he nailed his lines.

Somehow afterward, we got talked into Chuck E. Cheese and a trip to Toys R Us.

We. are. such. suckers.

:: :: :: ::

My hubby is home this week on Spring Break.

You may remember my mentioning a while back that we don't have cable or satellite TV. It was a choice we made on purpose a long time ago, and one we have never regretted for a minute.

We do have a small dinosaur of a TV set for occasional use in our home with carefully screened, family movies. And this thing usually doesn't come out, except on weekends and school breaks. (Or, ahem, when mama needs to distract little brother for long enough to get some things done and keep them done for more than ten minutes).

Unfortunately, Jeff's and Jericho's breaks didn't coincide this year. This effectively limited our Spring Break vacation (or lack thereof) options.

So between the two of them, they came up with a plan on how to make the most of 'our' time together this past weekend:

Jeff borrowed the complete set of Smallville - Season Six from a buddy on Friday afternoon.

He and Jericho pulled the TV out into the living room, and have been watching back-to-back episodes for days, taking a break only on Sunday. (Thank You Lord for that day of rest!)

Since Friday, I've been on a crash course in Smallville (by proxy) and now know far more about The Justice League, Lex Luthor, Lana, Chloe and of course Clark Kent...than I ever wanted to.

And did I mention they've been watching these back-to-back?

In the living room?

Which is 15 steps from the dining room where my computer desk is located?

22 episodes.

And they're already done!

"Somebody saaaaaaave me!"

:: :: :: ::

On another note:

Judah is officially 2 1/2 today!

St. Patrick's Day is our youngest son's half birthday.

*sniff, sniff* He's not our witto boika-boo anymore.

Nope, he informed me today, "I'm da man!" and thumped himself on the chest proudly.

But I'm pleased to say that I finally got his Two year pictures taken last week.

Yep, I'm finally finishing up my to-do list from September! Woo Hoo, at this rate, I might finally get my scrapbooking finished up by the time I'm 85, and then can finally sit down and enjoy them in my dotage.

And if the last word of my last sentence sounded a bit different from my normal vocabulary, blame it on the Mitford series.

Because in between entertaining Judah and getting my living room furniture rearranged around the viewings of Smallville this weekend, I managed to finish the last book in Jan Karon's popular Mitford series.

Even if I am the last person in the country to finally 'discover' the series and read it through.

I absolutely loved these books. They were wonderful, sweep-me-away-to-another-place kind of books, and an absolute delight to read.

I was so taken with the books, that I briefly considered buying the companion cookbook, because I just had to find out how to make Esther Bolick's famous Marmalade Cake.

Thankfully, I found it online for free. I'm thinking of making that for my contribution to the big family Easter dinner.

Did I mention how much I loved this series? The only bummer for me was that because everyone else has already read them long ago, I'm left feeling a little like the latecomer to church on the morning after Spring daylight savings...just pulling into the parking lot as everyone else is pulling out.

I was too late to get in on all the action of discussing the books as other people read them!

For an avid reader like myself that's torture, I tell you! Torture!

:: :: :: ::

While Jericho was in school today, the rest of us made the long trip to the fish hatchery with some friends.

We went there a while back, but Judah has begged to go there repeatedly since that time. And when you're tucking him in at night and he says in his sweet little enthusiastic and hopeful voice, "We go to the fith hatchy tomowwow?", how can a parent resist that?

So we made a day of it. We had grandma pick up big brother from school, and packed a picnic for the trip.

Judah loved feeding the fish and watching the feeding frenzy.

And playing with his friend Rachael.

And pushing the stroller.

And picking up the dead "fithies" the Dept. of Fish & Game employees skimmed out of the water while we were there.

And hugging dead "fithies" to his face like it was the most adorable little thing he'd ever seen...

...While germ-freak mom had to stand by taking pictures like it was no big deal, because he's a boy and they're supposed to do gross stuff like that.

:: :: :: ::

Two weeks ago, it was 85 degrees where we live. Local trees were blooming in profusion. A sure sign of spring, right?

Yesterday we woke up to 2 inches of snow.

Then, today we woke up to another beautiful warm day.

Ahhh, springtime in the desert. Fickle as a gradeschool crush.

Every single year that we've lived in this barren wilderness in the Southwest, I've put all our winter clothes away thinking winter was finally over, only to have one last spell of cold weather sneak up on us immediately afterward.

Ten times this has happened now.

Will I never learn?

:: :: :: ::

Oh, and if you're PMSing, I don't recommend seeing the movie No Reservations. While it's a cute chick-flick, it's also a bit of a tear jerker.

The kind of movie that might cause you to want to immediately contact a lawyer to take care of your will.

Which will cause you to want to bawl your eyes out and not want your family members out of your sight for a couple of days.

Just sayin'.