Pies, Pottery, Plants, Pretty music

We started our week with Pi Day.  I made shepherd's pie and a coconut cream pie to share with the members of the ward.  We had an informal gathering Monday evening at the church and we all ate pie.  Mine was gluten-free and another person brought a gluten-free pie, too.  YUM!

The collection of pottery that I have been working on was finally finished so I got to bring everything home.  My current focus has been on making tiny vases and little plates with birds on them.  I like how they turned out.

My daffodils are in full bloom.  My Christmas cactus has decided to bloom again.  And I planted 39 sweet pea seeds along our back east fence.  The sticks are where each seed is located.

Wednesday morning, I drove to Ballwin to join Emily and Larkin in hearing Noah's school orchestra play in a large ensemble music festival.  It was so fun.  And it brought back mostly pleasant memories of all the music festivals I took my orchestras to...

We have had gorgeous spring weather this week and I love seeing everything come to life.  Steve and I took the dogs on a nice walk yesterday evening...

 

We worked on our tax return throughout the week.  We are awaiting some information on a possible tax credit for the heater and air conditioner we had installed in September of 2021 but, even without that information, it looks like we will actually get a tiny refund!  

March Madness is in full swing and Sally and Linus submitted a bracket.  They chose only teams that had animal mascots and dogs were favored most of all.  So far, they have made some good choices and some bad ones.  In honor of the season, Steve and I watched "Hoosiers" last night.  We also watched "An Affair To Remember" on Thursday/Friday evenings.  Elise loaned us the DVD and it is the one referenced in "Sleepless in Seattle".  Honestly, it is not a movie I need to see again.  The plot was pretty vanilla, it was annoying at the end when she wouldn't tell Cary Grant that she had been in an accident, and, as much as I love Cary Grant, he was terribly cast in this role.  But then, Hollywood did that a lot back in the day.  OLD actors and actresses were given roles that really needed to be played by much younger people.  

Saint Patrick's Day on Thursday - we did the traditional corned beef and cabbage and red potatoes.  I made green jello with crushed pineapple and we had sugar-free pistachio pudding for dessert.  Delicious. 

All in all, it was a great week.  And we are preparing for our Arizona/California trip coming this Tuesday so hopefully, I will have time to post a blog next Sunday with lots of photos.

 

Second Week of March

I am a couple days late with my blog this week.  That is because Steve and I were in Indiana over the weekend to spend some time with Julina and Alex.  We watched the weather forecasts quite closely because a winter storm was predicted for Friday, our departure date.  Happily, the storm turned out to be just light flurries with no accumulation for Saint Louis and points east so our drive had no issues - aside from watching gas prices go up and up the further east we went!  We paid $3.99 before we left, Illinois prices were at about $4.50 and Indiana was at $4.25.  Thankfully, Julina has a Costco membership so we were able to fill up at $4.08.  We are still in our rental and it gets fairly good gas mileage that enabled us to just drive through Illinois without having to worry about our tank.  Columbia, apparently, DID get the winter storm and about 5 inches of snow - which melted quite quickly since it is March and not January.  While in Greenwood, we helped Julina with a few projects around the house and Steve spent quite a bit of time with Alex down in his basement "man cave" as he tinkered with his huge model train setup.  We had to leave for home early Sunday morning so we could get to our church meetings since the ward choir was singing.  So, it was a short visit this time.  Below are two photos from our time with Juli 

We had hoped to leave Friday morning for Greenwood - I even shuffled a cello lesson to 9:00 am that day.  But, we awoke to no hot water - AGAIN!  So, I got on the phone and called the plumbing company (Aries) to ask to be put on a waiting list for an appointment.  I got a voicemail.  So, I called another plumbing company (Guinner) and was told they were making appointments three weeks out!  I said OK but when they learned that we had a Whirlpool heater, she said they were not licensed to work on those kinds????  Weird.  I then called a third plumbing company (Maplewood) with some reluctance because I had reached out to them mid-February for a water heating installation quote and I had to leave a voice message and they never returned my call.  But, this time, they answered and they said that there was an appointment for Tuesday morning, March 15th.  WOW!  I took it.  Then, about thirty minutes later, they called me and said they had a cancellation and someone could be at our home in fifteen minutes.  What a miracle!!!  So, the guy came and he diagnosed the problem - we do not need a new water heater, we do not need a new igniter - we had a very slow and small leak where the water enters the tank and it was most likely extinguishing the pilot light and when we tried to re-light it, it would still be wet. (that would explain why the second time we had no hot water a couple weeks ago, Steve was able to relight it the next day - it had dried out)  So, he fixed the leak and we have been good to go ever since.  It was also refreshing to hear this plumber say that water heaters can last 15 to 20 years.  That is a completely different story from what Beig Plumbing told us right at the start of this fiasco.  Guess who our new plumbing company is going to be???  And guess who will be saving up for an eventual water heater replacement?

Early last Tuesday morning, March 8th, I got to drive Beckie and Micah to the airport so they could begin their visit to Hawaii.  Pictures on Facebook and Instagram show that they have been having a wonderful food-filled, beach-filled time which is exactly what they hoped to happen.

In typical March fashion, temperatures have been all over the place.  It was SO COLD last Saturday in Indiana.  The sun was bright and shining but it felt like four degrees with the wind chill.  Yesterday, we had sixty degrees!  My little crocus are not deterred, however, by the yo yo weather.  

Before the "winter storm" last Friday, temperatures were nice-ish and Steve and I helped with a cemetery clean-up across the street.  Spring time there is always a need to collect large limbs and branches that have fallen throughout the winter so the mowers can navigate.  

We have a weekly FaceTime visit with Alice (and her family) on Thursday evenings and this time, Alice wanted to draw pictures of Steve and me.  Here are her creations.

Isn't she adorable? 

Hmmm, what else happened last week?  Well, you can see from the photo of Steve and the dogs that Linus got a haircut on Tuesday.  I worked on my t-shirt rug all weekend and I am not totally pleased with the color choices I made so I am thinking of doing a new one with much more white in the blend.  In my humanitarian sewing, I get a lot of fabric donated to me and there was a large piece of white t-shirt fabric  in the last bag of fabric I collected over the weekend (I got two bags!) so I think it is meant to be, right?

I watched "Free Guy" on Disney+ while Steve was at youth meetings Wednesday night.  I enjoyed it.

And, I almost forgot to tell about last Sunday afternoon - attending the performance of the Mozart Requiem with the Saint Louis Symphony and Chorale.  It was just amazing!  All the Southerlands, Beckie, Elise, Steve and I got to attend.  Afterwards, we all congregated at our place for dinner.  What a lovely way to end a Sunday!

some of the delicious food we enjoyed together....

March comes in like a Lamb (son)

It has been nice and spring-like all week with some very warm days and some days a bit cool and breezy.  My first daffodil opened up this week (excuse the blurry photo...it was too hard to get on my knees to get a better shot)

Being the first of the month, I went to the Happy Hookers monthly meeting to deliver all the sewing projects I had completed.  I had thirteen zippered bags to donate to an inner city school that sends them home full of weekend food.  I particularly love the yellow check ones and you can see the dogs printed on the the patterned yellow bags.  Most of the ladies in the group donate crocheted blankets and I kind of wonder how useful those items really are.  Do the nursing homes and women and children's shelters just roll their eyes when a new batch of crocheted blankets arrive every month?  I hope they are welcomed because these ladies are so diligent and thoughtful...

Larkin came for the day on Friday and we had a little outing to Mastodon State Historic Site just south of us about twenty miles.  We visited the museum and hiked down (and back up!) the dozens of stairs to the bone yard site.

 

I didn't have orchestra rehearsal on Tuesday evening so Steve and I enjoyed watching a movie that Elise loaned to us  - "Paycheck".  It was a thriller and a pretty good watch.  While Steve was at church youth activities on Wednesday evening, I finished the series on Boba Fett.  Loved seeing baby Yoda again!  And on Friday, we went to Mona and Ed's for another dinner and a movie night.  Gluten-free pizza was again on the menu and we watched "O Brother Where Art Thou".  Great music, rather odd movie but with some funny moments.  Steve and I started watching "Luca" with Larkin on Friday and finished it ourselves on Saturday.  That was a cute movie.  

Saturday was a FULL day!  It started early with a full schedule at the temple baptistry and was followed by piano lessons at the Southerlands.  The evening was the ward talent show.  I rounded up two violinists and a violist and we played "Concerning Hobbits".  The other talent was quite varied:  poetry readings, a juggling act, ballroom dancing couple, three vocal numbers, a handful of instrumental performances, a science demonstration and a gymnastics show.  There were also tables to display other kinds of talents.  The most impressive one was a poster with an extremely complicated math problem!  Elise arrived a few minutes after we got home from the activity.  She and Beckie and the entire Southerland gang and Steve and I are attending the Saint Louis Symphony performance of the Mozart Requiem this afternoon.  Very excited about that. 

We got the pilot light lit again on the hot water heater and our current plan is to just buy an igniting unit and have a plumber replace just that part since the tank is not leaking.  

And, I think that is all my news for the week....