Last full week in May

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!  Our front-yard flag (with the neighbor's house)

 Linus and Sally got haircuts this week.  They look SO much better!  I can't say the same for the before/after photos, though....

Things are blooming in the garden - especially my yellow rose bush. 

 

Emily shared a bunch of dahlia bulbs with me two weeks ago and I got them planted this past week.  I have never grown them before and I really didn't have a place to put them so I created a place back by the vegetable garden.  I had a bare patch in the lawn where I had put a large felt planter the year before so that was the beginning.  I dug up a bit more grass and added mulch.  Kind of a lot of work.  I sure hope all that work is worth it!  Stay tuned....

While working on this dahlia bed early in the week, Linus and Sally were hanging out with me and they discovered a bunny burrow by my little redbud tree.  Sally had a dead baby bunny that she was worrying and Linus was trotting up the driveway with a live baby bunny in his mouth!!!!  I managed to extricate it from him and I put both over the fence where the dogs would leave them alone.  When I checked back later, the live bunny was gone so I hope he is back with mama rabbit.  I circled the hole with some short fencing to discourage any further rabbit hunting.  

We had Elise here for a visit Thursday and Friday.  She has finished her long-term media center substitute job on Tuesday and HyVee neglected to schedule her Wednesday and Friday so she came to St. Louis.  It was nice to have her here.  Shortly after she left Friday after dinner, Elizabeth Crippen arrived.  She and I went to Nauvoo for the day on Saturday - to attend the temple and to visit Carthage Jail.  We had a nice day.  Weather was perfect.  We took a longer route home along the Illinois Great River Road so I could show Elizabeth the cute town of Grafton (which Beckie, Steve and I visited last fall).  Everything was so green and beautiful and it was a lovely ride home.  Yes, Elizabeth loved Grafton, as you can see in the photos.

 

us eating a picnic lunch...

The only other time Elizabeth visited Carthage Jail was before air conditioning was installed and it was super hot so she did not have a great experience.  I hope she did this time....

Such a cute little light house!!!

We drove home with a gorgeous sunset and arrived at 9:00 for a very late supper!

It was quite the movie-watching week.  Steve and Fred Olver went to the theater to see the Yogi Berra documentary called "It Ain"t Over" and Steve just raved about it.  I look forward to seeing it on streaming or with a library DVD in the future.  Steve and I tried to watch a library DVD called "Mr. Baseball" but it was so awful we stopped it about forty minutes in and just skipped to the end.  I watched "Uncharted" on my own while Steve was at youth activities Wednesday night and I quite enjoyed it.  I loved Tom Holland's character!  And, while Elise was here, we watched "Disenchanted".  It was cute.  Glad to see Alan Menken is still going strong.  Steve and I watched two episodes of "The Mandalorian".  Thank goodness for son, Steven, to answer all our questions as we watch!!!

Steve and I actually got two bike rides in this past week, thanks to gorgeous low-humidity evenings.  

Moving through May

Steve and I are trying to be proactive and make decisions related to aging and end-of-life.  In the past year, we have identified a long-term care facility should either of us need to go in one.  And, on Monday, we made a decision as to where we will be buried.  While the lovely Concordia Cemetery across the street is convenient, it is also expensive.  And, it is slated to be even more expensive after the end of this month so we needed to check out Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery just south of us on the Mississippi River to decide if we should be buried there free of charge, thanks to Steve's two years of active duty and ten years of National Guard.  The cemetery is acres and acres of white grave markers dating back to the Civil War and it is a lovely, peaceful place and we feel good about being buried there. (the spouse is buried in the same plot as the veteran and the name/date is carved on the back of the stone).  

Tuesday was "Clean the Refrigerator Day".  Our ice maker has ceased to function other than spitting out one or two cubes every other day and we wondered if we unplugged the fridge and allowed any frozen water lines to melt, that maybe the ice maker would resume it's job.  It certainly needed to be cleaned and it looks spiffy clean but, sadly, the ice maker is still not working correctly.  It was super hard to find repair individuals to work on Samsung dishwashers and I fear it may be the same for Samsung refrigerators but I guess that is what I am going to have to do...

It sure turned the kitchen into chaos during the process!

Wednesday morning, I met Emily at the Missouri Botanical Gardens for a morning walk to visit and admire the Chihuly glass exhibits scattered around the grounds.  St. Louis city and county residents can gain free admission to the gardens on Wednesday mornings which made our time together even better!

Wednesday was a busy day - I drove down to House Springs to pick up more dog food and I drove to a cello sectional in Town and Country (by the temple) in the early evening and ended my day at Marquette High School to hear Noah's orchestra concert.  I used up a full quarter of a tank of gas that day!  

I vowed I would not drive anywhere on Thursday!  Sadly, I had to run a quick errand that evening but the rest of the day was spent at home catching up on so many things.  I put up a rabbit-proof fence (isn't that a book and a movie?) around my beans and I planted seven hills of pie pumpkins in the morning.  I plan on another "sincere" pumpkin patch this year and I will process the pumpkin to use throughout the winter to stir into the dog meals.  That evening, Steve and I started season 3 of the Mandalorian.  Loving it so far....

Friday morning, I got a bunch of mulch from Carondelet mulch site, I took a load to hazardous waste and I taught music lessons.  In the evening, Steve and I drove to Bellville, Illinois - just a 30 minute drive across the river - to check out their Art On The Square.  It is a cute little town and there were over fifty artists from all over the country exhibiting their VERY EXPENSIVE wares.  We just had a good time walking around and admiring...and then we shopped for chicken and watermelon on sale at a Ruler Foods (much larger than the one near us).  We enjoyed dinner at the Culvers in Fairview Heights.

Saturday was the baptistry in the morning and a ward talent show in the evening.  In between I baked a gluten free carrot cake and gluten free cowboy cookies.  Funny story about the talent show - 

I have a collection of music books for string ensembles that have simple arrangements of popular Broadway tunes.  So, from our ward, I recruited a bass, a viola, a violin, a pianist, and two cellos (not  including me) to perform "Beauty and the Beast".  I decided I would play second violin for this performance since we were pretty bass-heavy.  But, as we were getting ready to leave for the show, I just automatically packed up my cello.  About three blocks from the house, I said to Steve "The next time I do this..." and Steve interjected "you will bring your violin" and I realized I was bringing the WRONG INSTRUMENT!  So we had to turn back and switch.  Ugh, my memory is just pathetic these days!

I will close with a cute photo of Quinn at his orchestra concert a couple of weeks ago and by telling you that  this week, we watched a very OLD Hunchback of Notre Dame movie - it was so old it was silent!  And, comparing it with the Disney version as well as the synopsis of the actual story on Wikipedia, there are similarities but quite a bit of differences.  Not a very happy story either way.  

 

Mother's Day 2023

This has been quite the day and week!  Up until last Wednesday, we still had Kirsti, Ryan, Alice, and Ivan here.  They left very early Wednesday morning and our week since then has been SO different!  Quiet.  Busy in a different way.....

But, I need to tell about last Sunday.  Emily was still on her choir trip to Chicago and Noah had TWO choir concerts that afternoon/evening.  His first was with the Sheldon All Star Chorus at a venue in the city.  Joe brought him there as well as the other three kids.  Steve, Beckie, Micah, and I also attended.  (Micah was in town to help at Little Fox while Craig and Mowgli - the owners - were on R&R.  Yes, Mowgli is the woman's name.  What were her parents thinking?!?!)  The concert was excellent!  They performed what they will be singing in New York in June at Carnegie Hall.  The choir is mostly African-American and there are only about twenty in the group.  All have amazing voices and they sang the Gospel Mass by Robert Ray.  Afterwards, Joe took the younger three back home and Steve and I shuttled Noah to a north Saint Louis LDS stake center for his next performance with the Rising Generation Choir.  This is an all-white group of kids, I think all are LDS, and they also gave a great concert.  Noah had a delightful solo - such a super voice.  The main problem with this concert was that there was no printed program to identify the musicians and, more importantly, to identify the musical numbers so we would know when it was over.  I think most of the audience thought it would be an hour-long program so, when a particularly rousing and emotional song was sung sixty minutes after the start, everyone gave them a standing ovation thinking it was the grand finale.  Only, it wasn't.  They sang two songs beyond that and the concert didn't end for another fifteen minutes.  Very anticlimactic.  Here are photos from the second, too-long concert...

Monday evening, we had a family get-together in our backyard with Kirsti, Ryan, Alice, Ivan, Beckie, Emily, Joe, Noah, Lucy, Quinn, and Larkin.  We had a bonfire to roast hotdogs or make campfire grilled cheese sandwiches and s'mores.  There was a nice breeze to mitigate the humidity and we had a great time visiting with each other.  Larkin and Alice played and played - especially with the puddles on the driveway making "soup" 😄 

 

It was sad to see them leave on Wednesday.  It was so great to have them here...

After the Merrills left - we had to leave for the airport by 4:30 am but didn't actually get away until 4:50 causing Ryan and Kirsti and kids to dash through the airport a la Home Alone - Steve and I got back home and went back to bed!  And then we spent the rest of the day returning the house to its pre-grandkid state and the rest of the week doing tons of laundry.  Wednesday evening, I drove to Ballwin to see Lucy's orchestra concert...that is her with the long blond hair and glasses facing sideways.

Thursday Steve and I both had doctor appointments - follow-up for Steve and yearly check-up for me.  Boy, trying to write down all the many little things we do every week is exhausting!  Getting key copies to the back gate padlock made at Menards, shopping with a coupon at Bath and Body Works, attending the temple on Saturday morning, teaching lessons, cleaning up two weeks worth of emails in two email accounts.....Steve and I finished the last three episodes of season three of Manifest and, for Steve, he was annoyed at how it ended.  And a final season begins in June.  Steve is trying to decide whether to watch it.  I will - I need the closure - but the story line is really getting ridiculous!  I finished a really good book on Friday - Tress of the Emerald Sea.  It was a delight to read.  I got to babysit Saturday night for a family of three boys, Jaxson (9), Troy (5), and Quinten (3).  I guess their parents were unable to get any of their regular babysitters and, because I am Jaxson's primary teacher, they asked me.  Happily, by the time I arrived they had been bathed and fed so all I had to do was watch a few episodes of the animated version of How To Train Your Dragon before putting them to bed.  Then, I got to watch Enola Holmes until the parents got home.  Pretty easy gig. 

For Mother's Day, I really wanted to have gluten-free pancakes from IHOP so we went out to eat late Saturday afternoon and I had a delicious meal.  I also made my own homemade gluten-free pancakes Sunday morning.  Mmmmmm.  Steve and I are going to give each other (for Mother's day and Father's day) better quality outdoor string lights for the deck and the kids have pooled together money for me to replace the dogwood tree that I planted last year and that died sometime in the winter.  Beckie came over for dinner Sunday evening and Steve, my hero, cooked pork steaks in torrential rain.  

We are getting some good rains and my garden is thriving and I will close with photos....

Lots of grandkid time!

Kirsti, Ryan, Alice and Ivan returned from visiting Julina in Indiana Monday evening.  They had a great visit.  Monday was an extremely windy day and happily, their drive through Illinois didn't have the issues that occurred elsewhere in that state (the 72 car pile-up just south of Springfield due to blowing wind and dust !!!)

Tuesday, Steve, Kirsti and Ryan went to the temple and I stayed home to babysit.  We spent a great deal of the morning outside....the kids playing while I pulled weeds and lay down mulch in my herb garden.  Ivan had fun with a wheelbarrow ride.  Alice declined.  They both enjoyed the plastic baseball bats and balls.  Alice has good eye-hand coordination and should do great in T-ball this summer.  When we came indoors, and were sitting in the living room, I looked over and, to my surprise, Ivan had crawled into the dog kennel.  I'm not sure Sally was thrilled about that and Linus was rather confused as Ivan was on HIS bed.  Alice had to join in, too.  They also had fun playing the piano and pretending to put Ivan to sleep under the piano bench.

On Wednesday evening, I drove over to Ballwin to attend Quinn's orchestra concert and I brought Larkin home with me to have a sleepover with Alice and to spend the day with her on Thursday.  We put the two twin air-mattresses in the living room and they watched a movie way past their bedtime and just crashed immediately after it finished.

On Thursday, while the cupcakes that Poppy/Grandpa/Steve baked were cooling, we took the girls and the dogs on a little walk around the block.

After returning home, the girls decorated six cupcakes each.  I had leftover chocolate icing for them to pipe and I had a collection of royal icing flowers that I had made many months ago to put on top.  They had a blast.

By Thursday, the wind that had been blowing since Monday finally died down enough for us to have a bonfire/marshmallow roast in the back yard.  Alice practiced her batting - she writes with her right hand but bats with her left - and Ivan let me cuddle with him!

On Friday, Steve and I took the day to drive up to Springfield, Illinois, to visit the Lincoln Museum and to hear Emily's choir sing in the rotunda.  The choir was on a little tour up to Chicago and they stopped to give a twenty-five minute concert, singing patriotic songs and ending with a beautiful performance of the Gettysburg Address set to music.  They had to hop on the bus to continue up to Chicago right after but Steve and I lingered for several hours to look at all the exhibits.  It is a very beautiful and well done museum and we enjoyed ourselves.  Kirsti and Ryan and kids stayed in St. Louis and looked after the dogs when they weren't exploring the central library or Magic House.  

Ivan just LOVES the dogs and they are very good with him.  Kirsti snapped this adorable photo of Ivan and Linus at our back door.  He is saying "cheese" with his mouth full of apple and Linus looks pretty typical - kind of an Eyeore.