I am tired

It is a Monday afternoon after a very busy, full weekend that started on Friday. After a morning at the temple, we returned home for lunch and a nap and, while we were sleeping, an E3 tornado touched down about ten miles north of us! We had leaf debris in our yard and our neighbor's chimney cover blew off into the street and straight line winds knocked down a few trees in the neighborhood but it was nothing like the Central West End and north city. 

Saturday morning, we had our usual every-other-week early shift in the temple baptistry and it was a BUSY day! We have asked to be released from this responsibility and we are counting down the days - two more (on May 31st and June 14th). It has become pretty exhausting for us. We got home, grabbed a quick bite of lunch and took a short nap and then it was my spring studio recital. The venue was just around the corner at Grace United Church of Christ where I have had recitals previously. It went very smoothly and it was quite well attended by many relatives of some of my students. Happily, we had enough refreshments! (each family brings a plate of goodies) 

back row: Ben Baeres, Quinn Southerland, me, Ethan Barner

middle row: Mackenzie Jaspering, Maria Baeres, Jaxson Buttars, Dawn Olomukoro

front row: Larkin Southerland, Cayden Jaspering

We were finished by 3:30 and, by 4:00, Steve and I were on the road to Columbia to celebrate Steven's 43rd birthday. Emily, Joe and the kids also drove out to be there. Emily made an amazing Star Wars cake depicting the trash compactor scene in Episode IV. Elise brought a beautiful fruit salad and we brought baked beans. Steven and Tamara provide yummy sandwich fixings and chips and sodas. 

After dinner, we went downstairs to the television and played assorted trivia games on YouTube. It was so fun with the "complete the Disney song" game - ALL the Southerlands knew ALL the lyrics as did most of the rest of us. Steve and I were the weakest links, to be sure. 

Thanks to Beckie staying at our house with Sally, Steve and I were able to stay in Columbia overnight and attend our old ward on Sunday. It was so great to see old friends at church. We stopped at Melanie and Sal's afterwards so I could help get Melanie set up with making an online book with Blurb. Then we had lunch at Elizabeth's and played two games of Scrabble. The photo I took was of our second game where we decided to start the first word in the top left corner since that area hardly ever sees any action in most games. Kind of cool that we were able to cover the whole board....

We left Elizabeth's a little after 3:00 and headed back to St. Louis because we had tickets to a book signing tour with Dave Barry at 7:00 that evening at a library in town. Having read and loved Dave Barry for decades, we were so excited to actually get to see him. Emily and Elise also attended. 

Before the jam packed weekend, it was a fairly usual week. Tuesday morning dawned foggy and damp and I got a really cool photo of a spider web on our deck.

I also saw some amazing cumulus clouds Thursday evening after English class.  Almost done with the alphabet with my class - we learned V, W and X and we played color bingo.

Thursday day, Steve and I went down to Fred's to help him get his new Vizeo television set up and then Fred wanted me to take pictures of his vegetable garden so here we are.

 











I also renewed the tags for the Honda Element - also on Thursday - but I literally walked in and right up to the desk. I was in and out in five minutes!!!!

On Tuesday evening, I drove to Ballwin to give piano lessons to Quinn and Larkin - last time before their recital performance - and I brought back a Little Green Machine that I borrowed to clean the couch in the family room. It did a great job. I gave Sally a bath the next day and washed her two beds. Clean all around!

About the only relaxing thing we did all week was to re-watch Hunt for Red October on Monday evening. I taught my last home school class on Tuesday and orchestra is over for the season and I sure hope I can have a more relaxing summer???!!! Of course, there will always be yard work to do but I am almost finished putting in the bedding plants I bought. I think I need to close this blog. I am kind of distracted because the weather people are on the television announcing the strong storms that are blowing through. We are under a tornado watch until 3:30 in the morning! Springtime in Missouri....