Spring?

This is what we woke up to this morning...Spring disguised as Winter.

It is really beautiful. I think flowers and leaves are pretty as well, though.

Anyway, I am planning a quiet day with my Mom. I drove up yesterday, when the roads were just fine  We have our Kindles loaded and ready. Maybe one more snowy day isn't so bad.

Dylan Winter and the Starling Murmurations

Mike showed this to me last night. It was so amazing, it needed to be shared. I really can't understand how they fly like that, as if they have one brain. How do they not bump into each other?

Wo-wa

Last Saturday when the little girls were at our house Elise kept asking, "Wo-wa go?"  She'd look so perplexed and extend her little arms out, palms up. She was wondering where are family friend, Laura, was.







We invite Laura to our Sunday Night Family Dinners (yep, these dinners are so special, I use capital letters) because we've enveloped her into our family. She has a lovely family and is most definitely not lacking in that way. They live out of state, though, so we like to be her family-away-from-family.


We don't want her to be lonely, plus, she just fits in and we enjoy her so much. I think Elise believes that she lives here.

Anyway, today is Laura's birthday! Happy Day to you, Laura!

We actually celebrated her day on Sunday by going out to eat together. Except that Elise wasn't feeling well, it was a nice evening.

Eric told us that Cordelia spent a good deal of time planning her outfit for the party. She was quite beautiful!


We have only cell phone photos to share, but they are better than none at all.

Anyway, we just want to say Happy Birthday to our friend and pseudo family member, Laura.

Hope your day is wonderful!

No Explanation

Frozen!

Saturday night was fun for us. We had granddaughters over and we watched the movie, Frozen, with them.

I'd already seen part of the movie at the theater with Cordelia, as well as Maria and Elise. However, Cordelia got scared and we left before the ending. Nevertheless, she has continued to be obsessed with the movie. She wanted me to see the ending and she wanted Grandpa to get to see this movie. It was right up Mike's alley so why not?

It started out kind of like this...

Then there was some silliness.

Elise had to drive somewhere.

Every now and then she had to stop and check her engine.

When the song, "Let it Be" came on,

the party really got going.

Cordelia knows all the words.

She knows all the actions but it seems she wanted

to add in a few of her own moves.

But in the end, it was all about the song itself.

It was adorable!

These are the "Good Old Days", aren't they?

We Believe Newsboys

More Snow

We awoke to snow.

Yes, more snow.

I decided I needed to try to enjoy the beauty of it so before I even fixed breakfast I took my camera out for a little excursion in our yard. I am sorry I didn't work the camera as well as I wanted because it was that kind of snow where you could easily distinguish large, individual flakes.

I took a good look at this poor tree in our backyard. A year ago it was a lovely, well-formed tree. After that remarkable storm in October that broke so many trees around town, this poor teen-age tree will forever be misshapen. I am rather fond of it. I like that it still stands tall and proud with no apologies for its battle scars.

I looked around at some of the other trees that still bear the scars from that storm.

I've been looking again at all the branches around town that are wounded and dangling. I'm sure many of them won't leaf out and their destruction will become more apparent. Although we had our's professionally trimmed after the storm, we still have evidence of the brutality they all endured.

This evening, I took my camera out again. And again, I was disappointed in my photography skills.

I was trying to capture drops that had frozen on the tips of the blades of grass. Can you see them? They were all sparkly and looked like diamonds balancing there. I had not seen anything quite like that before.

OK, winter, nice show. Let's just call it your encore, ok? 

Move along now.

Winter, You've Overstayed Your Welcome!

 It seems to me this has been a long, troublesome winter. I think people in the Midwest and East have maybe had a worse time of it than us. Our's started so early, though, with the first snow in September. Soon after that we had that heavy snow that broke hundreds of trees here in town.

Winter is on its way out now. I'm not going to miss it! I think now is a good time to make fun of it a bit. I've resurrected these photos. A friend once sent them to me but I'm not sure where she found them. Sorry that I can't give credit because they are a pretty clever little collection.

Anyway, if you are as glad as I that winter is soon moving on, enjoy a little laugh as we boot it on out the door.

Mall Golf

After Mall Lunch today we went to a sporting goods store and Mike introduced the girls to the little practice putting green there. What do you think? Future golfers? Even Maria got in on the fun.

Ride the Divide

You guys have got to see this! A few weeks ago, I learned that a family friend of our's was pretty much a celebrity. Click here for proof. I watched the movie in which she was featured on NetFlix!

One of Maria's friends from high school, Mary, is featured in this documentary. Mary was special to us and spent a lot of time around our house during their high school days. Years later, I was aware that Mary took a crazy bike ride but until I saw this documentary, I most certainly did not realize quite what it was she was doing.

This "Ride the Divide" is referred to as an underground race. These crazy people start their race in Banff (That's in Canada!) and ride along the Continental Divide ALL THE WAY TO MEXICO! That really is crazy. That is 2,711 of the toughest miles you can imagine. Mary, our petite little celebrity, was the first woman to ever accomplish this feat. Remarkable! I still can't believe she did that.

When Mary was doing this race she called me once for medical advice. Her legs were so swollen she was having to consider dropping out of the race. I admit, the mother/nurse in me did not really encourage her to push on as I was seriously worried about her health. As it turned out, she had to be left behind the pack to try to rest and to get the swelling down. What that meant was that she then ended up doing the bigger chunk of the race  a-l-l   a-l-o-n-e!  Consider all the wild animals! What about the places where trees/snow/wind and later heat made it nearly physically impossible to move forward!

I am really perplexed by people with that sort of stamina and drive. To look at Mary, who is not a very big person, you'd never guess she could do this. Honestly, it really blows my mind. I don't understand why people would put themselves through such torture but it fascinates me nevertheless. If you are fascinated and wish to know more about Mary's experience, you can read her blog of that ride here.

Anyway, this documentary is over an hour long so if you don't have time to watch it right now, feel free to come back and give it a look. I found it also on YouTube so you don't have to be a NetFlix subscriber to see it. The scenery is absolutely spectacular!

Enjoy!

Late Bloomer

Thanks, Lori and Bill, for providing photo fodder.

I Feel Spring!

First of all, Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I know that everyone is Irish today.

I for one, know that I have Irish roots.

Actually, I've always known that but now it is documented.

According to my saliva test as analyzed by 23andMe, 

I am 34.2% Irish.

So there you have it.

Moving on...

Spring is trying to squeak into Wyoming, between the snowstorms that is.

It wasn't very sunny yesterday.

It was windy.

But it felt Spring-ish.

Cordelia really wanted to go for a walk,

So we did.

I love seeing Eric as a father.

He's good at it.

Everyone felt playful. 

Eric tossed Cordelia up in the air so Elise wanted me to do the same with her.

No, I didn't really throw her, but she was delighted anyway.

Grandpa found a pine cone just the right size for little fingers.

I hope those little girls always appreciate the sweet relationships

they share with their Daddy.

I know that this girl appreciates the sweet relationship she shares with her Daddy.

Don't ask about my weird outfit.

Is Mike laughing at me behind my back?

Who's he to talk?

He's wearing his slippers.

Cordelia was looking at the world a bit differently. 

A little mother-daughter run... not sure if they were cold or just

feeling competitive and wanting to be the first ones home.

Thank you, Maria and Eric, for helping take photos.