I have loved Bleeding Hearts (Dicentra Spectabilis) since I was a little girl. The flowers are so sweet and I am always amazed out how the plants practically burst out of the ground every spring. Do they grow 6 inches a day? I think you could actually see them grow if you watched for a day.
My Bleeding Hearts look especially lovely and are very happy with the extra water from my copper rain chains. So much nicer to look at than a boring/ugly downspout. I frequently get compliments on the rain chains…even more than on the Bleeding Hearts.
Do you love your planet? Do you love Sherwood? Do you like to get dirty? Sherwood has been a Tree City USA participant for 4 years and is celebrating Arbor Day by planting over 400 trees and shrubs around Stella Olsen Park. You’ll need your gloves, some boots and a shovel to join in the fun from 11am to 3pm on April 16th. Snacks and beverages will be provided.
Brian and I will be there as will our friends from Raindrops for Refuge to make sure we do it right. I get to be a “crew leader.” Very exciting 🙂
I pulled down the box of Easter decorations from the closet and what did I find? Pooh and Piglet in their Easter costumes. These two always make me smile and remember my little Joe.
How the game began is hard to recall. But, basically, little Joe (probably 2 1/2 years old) would take Pooh and Piglet and hide them under my shirt. One time, when he wasn’t looking, I quickly hid Pooh and Piglet somewhere else in the room and sat back down in the same position. When Joe came back to check on them, imagine Joe’s wide eyes and giggles when they were GONE. It was Easter magic at its best. We played that game over and over and over with the same delighted giggles and scurrying to find the lost animals.
A year later, when I retrieved the Easter decoration box, there were Pooh and Piglet. Joe immediately grabbed them and stuffed them under my shirt! He was so excited to play the game again. Of course, with each passing year he got wiser and harder to trick. I told him they couldn’t disappear while he was watching, so he then volunteered to hide in the bathroom. Of course, that worked like a charm 🙂 That Easter magic lasted for several more years. He didn’t ask to play this year, but he had a big grin on his face when he saw them again.
My good friend, Trina, is an extremely talented owner and teacher of The Neighborhood Preschool in Sherwood. Her energy and creativity seems to have no bounds. Today, she posted on Facebook that leprechauns have been peeing green in her toilets today! Can you imagine the kids’ eyes when they went to look? And then they all had green mac ‘n’ cheese and green OJ. Wish she had been doing this when my guys were little…what fun they would have had.
You can follow Trina’s antics by being a fan on Facebook of “The Neighborhood Preschool and Daycare” or by checking out her new blog
Birthdays are celebrated by eating out and eating big in my family. Brian’s birthday was the perfect excuse for us to try Famous Dave’s in Tualatin.
Yu-um. All 5 of us enjoyed the meal (a rare occasion with 3 very opinionated boys). We all left over-stuffed with smiles on our faces. The brisket, BBQ chicken, chicken wings, rib tips and chicken strips all got a thumbs up. Ben was thrilled to get his corn on the cob, and the rest of us LOVED the corn-bread muffins. I enjoyed the spicy baked beans (I was so stuffed I couldn’t even try my baby red mashed potatoes) and the fries were a favorite for Brian…especially dipped in the “Georgia Mustard.” I’ll have to say, that was some awesome sauce. It was great on my chicken. So was the Devil’s Spit and the Sweet and Zesty.
With all that said, Famous Dave’s won’t be a place we frequent a lot. That’s just too much food and too much meat for a healthy lifestyle. Famous Dave’s does offer salads and such, but I can’t really see the point in that. It’s a semi-tacky place with pigs and chickens all over the decor, a roll of paper towels on the table and honky tonk blues playing in the background. One sign said, “If it walks or flies, we’ll BBQ it.” That, with 3 boys, led to some fun dinner table discussion. Do frogs count? How about salamanders? How ’bout opossum? You get the idea.
We had fun and a good meal. Famous Dave’s is great for a treat, and I think Brian really enjoyed his birthday dinner.
After reading The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, by Stieg Larsson, the Lit Ladies Book Club enthusiastically picked its sequel for the next month.
The Girl Who Played with Fire is even better than Dragon Tatoo. It jumps right in to the fascinating life of Lisbeth Salander and gives readers a much better look into what makes our heroine tick. The story winds nicely back into the life of Mikael Blomkvist though his role is much less pivotal this go around.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Many of the Lit Ladies pointed out that Dragon Tattoo started a bit slow and the Swedish street names and locations made for cumbersome reading at times. We were definitely over those minor complaints in The Girl Who Played with Fire. The story is engrossing for page one and by the end, I was hiding in a quiet corner of my house devouring every word. I cannot wait to get my hands on the The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest when it is released in the United States on May 25th.
He scored a goal in his soccer game, ate Tracktown Pizza with his Grandma and Grandpa in Eugene, had 3 of his very best friends over for the night and got some very fun presents. We “finally” gave Ben a cell phone for his birthday. He is literally one of the last kids in Sherwood’s 7th grade class to get one 🙂 But, I’m glad we held out. He is more responsible now and we got to hang on to our “kid” for much longer.
Luckily for me, Ben has not turned into “one of those teenagers” overnight. He’s a great kid and I don’t expect that to change dramatically as the teen years engulf our family.
Ben gave the 12-bar blues a different spin and re-recorded. Not sure which version I like better. Guess I’ll just have to put both of them on my iPod 🙂
Our lovely “lioness” Merry Margaret (Maggie) is now resting in peace after a long, well-lived 14 years. Our hearts are very sad this week, but the weight is lifted slightly knowing that she lived with spirt and greatness even in her last days.
Maggie, a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, was more than a handful from the get go. She chewed siding, ripped up flowers, dismantled a Japanese Maple and eventually learned to leap a 6 ft fence (still don’t know how she did that). Maggie also stole tomatoes off the vine, dug holes so deep you couldn’t see her shoulders and would swim in circles until she yelped from exhaustion if we let her near water. She was crazy and so full of life that we loved, loved, LOVED her. I’m not sure if I ever truly asserted myself as the “alpha female” in our relationship, but it was worth sharing the title for her.
Maggie was a lover of tennis balls, snow balls, rawhide chew sticks, compost piles (no joke) and the beach. She rarely got cross with another animal (even goats, cats and the annoying little dogs we tortured her with).
We loved you, Maggie, and will remember you always.
How cool is it to have your own kid’s recording on your iPod? Serious! Listen to Ben’s 12-bar blues. He layered the tracks and it’s him playing the bass, the rhythm guitar and the lead guitar on this song. So impressed.
BTW: The picture is of Ben and his friend, Quincy, hanging out before their jazz band performance. Don’t they look awesome? Cool cats.
