Dog Days of Late Winter

I love my dogs! I'd be lonely and bereft without their daily companionship.

I like how the freshly fallen snow contrasts with Violet's black fur. I think it's so pretty for the short minute that it lasts!

Sharing the sun spot by the back door.

Boo Boo had his paws crossed like a little gentleman dog and it was so cute.

Boo Boo is one of my top joys and compensatory blessings in life. I adore him.
ALTHOUGH--in the interest of full disclosure--he had a time-out in his kennel this morning for eating the cat food AGAIN. 😠

The Roses of March

I got a pretty bouquet of roses for March from Price Chopper's monthly rose bouquet program. They bloomed well, and when their time was up, they died well. It is a thing with roses, as I've documented and discussed on my blog before!

In the beginning...promising potential!

Then they delivered on their potential and opened up and bloomed nicely. 

And then when they were done instead of drooping they stayed upright and died in elegant fashion. 

Dignified desiccated roses.

💛🤍💛🤍💛🤍

Home Improvements

I made a few small improvements to the house in March through some good catalog purchases. I have a lifelong love of catalogs and I'm happy to report that the internet has not obliterated them and their influence from my life at all!

I got this cute rug for the laundry room from L.L.Bean. 

It completed the room nicely and made it a little more "homey."

I got this "Home sweet home" picture on clearance from a catalog (I don't remember which one, sorry!). I'd been planning on hanging it on a wall somewhere in the house but when it arrived I realized that it was way bigger than I thought. I found the perfect place for it though--in this tricky big display alcove in the built-in shelving in the family room. Perfect!

I bought this Lenox ornament tree that I'd had my eye on for years. I think it's so pretty, and I like how it has a different ornament set for each of the various holidays and seasons.

Catalog power!

John's 14th Birthday

John turned 14 on March 8th. My once-little boy is growing up fast!

His big present (literally) was a pegboard to mount on the wall. It's a ninja obstacle that he'd been wanting.

My cousin Becky made him this cool American Ninja Warrior cake that featured an edible warped wall. I like that she put "14" on it, which had a double meaning--for his age and for the (non-literal) height of the wall.

We had a family party at our house.

My mom gave him money that she had folded up into cool origami shapes. 

The boys' birthdays are about six months apart which is nice and convenient, so Sam had his half-birthday on March 20th. We celebrated with a candle in a brownie. He was happy with that! 

In Like a Lion

I'm a week behind in my blog post catch-up schedule because I was recovering from a horrible cold last week and could only do the bare minimum for most of the week. I'm happy to report that I'm mostly better now and back to normal, although I'm still more tired than usual. But I'll live. My goal was to blog about March and April before Christmas and take the rest of the month off from blogging starting the week of Christmas, but I may only be able to do March now, or I might have to cut into my "vacation" time to get April done this month. Decisions, decisions.

March lived up to its reputation and came in like a lion and gave me the winter snowstorm I'd been waiting for all winter. Yay!

 

 I really should have gotten a cover for the grill. I realized my mistake when we opened the grill this summer and it was moldy and gross and unusable and I had to get it professionally cleaned. Lesson learned. There is now a good cover on the grill for this winter. 

Violet doing her best to make a trail through the snow.

 School was cancelled but unfortunately I had to go out and drive that morning as the storm was winding down because Peter had a colonoscopy at the hospital that morning that I had to accompany him to. I was nervous about the drive but it turned out to be fine (so did the colonoscopy; everything was okay). 

This was a few days later after some of the snow had melted. Still nice and white though!

I thought these squiggly icicles were cool.

There's a rolled-up Wall Street Journal somewhere in that snow bank that the plow got before I was able to snatch it up from the driveway. I found it weeks later when the snow had melted more. Needless to say, I didn't read it.

February 2019 Randoms

Here they are, in no particular order. And now once again including my phone pictures! 

A scrump-diddly-umptious meal of scrambled eggs and fruit for Sam. 😋

Sam filling out valentines for his class. I bought Fortnite valentines through an Etsy download since there were none to be found in stores or on amazon.

A random shot upstairs, looking into Sam's room and the boys' bathroom.

Scene of a classic American childhood in the 20teens (what is the term for this decade, exactly?).

I liked this cover from the the Bas Bleu catalog. And the quote from Whitman. 

Sam's last Pinewood Derby was a bust. His car didn't do well. The strategies he and Peter had successfully used in the past on his car's design didn't work this time. C'est la vie!  

 Pineapples were kind of my thing in 2018 because of this saying.

Some of the reasons why we do what we do.

This chocolate mousse cake from Trader Joe's was SO GOOD.

A beautiful sunrise sky. 

My updated DNA estimate. I love how British I am!

I have to go to the United Kingdom! My very blood cries out for it!

My friend Meredith gave me this sculpted chocolate "perfect man" for Valentine's Day. So funny!  

I read a book in February about American heiresses who married financially troubled English nobility. One of them was Jennie Churchill, mother of Winston Churchill. She had another son as well. I relate to women with just two sons, and I like this picture pose of them together. I'd like to get a picture like this done of me and John and Sam together. 

I don't know why, but she kind of freaks me out a little.  

Evidence of our paltry, disappointing winter. 😭

 The boys at John's ninja gym.