Sunday Afternoon

Last night, Joel and I celebrated Earth Hour by shutting down everything, including Amelia, from 8:30-9:30pm. We lit some candles and grabbed a drink to enjoy the darkness. I'm not sure how many people participated world wide but I think it was A LOT! I wonder how different my power bill would be if we did this once a month, or once a week. I couldn't be on Mondays though, don't wanna miss House.
Joel and Amelia have gone to Jameson's 3rd birthday party today. I stayed home due to the nasty cough and the need to study (which I'm currently taking a little break from). Amelia was sooooo cute when they left. She was dressed nicely and had glitter in her hair - party ready! This afternoon, she and I will go do a little shopping 'cause I don't plan to go to Sonora again for the rest of the week.
Oh, the butterflies... all 5 "hatched." Two of them as previously reported, one during school on Friday and the other two during the course of that evening. They're doing great, eating from orange slices, strawberries and flowers with sugar water sprayed on them. Amelia watches them all the time. We'll be setting them free at the Preschool Spring Party on Friday. It has been a very cool project and we'll probably do it again.

Yucky Bugs

I'm talking about a couple different bugs here. First, I have the yuckiest bug you can get... the flu bug. I feel like crap and am at home which means that Joel is working all by himself which makes me feel a little worse. It's alright though, I'll take a nap and feel a bit better about it. :) The other bugs really aren't vey yucky at all. We've been housing the catterpillars for Amelia's school since we received them in the mail a couple of weeks ago. She's takes them in on Fridays to show everyone their progress. Last week, all 5 of them climbed up to the top of the cup and became chrystalides. We got home last night and noticed we had a new butterfly in the habitat. Another opened up about a half-hour later. As of this morning, we still only had the 2 but I'll be going to pick everyone up soon and I hope we have more now. I really hope at least one opened while they were at school today!

The Sniffles

Now that Amelia is finally getting over her cold and coughing less each day, I've only just begun. I began to feel my throat getting soar last night and now, at the end of the day, I've got it all. The itchy eyes, swollen throat, headache and chills. Great. Amelia and Joel are playing and all I want to do is go to sleep. I hope this goes away quick 'cause I just don't have time to be sick... again.

What the...?

So I mowed the lawn the other day - gorgeous day. We had a very nice BBQ and visit with Joel's family yesterday as Aunt Kay, Uncle Rick and Cousin Gwynne were here from the Bay area. Today, we awake to SNOW! Where did Spring go? This wasn't really unexpected - the meteorologists said this would happen, I just didn't believe them, couldn't believe them. The report called for snow last night to about 2500' and we're around 3800' so we were warned. When Amelia awoke thismorning and came out to the kitchen, all I heard was "Oh my gosh" and then "where's my snow boots, Mom?"

Beautiful Day!

It is 72 degrees here today and I am loving it! Amelia spent the morning at school and I ran errands. It was BookMobile day so Amelia traded her library books in for 8 new ones - Joel will be happy as he's the one that does the bed time readings and gets bored with repetition. Amelia, however, does not and would be prefectly content reading Green Eggs and Ham every single night. When we got home this afternoon, Amelia played in her sand box while I mowed the lawn - it actually needed it already!
The big news on our hill is that of a visitor... a big Mama Bear is awake and hungry. She's been getting into the neighbor's trash cans and making people nervous. A few days ago, our friend John accidentally locked the bear in his garage, long hilarious story. Anyway, it took a snow shovel to clean up the "mess." So far, I haven't seen or heard it at my house but that doesn't make me want to be outside much after dark.

Amelia's Big Girl Bed

Amelia spent her first night in a "big" bed last night. When we brought it home, she was so excited and actually asked to go to bed last night! Joel found the bed on craigslist a couple of months ago and I got a mattress for it yesterday when I was in Sonora. After seeing the bed, our neighbor, Donna, brought over the cute bedspread that really went with the bed perfectly. As you can see, as soon as I got it made up with her new Diego sheets, she got to try out the bounce!

My New Toy

I've wanted one ever since I saw it on an infommercial at 3am many months ago... a Steam Mop. I hate mopping the floor and I don't have time to get down and scrub it every time so this seemed like a very cool thing to me. So, I didn't get one for Christmas and I didn't get one for my Birthday so, after selling my little motorcycle last week, I splurged. Joel brought it to me at Gwynne's thisafternoon (I was painting again) and I tried it out in her kitchen while Amelia was still napping. WOW! It turned out pretty good. We brought it home and I had to wait until after dinner to try it out in my own kitchen 'cause everyone was hungry, darn it. The floors look great and they're not sticky like mopping sometimes leaves them. I also did the master bathroom - major improvement! Amelia's bathroom will have to wait for now as I went through all 6 of the cleaning pads and they are currently in the washer. That's right, wash and reuse! No waste, no chemicals, no more crap to buy and it only weighs about 4 pounds. So far so good on this crazy purchase.

Bowling with Toddlers

I just sent the last hour or so at the Black Oak Lanes with Amelia's class. It turned out to be way more fun than I thought it would and Amelia had a great time as well! They are actually quite set up for the preschool set - they have bumpers, ramps to roll the balls down, little shoes and light balls. Amelia bowled a 68!
We experienced another first today - the escalator! As soon as we got on it Amelia yelled "woo hoo!" Disneyland is going to seriously blow her mind!

Weather?

So, as I said before, Saturday had temps in the 60s - perfect for a get-together. Sunday afternoon brought rain but nothing compared to Monday. Insane rain and hail along with thunder and lightning (see photo). We had some more rain on Tuesday. You know, the all-day drizzle that puts people in a fantastic mood but nothing prepared me for what I woke up to... 3 inches of fresh snow! It doesn't stop there. It is now about 2pm and the sun is shining bright! The temperature is just over 50 degrees and the snow is nearly gone. The street I live on looks more like a creek now as the water runs down it and the previously mentioned storm left quite a bit of mud a debris, very pretty. This is, by far, the strangest Winter I have ever experienced!

Craziness

This last Saturday, we celebrated Joel's birthday with a White Trash Bash. We were joined by many well-dressed friends and family for a hill-billy pot luck that included hot dogs roasted over and open flame and paired with white bread, Ritz and cheese in a can, BBQ chicken legs, bean dip, BBQ chips, cheap beer and a cake made by piling Hostess cakes up on a big plate. YUM! We all had fun the Spam carving contest - Gwynne was our winner and took home her very own can of Ranch Beans. The best dressed male was Billy and he received an outdoors magazine from the liquor store. Jessica was the best dressed female and was awarded a package of fly strips and a box of lime Jell-O. The coveted 40 oz. Cobra beer went to our best dressed couple, Jason and Rachel. Even the kids dressed up - Amelia wore her well worn jeans and work boots and sported a tramp stamp while Jameson wore overalls without a shirt and had a tattoo on his neck, nice. The weather cooperated through the evening and we were blessed with temps in the 60s.

So now it's raining - A LOT!!! We had a huge downpour a little while ago that included Thunder, Lightning, Hail, Rain and Mud. Crazy.