Dancing with Daffodils

We have traveled the last three years for spring break but it just wasn't in the budget this year. Plus now that Curtis is playing  a high school sport, he really didn't want to miss practice or games. I tried really hard to make a short weekend trip work but even that didn't pan out. Now I'm glad since it allowed us to buy the car but I was worried this week would be disappointing to the kids after the fun adventures we've had the last couple of years.  I am happy to report that my kids were perfectly happy with our week. We did a cleaning project every day and so I feel like we worked well together and accomplished a lot, including cleaning out the garage, doing yard work, cleaning rooms and bathrooms and floors. But we loved sleeping in and having a fun breakfast and then getting our work done and then playing. Lily worked a lot on her presentation and paper for AP Research and she told me she was happy we stayed home so she could get it all done. They practiced ...

 Tuesday was Josh's 45th birthday. I would have planned a party or something fun to celebrate but he isn't the most social guy and we have been trying not to spend any extra money lately so we kept it low key. We actually went out Monday night for his birthday dinner of Nicolletti's and then I spent most of Tuesday grocery shopping and baking. Brandon was supposed to have a baseball game that night but it got cancelled for rain so that was kind of nice timing so we could actually celebrate Josh. Since we'd already had pizza I got fancy (expensive) sourdough bread and made banana bread muffins and his favorite donut muffins and we had fancy egg, cheese and bacon sandwiches with the muffins for dinner. His main gift was a surfing day when he was traveling in San Diego but I also got him a new shirt, book and an alarm clock, then the kids got him trail mix, another book, kitchen shears (his request) and Lily got him the Dog Man movie. He was the only one who wanted to go s...

Josh has been gone for work for the past two weeks and it went well but was long and lonely. It didn't help that he was in CA and loving it so it kind of felt like he went on spring break without us, but we made it. The first week he was gone I did a lot of getting up early, driving all over, teaching piano, picking up kids, walking with Michelle, taking boys to baseball, and did I mention driving all over our county? I tried to make food Josh doesn't love so for dinner we had cottage cakes one night and a croissant berry bake another, along with shepherd's pie and banana cream cake for dessert.  That Friday was an early dismissal and I picked up Lily a few minutes early from school so she could take her driving test. I was so nervous but the test guy was super nice and Lily did well and passed! I was so relieved....and then terrified that I was going to just send her off on her own. She ended up driving Emma and herself to dance and then home again and it was super nice no...