Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday, dear Emily!

Happy Birthday to you!

Love, Mom

HONEYSUCKLE . . . MOVE OVER!!!


Okay, all you backyard gardeners! I've got a couple of honeysuckle bushes that I planted to give the birds a place to land before coming to my feeder. They started out as little bushes that were below the top of the fence. I watered them and kept them going the first year. Then I kind of forgot about them.

Fast forward 6 years . . . they are monstrous!!! I have casually trimmed them a couple of times, but this spring they have lives of their own. Small deer can hide in them, and look at the blue spruce trying to escape from the advances of Grand-daddy Honeysuckle!!

Problem is, I think I need a chain saw to prune them. And the one on Mary's side (bottom) is growing over the fence and invading her new tree
.

Pam, I already posted on your blog asking for help. Do you or any of my loyal readers have advice about when to prune these and how far back to cut them? Reply quickly . . . before it's too late!

As you can see, it's raining here this afternoon. I'm off to the sewing room to work on David's t-shirts and Katy's Dora the Explorer outfit. Rainy Sundays are good for stuff like that.

Ta Ta!

Just a Few Garden Musings . . . .

The perennials are blooming and I even put in a couple of flats of marigolds. Things are so pretty this spring, and I have been enjoying the yard the last couple of weeks. I haven't been to the pool like Katy, but Oma has her own kind of fun.

Opa's favorite is sitting on the porch in the evening to read the paper until 7 o'clock or so. We eat late and often enjoy our dinner on the porch or the deck. We just can't bear to waste the outdoors.

The front porch with its yummy rockers and shady view is a GREAT place to spend our evenings.

Babes in Pittsburgh!

This weekend was a wedding for one of Emily's college roommates in Buffalo. So Em and Brian came to Pittsburgh on Friday night. We had a great time eating and talking and playing with the kids. Then on Saturday morning, David went with Mom and Dad to the wedding, Katy stayed with Opa and Oma. This, of course, was AFTER we had our traditional waffle breakfast . . . with fresh strawberries that Katy brought from Columbus!














We were planning to go to the park or go swimming on Saturday. However, it kept raining and getting everything all wet. So we filled up the bird feeder and watched the birds and went for walks when the rain stopped. One of the best games to play on a walk is one that Katy calls "FLY"! It consists of Opa holding Katy out on his arms like an airplane and zooming her up and down the sidewalk and over bushes and all kinds of other daredevil stunts. Katy laughs and screams and has a ball with this game. When Opa stops, she yells "More! More!" So Opa can barely lift his arms today, but they had a really great time playing "FLY" on Saturday . . . and again on Sunday for a while.

In the interest of making use of all the stuff I've saved for 20 years from my own kids, I dug the old Fisher Price record player out of the garage for Katy to play with on Saturday. This thing is over 30 years old, and it still plays. Katy didn't know exactly what to make of it. I think she thought it was the funniest looking 'bideo' she had ever seen! And the scratchy sound it made when you moved the arm across the record was downright scary. But the record with "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" and "The Itsey Bitsey Spider" was a real hit. We must have listened to it 20-30 times!

Sunday morning was a great day! Katy helped me make blueberry muffins while David helped Daddy read the paper. Later in the day, we went out to eat pizza at the Chicago Uno place. And it was so nice outside that we sat on the porch and pulled some weeds out of the flower beds and even petted Max, the new puppy that lives across the street.

It was a great weekend, and things are really quiet around here this evening. But we really enjoyed our visit. Everybody got home safe and sound today, too.

See you again soon!

Melanie's Visit . . . Shopping . . . the Great Bed Swap!



Melanie finished her finals on Tuesday, and she drove Dick's SUV to Pittsburgh to swap her double bed for two twins. She is changing rooms next year and doesn't have enough space for the double, so she left that one here and took our twin. The second twin we had was already scheduled to become Katy's big girl bed when she gets out of her crib. Since Melanie had the SUV here, she took both beds back to Columbus. This whole exercise generated a lot of re-arranging of furniture and dust and vacuuming. We cleaned out Melanie's closet while we were at it. There is still a lot to be done over the weekend. And Oma needs to get ready for summer visitors, too. :-)


Of course, no visit from Melanie would be complete without SHOPPING! On Wednesday afternoon, I left work early so that we could go to the Grove City Outlets. For those of you in Ohio, this is an outlet mall owned by the same people as Jeffersonville. The stores and arrangement is the same. So you know we easily spent 3 hours just hitting the important stores. We did, however, stop at the guest welcome center and get the AAA discount coupons and all the special offers. I think we did pretty well, don't you? Any time there is discounted Chico's and Coldwater Creek in close proximity, it is goodness. Such karma is rare. Melanie obviously found a few places on her favorites list as well. After shopping, we went to Olive Garden for dinner. Those of you who know Melanie will know she was pleased with this restaurant selection.

Greg says he wants to see the Narnia movie this weekend before it leaves the big screen. We will probably catch that tomorrow or Sunday. It is supposed to be very hot outside, so a little bit of yard work will go a long way. The Three Rivers Arts Festival starts tonight, and I will definitely want to go there before the 22nd. However, we need some quiet time after travelling around in May. We will catch it later. Besides, I can stop down at lunch time since I'm downtown! (Shhhh!)

For those of you who are new to blogging, I thought I might mention that this is supposed to be "interactive." This means that it kind of takes the place of letter writing or e-mailing. The idea is to have little conversations with people in the comments. So jump right in there all you silent people. I would be delighted to know you are out there and whether you are bored stiff with what I'm writing or mildly entertained or . . . anything. You do have to create an ID to comment, because if I allow anonymous posts I get a lot of unsolicited advertisements and spam in the comments. But I really would enjoy hearing from you.

Have a great weekend!

Another Beautiful Weekend . . . Lots to do!

This was another great weekend. On Friday night, Greg and I went to the symphony at Heinz Hall. Pinchas Zukerman was conducting three Mozart pieces. They were all great; and the featured performer was a pianist named Benjamin Hochman playing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17 in G. It was a lovely concert and a great evening with my sweetie.

Saturday was the Federated golf outing that usually happens on Good Friday. This year, Easter was so early that the outing was postponed until May 31. While this golf outing has a history of rain and cool weather, we thought we might have sneaked by having it on a different weekend. But on Friday, the weather forecast was calling for thunderstorms on Friday night and all day Saturday. When I got up Saturday morning, Kathy B. from my foursome called to say that it had been raining since 4:30 a.m. and that there was a tornado watch for our area until 11 a.m. We made several calls trying to decide whether to drive the 45 minutes to the course for our 9:30 tee time given the conditions. But by 8 a.m., the storms were moving south of Pittsburgh and things were looking better.

We gathered at our rendezvous spot and got to Birdfoot Golf Course by 9 a.m. under cloudy skies. In the picture above, you can see me, Sue, Linda, and Kathy B. right before we started our round. We were about 15 minutes late teeing off because of a weather delay. Otherwise, it just got more and more beautiful outside the longer we played! It turned out to be a great round and a fun time. The course was really beautiful as well. I had never played there; and it is definitely a place I'd go again. The only warning I have is to watch out for the long par 5 on number 13. It is a KILLER!

Greg and I spent Saturday evening reading on the porch and eating kind of a "grazing" dinner. Then we watched a movie and turned in. This morning, we went to the early service at church because I had signed up to help with a service project with my sisters at Zonta Three Rivers North. (You will remember them from February when I wrote about the Glass Slipper Ball.)

The project we were working on today was to assemble and pack 1,000 birthing kits for poor women in a coastal area of Peru (South America). The infant mortality rate in this area is well over 30 percent due to unsanitary conditions and lack of medical facilities. Most of the births take place in subsistence-level "houses" with no running water and no electricity. The kits we put together were packed in Ziploc bags and contained sterile sheets, gloves, gauze, ties, and soap to assist the women in a clean delivery.

My shift was 1-3 p.m. this afternoon. I rode down to Duquesne University where one of our Zontian's had access to a large OT lab on campus that we were using for the assembly and packing. Here we put on hair nets and sterile gloves and created little assembly lines to pack and seal the kits. It was a great time working and chatting. And the group of Zontians and the volunteers from Girls Hope and everybody there were so pumped up about actually doing something to help make women's lives a little better clear down in Peru.

While I am talking about helping people, I want to also mention that our good friend, Bill A., from Northway Christian Community is leaving this coming Thursday for a month in China and Thailand. His first stop is a village in China that was hit by the earthquake last week. Northway has some missionaries on the ground in this region who were unhurt by the quake itself. They have been providing relief for the many people affected by the earthquake. Bill is going over to help and deliver funding and support.

On the related topic of helping others, I need to tell you about a book I'm reading. I bought a mystery story to read on the airplane a couple of weeks ago when I flew to San Diego. I finished that book in the evenings while I was at the conference, so I was browsing through the bookstore at the San Diego Airport looking for something else to read. I ended up buying a copy of "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. This is a true story about Greg Mortenson and his work in Pakistan and Afghanistan over the last ten years. Greg is the son of a missionary who was raised in Tanzania. His father founded the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center. (I know some people in Beavercreek who have been to this hospital.) It is so exciting to see how an ordinary guy has made such a tremendous impact in these places by building schools and investing in the people of this region. Best of all, he is educating girls in a place where the cultural norm is for women to be denied an education. Anyway, I am still reading this book; but I highly recommend it to you. Check out this book if you get a chance!

And finally, here's a tribute to my BFF, Sue, who has been my friend since ninth grade. That would be about 40 some years. Sue's birthday was last week; and she is still one of my most tenured and dearest friends.

Have a great week!