It’s time to sign up for our next Pilates session.  Imagine our surprise when we opened the website and saw a picture of us as the current example of what the class offers.

 

For the exercise in the photo, we have resistance bands (green) around our legs and we need to open and close our knees 40 times, keeping our feet and the rest of our bodies on the floor.  If you’re not in shape, your inner thighs will tell you within 2-3 hours.  Ted is in the front (red shirt) and I’m in the blue shirt.  The teacher is in the upper left.  There were more people in the class, but I guess they didn’t all fit in the picture.  We’d forgotten that we signed consents for this photo 1-2 years ago.

Finally–warm weather!  We’ve had highs in the upper 70s and 80s and no rain this week for more than 1-2 days in a row, and it feels so good!  Wherever you meet people, the talk is about how good it is to see the sun, how much more energetic we all feel, and what a treat it is to be above 50 degrees for a change.

“In the spring,” Tennyson wrote, “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”  Love is a year-round (not a seasonal) thing for Ted and me, so in the spring, our thoughts turn to opening up the pool.  This week, we’ve been cleaning up the yard and the lawn furniture–since it’s finally warm enough to sit outside and enjoy ourselves.

The cover is off the pool, the furniture is out of the storage shed, and I’m ready to go with my trusty power washer.

There was a lot of rain in the past few months. The water level was at least 16 inches lower than this when we covered the pool last fall.

Everything is cleaned up and put in place.  I love seeing all the trees in bloom wherever I go.

 

This year, we’re going to have a new pool liner installed, so we don’t have to clean up the water.  A technician will be coming early next week to put the pump back in working order.  Then we’ll drain the pool and a crew will spend a day removing this liner and installing the new one.  The warm weather makes me eager to get back in the water to swim some laps.

 

For non-grammar nerds, the Oxford (serial) comma is the final comma in a list of things.  People either love or hate the Oxford comma, and style manuals are beginning to compromise by advocating use of the Oxford comma as an option when clarity is needed.  I always use it because it always provides clarity.

Without the Oxford comma:  I love my parents, Lady Gaga and Humpty Dumpty.

With the Oxford comma:  I love my parents, Lady Gaga, and Humpty Dumpty.

This week, Ted and I attended the St. Charles School District orchestra concert.  This is my favorite school concert of the year because it includes the entire string program in the six participating district schools:  elementary (5th-6th grades), intermediate (7th-8th grades), and high school (9th-12th grades).  In thanking the parents, community, and administration for their support, one of the teacher/directors mentioned that she is proud to be part of such a thriving string program (about 400 students) when many schools are eliminating similar programs due to budget cuts.

L -> R: elementary, intermediate, high school orchestras

 

The elementary school orchestra always plays first.  Their selections are short and simple (“Hot Cross Buns,” “Flintstones Theme,” etc.), and it’s amazing to hear their improvement since the fall concert.  Then the intermediate students play more difficult pieces (e.g., a simplified arrangement of Dvorák’s “Cavatina”).  You think the elementary orchestra sounds good until you hear how much better the musicians are with two more years of practice in intermediate school.  Finally, the high school orchestra performs and it sounds even better.  This year, one of their selections was a Disney medley arranged by a high school student musician.  The concert finale selections are played by all three orchestras together–a challenge for the teacher/directors, I’m sure.  Those pieces were my favorites of the evening.

Author’s note:  As a former band member (clarinet), I was amused at the way the directors kept the three orchestras on the same beat for the final pieces.  The elementary director (on the left) plays her violin along with her students and keeps time with her bow strokes.  The high school director (on the right) keeps his eyes on her to keep time with his hands.  The intermediate director (center and a little forward of the other two) watches the high school director and keeps time with him.  Teamwork! 

The intermediate orchestra takes its bow after its performance.  The arrows point at Sky (front) and Dylan (back).

 

When the concert is finished, cake and punch are provided for the students and guests.  The moment the musicians are excused after taking their final bow, there is a mad student rush for the gym door to get to the cake and punch!  (After all, it’s probably been nearly two hours since they had dinner.)  Yes, it’s always an enjoyable evening.  Next year, Teddy will be joining the elementary orchestra.

Cake!!!  The still photo doesn’t do justice to the speed at which these kids are heading for the door.

It’s been seven days since our last frost advisory and since our low temperatures have gone below freezing.  Before we get too happy about the possible arrival of spring, however, we had another cold night.  Yesterday’s normal temperatures are 71/51 degrees.  We had a high of 62 and a low of 37.

This is what I saw on our thermometer this morning.

 

Until it gets warm for real, I agree with this guy.

At least it’s not sleeting here.

Yesterday, Ted and I drove to the Lake of the Ozarks for my birthday dinner at Bentley’s.  It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day and it looks like spring might actually come to Missouri.  The grass was green, the budding leaves gave the trees a green tinge, and the redbuds were in full bloom all along the 150-mile route.

Unfortunately, our drive from home to the restaurant was filled with highway adventures.  Due to a tractor-trailer fire a few days ago, the service road along I-70 was closed, so eastbound access to I-70 was not possible at “our” interchange.  It didn’t affect us when we left westbound, and we knew about it in advance, so we took a different exit to get home.  It was early rush hour when we left home, but we knew that too, and it was no big deal.  Then we got to a mile-long back-up on I-70 for an accident on the other side!!!  Our back-up was just the looky-loos watching the accident; it was much longer on the other side because some of the eastbound lanes were closed.  After that, there were some early season construction zones that slowed us down.

The big event of the day, however, was the reconstruction of the exit ramp at Kingdom City where we turn to go south to the Lake.  The westbound exit was closed and detoured.  It took us more than 20 minutes to make our exit and turn so we could continue on our way.  After creeping our way along the detour route, we finally reached US-54 and, in spite of the installation of a traffic light, it was still difficult to make a left turn at the corner to join the southbound traffic.

The traffic coming from the north was backed up. . .

. . . and the traffic back-up continued on the south side of the intersection.  The actual exit ramp (when it’s open) joins I-70 and US-54 way down at the McDonald’s sign on the left.

 

We called the restaurant to re-schedule our reservation, and had no more traffic problems.  Some other drivers did, though.  The State Patrol was out in full force (end of the month?) and we saw four cars stopped, presumably for speeding.

Our waiter delivered our glasses of wine quickly so we could immediately begin relaxing, and our dinner was wonderful.  It was definitely worth the drive–even with the traffic hassles.

Just looking at the Lake of the Ozarks and seeing trees in bloom was a treat.

 

Our drive home was uneventful and I think my 2018 birthday season is now at an end.  It was a good seven-week run.

In spite of the never-ending below-normal temperatures we’ve been having, Mother Nature is strong enough to start things growing.  As soon as I passed the carts and entered the Wal-Mart store today, I saw this eye-catching display.

Aaah-choo!

I’m not the only one wondering if winter will ever end.  Ted saw this on Facebook.

It’s a dated post.  Today is the 106th of January.

I’m not imagining it.  It’s true.  We’ve had so many cold, gray, and rainy days since February, that we’re a month behind on spring.  The normal high and low temperatures for today are 67 and 47 degrees, but we had a high of 43, with snow flurries and a freeze warning forecast for tonight.

After snow last Sunday, we had two days in the upper 70s last week.  That was just enough to convince our magnolia trees that they should open their long-ready buds–a month late.  The blooms, however, are proof that spring is late and that the weather has truly been as crummy and as cold as it seemed.

Normal spring

This is one of our magnolia trees on March 16, 2016.

 

2018 spring

This is the same magnolia tree today, April 15, 2018.  The outer petals of the buds froze several weeks ago.  By staying closed, the frozen outer petals protected the blooms, but the color suffered.  They’ll freeze completely tonight.  Note also the rain-wet streets–again.  (But the grass looks good.)

It’s spring (except weatherwise), so that means it’s concert time.  Ted and I were able to attend the orchestra concert at Hardin Middle School, featuring Sky and Dylan on their cellos.  They play much better than they did when they started, and it’s obvious that the music is more difficult than “Three Blind Mice”–one of the first pieces they learned several years ago.  The music was wonderful and, thanks to daylight saving time, it was still light outside when the concert was finished.

I couldn’t see Dylan very well from where we were sitting.  Follow the arrows to find Sky and Dylan.  Yes, that’s Dylan hidden behind the scroll of the cello played by the boy on Sky’s right.

 

Dylan is (a little) more visible in this close-up.  Sky takes this music seriously.

My sister-in-law, Mutzie, sent me an email filled with map graphics that show a variety of interesting facts.  This map made me glad it’s not 1969 any more.

Hard to imagine, isn’t it?

Celebrate!  In honor of National Siblings Day, let’s re-visit July 2004.

Really, Steve?  Making bunny ears on yourself??

I recently posted a cat image of the world Ted received from one of his friends.  Shortly after that, my brother Steve sent me some of his favorite animal-like views of the world’s land masses.

The Mercator projection of North and South America produces this duck image.

 

Without the labels, these Australian animal profiles could be part of the Rorschach test.

“April is the cruellest month.”

                     The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot

 

Yesterday:  High temperature of 66 degrees; sunshine; warm breeze; birds singing; sitting outdoors and enjoying a good read.  Spring!

 

Today:  Temperature going down from a morning high of 51 to a predicted low of 24 degrees; currently 38 degrees with a wind chill of 30; cloudy; wind gusting at 25 mph; birds hunkering down in their nests; rain on the way (formerly expected to be snow, but we’re catching a break); no one sitting outdoors.  Back to winter.

 

Note:  Eliot had insider information about the capricious nature of April weather.  He was from St. Louis.

I don’t normally think, “I know what I’ll do today–I’ll look through some old folders,” but every time I look through old folders, I find something enjoyable.  Obviously, I have the good sense to fill my folders with interesting memorabilia.

Today, I was trying to find a document in an old folder and found some information my dad probably sent me about Hingham, WI, my hometown.  I had totally forgotten that Hingham has an Historic District with 13 buildings that were recognized August 6, 1994.  I remember all the buildings, even though some have been updated and don’t look like they did when I lived there.  Presumably, they have not been altered since 1994, but I left for college in 1965 so there was plenty of time for change before the buildings became “historic.”

If there were 200 people living in Hingham while I was growing up, that was probably a high estimate.  The 2010 census counted 886 residents of Hingham, so the town–still unincorporated–has grown.  I never thought much about living there and never thought it was anything special, so I was impressed when I read that Hingham, originally platted in 1850, was “one of the early and prominent communities in Sheboygan County.”  (Prominent?  Hingham?)  In 1890, however, the railroad was laid two miles west and “effectively ended the town’s emerging status.”  The railroad went through Adell, where my family went to church.  The 2010 census gives Adell 516 people, so I don’t think the loss of the railroad had any major long-term effect on Hingham’s emerging status.

If accumulated stuff is supposed to be thrown away unless it is useful or joyful, this folder gets to stay.  It was joyful to find this information on an unseasonably cold April afternoon.

A grade school friend’s dad owned the Hingham Feed Mill.  It originally operated with a millrace to turn the mill wheel.  Kids used to swim in the millrace.

 

The Hingham Hall was the gathering place of the town.   In the summer, it was ground zero for kick-the-can games and for bike tag (you play tag biking around town instead of running, and the Hall steps were “home free”).  During the school year, it was the venue for school plays and for roller skating parties sponsored by the 4-H club.

 

One of my grade school classmates lived upstairs in the George Poole Store.  I don’t think she knew it was an historic building.  At that time, her dad owned it and it was the Clover Farms grocery store.  My great-grandma Dell lived in Whitcomb House.  When I was five years old, I remember walking the short distance from my house to hers to visit with her on her porch.  She often offered me a cookie.  Maybe she enjoyed baking cookies as much as I do.

 

If I had drawn this map, I would have included “the pond” in the blank space bordered by Co. Hwy. F and Water St.  The pond is where we went ice skating in the winter and swimming in the summer.  Along with the fire escape on the “old grade school,” the pond was a defining feature of the town to my friends and me.   Until I saw this map, I had no idea I lived on Maine Street!   It’s spelled “Maine” on the map, but “Main” on the picture of Whitcomb House.  Either way, it wasn’t Main(e) St. when I lived in Hingham.

When Kathy was here for my birthday weekend, I learned that this is her favorite cartoon.  It’s from The New Yorker magazine.  When we found it for her, she laughed again–as she’s apparently been doing since 10/10/94.

 

Because it’s a tradition.

“You may ask, how did this tradition get started?  I’ll tell you.  I don’t know.  But it’s a tradition.”–Tevye, Fiddler on the Roof

A few weeks ago, I discovered the secret of perfect Vienna Torte custard frosting.  Now I’ve cracked the code for delicious cherry pie.  My cherry pies are always ok, but not great.  Ted’s mom made delicious cherry pies but, for unknown reasons, I never asked her for her recipe.  “Aha!” I thought.  “Perhaps Ted’s sister, Mutzie, has her mother’s cherry pie recipe.  I’ll ask her.”

Mutzie’s response to my request was that she doesn’t bake much.  She did, however, have a Door County cookbook and thought that, since Door County is famous for its cherries, there might be a cherry pie recipe in it.  Sure enough, there is, and it’s called (surprise!) “Door County Cherry Pie.”  Mutzie doesn’t use the cookbook, so she offered it to me and I accepted.

I discovered some forgotten Door County cherries from last summer in the freezer and decided to try the recipe.  It tastes just like Ted’s mom’s delicious cherry pie.  Thanks, Mutzie.

It seems that spring has forgotten Missouri.  We had a few hours of warm weather this morning (a high of 73 degrees), but the cold front moved in around 2:00 pm and the temperature is rapidly falling to a predicted low of 27.  Tomorrow’s high is forecast to be 40 degrees–and so goes the rest of the ten-day forecast.  Missouri and I are not the only ones disappointed by the absence of spring.  I found this news blurb back on March 22, but the weather hasn’t improved since then, so it’s still timely.

While we were waiting for Jim, the salesman, at the pool store last weekend, we were looking at the display room walls covered with prize-winning pool designs.  We’ve done this before to kill time while we’re waiting for assistance, but there are so many awards on so much wall space that this is the first time we got to the wall with our pool on it.

 

This is one section of an award-covered wall, including our pool.

And here’s “our” plaque.  Third place, yes, but still an award-winning design.  The designer told us at the time that this was the first time he designed brick trim in the deck area rather than just using it around the edges of the pool itself.  (There’s more brick trim around the ladder across the pool, but you can’t see it very well in the sunlight.)

Temperature:  25 degrees

Precipitation:  rain, freezing rain, sleet, and snow

Bonus:  thunder!

Road conditions:  improving–the snowplow just went by our house.

So much for all the flowering buds that were almost ready to open.  April Fool!

The normal high and low temperatures for St. Peters at this time of the year are 61 and 42 degrees.  The weather forecast, however, is predicting high temperatures between 28 and 49 degrees for the next ten days and lows below freezing for six of those ten nights.  Up to two inches of snow is forecast for tomorrow.

So today we bought a new liner for our pool and set up a pool opening date to have it installed. . . . And that’s how you define optimism.

I love having my birthday on the first day of spring–even if the wind chill was 24 degrees when I got up this morning.  Google and Snoopy are celebrating with me.

Kathy and Annette came for a weekend visit to celebrate my birthday.  When they arrived, we headed to Pizza Hut to meet Kari’s family.  The boys had not planned to join us for lunch, because they thought we were going to have something like grilled cheese at the house.  When they heard we were going out for pizza, they announced that “Pizza Hut trumps grilled cheese” and immediately found time in their busy schedules to join us.

I saw the kids less than two weeks ago, and Sky was almost taller than I am.  Today, when I saw him, I was looking up into his eyes just a little bit.  I now have four grandsons taller than I am and three more who are growing quickly.

 

The girls, Ted, and I spent the afternoon catching up with each other while the kids played, and then we had a birthday dinner with gifts and cake.

The woman who has it all:  family, birthday gifts, and a perfect Vienna Torte.

Kari’s family gave me a book I can’t wait to read and a voucher for a lunch date with Kari.  That means there’s some quality mom-daughter time coming up soon.  The hand soap and lotion are from Kathy and Annette.

 

When I was about 11 or 12, my Aunt Shirley gave me a pretty bisque porcelain flower pot with hand-painted raised flowers on one side.  I could never get anything to grow in it, but I love it.  Some time ago, I gave it to Creative Kathy and asked her to think of a way to make the flower pot pretty to display.  She filled it with flowers to match those on the pot.

With a table runner Kari made, the enhanced flower pot is a perfect spring centerpiece for the kitchen table.

 

The big finish for the birthday dinner was the perfect Vienna Torte I made yesterday.  Yum!

Teddy (left) is in a state of supreme happiness anticipating the cake.  He came back later and asked for a second piece.  Of course, Grandma said “yes.”

 

The weekend was over too quickly.  Now I’m looking forward to my remaining birthday lunches / dinners with friends and with Ted–two down and five to go.  I love my birthday season!

My favorite birthday cake is Vienna Torte–a recipe from my grandmother.  It’s a chiffon cake with a custard frosting.  My mom always made it for my birthday, and I started making it after Ted and I were married.

I never have trouble making a great chiffon cake, but it’s always a challenge to achieve the right texture for the custard frosting.  Grandma’s Vienna Torte frosting recipe tells me to cool the custard and then to “add powdered sugar, butter, and vanilla.”  That’s what Mom did and that’s what I’ve done every time I made the cake.  A few times, it has turned out perfectly; most of the time, the custard is runny instead of fluffy.  It firms up in the refrigerator and tastes fine, but its unpredictable consistency is frustrating.

This year, I decided to see if Google had any ideas related to custard frostings.  I searched “frosting recipes with custard and butter and powdered sugar” and–surprise!–found several.  They weren’t exactly like Grandma’s, but I found four that required cooking a custard, letting it cool, and then combining it with butter and powdered sugar.  Each of the online recipes, however, directed me to first whip the butter; then to whip it with the powdered sugar; and then to add the custard to the butter/powdered sugar mixture and whip it.  I have always done the opposite:  added the other ingredients to the custard.

Using Grandma’s recipe and following the online whipping directions produced a perfect custard frosting!  Maybe that’s what Grandma did all along and she just didn’t write it down for herself and/or future generations.  After all these years, I can finally make stress-free Vienna Torte for my birthday.

I have to go now so I can do my happy dance.

Today, Ted and I went shopping for groceries and had the opportunity to observe Channel 4’s “Weather Radio Wednesday.”  In early spring (pre-tornado season), Channel 4’s weather team visits a different metro area location each Wednesday from 3:30-6:30 pm.  This Wednesday, they were at our local St. Peters grocery store.  They had weather radios for sale, and were also available to program weather radios to sound alerts for the metro area county of the user’s choice.

The line to reach the Weather Radio Wednesday team stretched the length of the store aisle, and then curved another 8-10 people around the corner.

Two weather team members (blue shirts) covered the weather radio sales and programming.

Channel 4’s chief meteorologist (on the right in a blue shirt with a Channel 4 logo patch) did public relations duties with the crowd and also broadcast his 5:00 pm and 6:00 pm weathercasts from this location.

 

This was a popular event.  I heard the store manager say it was like Christmas, with people cruising the parking lot, looking for a place to park.  Ted and I can verify this, as we needed to park on the perimeter of the parking lot.  Thankfully for us, the grocery-purchase lines were much shorter than the weather radio line.

In The Proposal, Betty White (the grandma) gives Sandra Bullock (the soon-to-be granddaughter-in-law) a necklace that has come down through the family.  When Sandra protests, Betty insists that grandmas love to give their things away because it means they’ll still be around in some way after they die.  This is true.

A few years ago, I gave Kyra, my only granddaughter (as she likes to remind us), a few pieces of my jewelry.  I wasn’t sure if she’d wear them or not, but I hoped she would at least treasure them as a memento of me.

Kyra is currently serving on a mission for her church in Bakersfield, CA.  She sends a weekly email message and always includes some photos about what’s going on in her life.  Today, as I was scrolling through the pictures she sent, I recognized a necklace from me on her neck.

Yes, grandmas love to give their things away.  They love it even more when they see their granddaughters enjoying those things.

This is me at three years old.  Check out the necklace.  I’ll bet my mom made that skirt and blouse.  The decorative bow in my hair that matches the skirt is definitely her touch, and she loved to do detailed sewing like the blouse.

Here’s Kyra.  Check out her necklace.  Beautiful girl, treasured necklace, and a little tear of happiness in grandma’s eye.

Today’s Google doodle features William Henry Perkins, a British chemist and entrepreneur who accidentally discovered the first synthetic dye.  In 1856, when he was just 18 years old, Perkins was trying to synthesize quinine to treat malaria.  His experiment failed and, instead of quinine, his beakers were filled with a dirty brown sludge.  When he cleaned the beakers with alcohol, the sludge became a bright, rich purple dye that he called mauveine.  A long chain of chemical advances resulted in a bright, inexpensive synthetic color available to the masses.  Thanks to Perkins, we don’t have to smash roots and berries to have colorful clothing.

In its apparently never-ending quest for health, happiness, and statistics, Google studied consumption of its employees’ favorite candy:  m&m’s®.  Organic figs, nuts, and other healthy snacks were placed in clear containers; m&m’s® were put into opaque containers.  After seven weeks, the 2,000 Google employees in the New York office consumed 3.1 million fewer calories in m&m’s® form.  That was the equivalent of nine vending machine-size bags of m&m’s® for each of the 2,000 employees in the seven-week period!

I have only minimal will power when it comes to m&m’s®, so I rarely buy them.  If, however, they are placed in front of me (e.g., at an event or given as a gift for, say, my birthday), I give myself permission to eat them.  Kathy and Annette gave me a vending machine-size bag of m&m’s® for Christmas as well as an opaque container for them.  After we took down the Christmas tree, I put the little bagful of m&m’s® into the container and set it on the kitchen counter in plain sight.  (This was a gift, so my rules gave me permission to eat the candy.)  Google’s research is right:  That little bag of m&m’s® lasted more than a week.  The letters on the container are far less tempting than those colorful little chocolate bits in an open dish, and I pour fewer pieces into my hand than I grab from an open bowl.  Go, Google!

I bravely purchased an 11-ounce bag of Easter m&m’s and put the little pastel temptresses into the opaque jar. After more than two weeks, nearly half of the bag’s contents is still in the jar, even with “Chocoholic Ted” helping me eat them.

Dr. William Anthony, a Boston University professor, wanted to spotlight the health benefits of napping.  In 1999, he selected the Monday after the change to daylight saving time to celebrate National Napping Day.  He knew that after losing an hour of sleep, people would already be in nap mode.

To celebrate, thank Dr. Anthony and treat yourself to a 20-minute nap today.

Ted’s and my Pilates class meets Monday and Wednesday mornings.  The previous session ended Monday, March 5 and the next session doesn’t begin until Monday, March 12.  Without that Wednesday class, we had a full seven days without Pilates, our only specifically scheduled exercise.  The weather has been cold, gray, and gloomy and Ted and I have been reading some very good books.  We decided to live on the edge and take a whole week off from exercise.  The plan was to just take it easy, and don’t accomplish much for a week.  After all, what’s retirement for if you can’t do stuff like that?

I made it three days.  By the fourth day, I felt like such a slug, I had to get out and walk at least two miles.  Ted held out until the next day, and we’ve exercised every day since then.  We didn’t see any walkers going past our house today because the weather is that bad, but we were out there, raising the bar for everyone else.

Right after Russia launched Sputnik in 1957, our schools were participating in the President’s Physical Fitness Program–also launched in 1957.  (Coincidence?  I think not.)  Maybe all that “beat the Russians” exercise in grade school successfully conditioned Ted and me to get up and get out, and spoiled us for inactivity.

Ted and I were working in the back yard last week and noticed that one of our redbud trees wasn’t looking good.  It’s been failing for several years, and we had a major limb cut out of it a few years ago.  Last week’s inspection revealed the base of the tree looking so rotted, we were afraid a spring wind storm would blow it over.  It would then hit (1) our storage shed; (2) our pool fence; or (3) our neighbor’s sunroom windows.  Every option would require a repair.  Ted called the tree company and they came to the house today, chainsaws in hand, to remove the 31-year-old tree.

Men at work.  They cut the main limbs away, one by one.  Two guys held a rope around the soon-to-fall limb while the third guy cut it off with his chain saw.

The final limb bit the dust, guided just to the left of the neighbors’ sunroom, and is lying on the ground.  No more redbud tree; no broken windows.

This is the rot Ted and I saw at the base of the tree last week.  The other side of the trunk looked the same.

The inside of the tree was mostly rotted away at the base, and the space was filled with leaves.  Squirrels at work?

When the cutter sliced the trunk into pieces that could be carried to the truck, the slices broke into chunks instead of holding together as a single unit.  The cutter’s comment:  “That’s not good.”  He said it was a good thing we had the tree removed, because it was definitely going to fall down very soon.

The last step:  recycle.  The tree is now mulch and is ready to enrich the earth from whence it came.

This gorgeous photo was taken by Malcolm Denmark, a Florida Today photographer.  It shows the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral early this morning.  Ooh, aah.

My brother Tom sent a cartoon to my siblings and me and it reminded me of some related cartoons I’ve saved over the years.

English majors always try to be grammatically correct, . . .

 

. . . they can be challenged when looking for employment, . . .

 

. . . and they sometimes find the perfect niche.  Thanks, Tom.

Kari was notified that Teddy would be receiving three awards at school today, so she invited Ted and me to attend the assembly.  Each classroom teacher gave awards for subjects taught in that classroom.  Special subjects included art, music, computers, etc. in addition to reading, writing, math, and the Big 3–given to one student in each class for being a safe, respectful, and responsible learner.  We were very proud of Teddy.

In the special subjects category, Teddy received a music award.  He’s on the far left.

Next was the classroom reading award.  He’s on the right in the back row.

Teddy’s third award was the Big 3.  Kari said the teacher told her Teddy is the most mature child in her classroom.  (Check it out.  The boy on Teddy’s right is wearing a shirt that says “Fossil Fuel” and has a picture of a dinosaur riding a motorcycle.)

The Big 3 includes a medal in addition to the certificate.  Here’s our winner.

 

Today was also Hat Day at school.  Most of the hats were cute, but not remarkable.  Some kids went for the extremes.

A Beefeater, perhaps?

World’s largest hat?

No hat, but the boy in the middle wore a three-piece suit and a tie for the event.  He looks bored here, but he was excited about his award and was glad-handing everyone.  Future politician?

Back at Kari’s house, we celebrated all these certificates with fresh-baked raisin bread and fresh caramel-frosted chocolate cupcakes.

 

Meanwhile, outside in Kari’s driveway, the Camry lives on.  Ted and I bought the Camry in March 1992.  It wouldn’t die, and we got sick of driving it, so Ted replaced it with a 2003 Solara and we gave the Camry to Kathy.  In December 2017, Kathy bought the Prius from us and gave the Camry to Kari.  Those Toyota cars just won’t quit!

 

It’s so much fun to live close to one of our kids’ families so we can regularly be a part of days like this.

Ted and I are currently in the process of working with our travel agent to plan our Australian trip.  With that in mind, check out this drawing one of Ted’s friends sent him.

 

The rough outline of our trip has us traveling from late November into early January.  The itinerary gives us two days in Bali to recover from jet lag; a 15-day cruise from Bali to the northern and eastern  Australian coasts, ending with two days in Sydney (part of the cruise); and then immediately continuing with a 15-day cruise (same ship, same stateroom) along the eastern side of New Zealand, ending with two days in Auckland.  Then we’ll fly to Sydney to spend 3-4 days with our Australian friends, Mark and Tracey, whom we met on our 2015 European river cruise.  After that, we’ll go back to winter in St. Louis.