QuidNunc/QuidTunc?

I can see from my blog stats that if I have had a quiet week or two y’all think I am pretty sure to be here on Monday morning! I actually got up betwen 6:30 and 7:00 this smorning. I woke up and felt pretty good. Joel gets a perk out of doing the paper route by himself sometimes and  Monday is an easy day to do it, so that’s how I manage to sleep that long in the AM. We had a fun weekend starting with a dinner party with some friends that we don’t see regulary. Having lived in 3 different places and on our 3rd church in 15 years, and yet all the same county, there are people nearby we like to keep in touch with, but have to make a “special room” for that. Sometimes I have luch with what I call my “mega-music’ friends. Music will flavor the conversation but we keep up with each others’ families mostly.Maybe one of these days we’ll sing a song in the restaurant! They all read music like you are reading this blog. But before my dineer I cleaned my whole house in one day!1 I haven’t done that in years, at least by myself! Evrybody brought something, so  I cooked some fancy pasta (you know, buy quality, boil water, throw it in) put some shrimp into a red sauce and made my own Alfredo sauce which I thought turned out pretty good. I did it once before, at Cono, for a banquet! and some bread. I ahve been on a bread kick lately.

The back of that cupbaord I painted with blackboard paint, so little hands have something to do in the kitchen when there is no stirring to be done.

And here is the latest artist, our Nina-Katarina

When I first put this picture on the computer Joel looked at it and said, :Wild thing!” But, just for the record, Nina was good girl that day and Gramma was sorry to see her go before we played all our games!

After reading Emily’s post I had a hankering to snow geese hunting. All we saw was a file d full of swans. Just kidding. I got in only one picture and it’s not very good. The swans and gees were at Middle Creek by the hundreds I am sure, but thay were so far out in the water , that with high powered binoculars supplied by the visitor enter, it was a little less than gratifying. We did watch several huge flocks of C -geese (C is for Chris …hahahaha) come in for a landing. And we had a picnic. Okay now you know I am still alive . I got dates for this afternoon Seeya ’round

You never know what you are going to find when you look around at the ‘related videos’ I think this is funny, but maybe someone else doesn’t! I love that ‘Immanuel’ song and the group performance ios very warming. Wonder where it was.

Okay, it is the middle of February. I think I quit trying to celebrate V-day when I had little kids and they always got sick about this time of year. Now that they are grown up I keep up the tradition myself! Best not to plan too much for the middle of February. I do like flowers, though. So I had my session with the toilet bowl myself last night. I can never get over how absolutely awful it feels. I always think of Gretchen Deutschmann saying, “When it’s 3:00 in the morning and you are hanging your head over the toilet bowl, you are sure life can’t get any worse than this!” True, you feel that way. But life can, and we’ll try not to think about it!  So today I crawled into the bath tub and turned on my bubble blowing machine that lets me pretend that I am in a jacuzzi and thought of , “Like the sunshine after rain, like the rest  that follows pain, like a hope returned again is the peace that Jesus gives….”

Well, I thought I would insert a picture or music, but no one is cooperating with me tonight, namely WordPress and Youtube, so it will have to be another day.

Love, Melinda

Here it is.

From the outside

from the inside

I can’t figure out how to turn thispictures around in wordpress!

Yep,he’s married.

I am just not good at keeping the camera thing together. On the way to the JP’s, my battery died. I came home and plugged it in, but it’s all new stuff and i can’t remember in the crowd of people and things where I put it. There are more pictures on my flickr, but I took them fast because dinner was mostly over before I remembered where the battery was. Jeannette was the official photographer, but she must still be editing. N & N took more formal pictures at Longwood Gardens… so this serves as proof of the pudding.

Nicky really did not want a big fuss wedding. And she’s the bride, she can have what she wants. She and Nick dressed up and  she had a bouquet of flowers and went to the distict magistrate’s off ice that is practically rightr behind her dad’s house! She and Nick were going to meet there. Nick went with Joel in the car and Nicky and I went hiking through the icy, snowy backyard which Nick had convinced me had been shoveled to a locked gate! So we climbed our slippy way back down the hill and Joel came and got us. It was a woman judge  and she recited the ceremony from memory, quoting much of I Corinthians 13. When Nick was told he could kiss the bride, he tipped her over backwards! He was way giddy!! We took them to Macaroni Grill for lunch and then left them alone! The next night we had dinner at our place, which they wanted to keep small, so it was us DiBers and spouses, and a couple of grandkids, Uncle Buzz and Aunt Lee, Nicky’s Dad , and Buzz and Lee’s youngest son Michael and Hang, his wife of a year and a half, I think! It was a nice size crowd . I ended up renting tables so we would be comfortable… not a bad deal. Meredith had given m the idea of putting icicle lights around the table under the tablecloths. Mary arrived early to help decorate . I made turkey, sweet potato fries, broccoli salad, clam chowder and  minestrone. Mary made rolls. Jeannette got the cake and I got the little cake for them to cut. we had a “time of encouragement”. Nicky’s dad was giving them the piece that says. ‘Don’t go to sleep angry at each other. Work it out first” and Michael piped up with, “Yeah, because it can get really cold on the sofa!” We just roared awhile he tried to backpedal saying he hadn’t actually done the night “on the sofa”. Aunt Lee shared her words of wisdom and then turned to Nick and said, “Remember when the goose chased you?!” She had taken the kids to Long’s Park with her friend with her grandkids and this Canadian goose took off after Nick! Unfortunately, I wasn’ t there to see it. Actually, it probably would have scared the whatever out of me to see my kid chased like that! Anyway….  we had cake times and they opened their presents and a good time was had by all.

Sam and Sarah stayed overnight with us and I took Sarah to the fabric store and Joel took Sam to the bike shop and bought him a helmet which I hope he is wearing faithfully. We stopped at the Haymes for supper and a little visit and then we were pretty tired.Party’s over.

We woke up this morning to about 8 inches of real, fluffy snow! I keep thinking that when we have snow, I would put in this video. I’ll write more later day about ‘recent events”. Trying to collect all my pictures!