Our Week of Cold and Critters.

What a week ... we woke up Monday morning at Trevor and Nell's house to 6 inches of snow.  Yikes.

I got to clear it off, so I could go to work.  Dad stayed there to watch the girls, J Scott having left Sunday night.

Here's the house and front lawn.

While at work, I ran across a couple of my favorite old pictures, and being at work, this one seemed appropriate.

Remember Nenna and the doll she carried everywhere?  I love it.

Eva went shopping for summer clothes with her friends, then they all dressed up in them and made a snow man.  Yes, they did.

Success!

When I got back from work she showed me this little critter, her hamster.

On Tuesday I cleared off the car again, this time to go junking with Eleanor and Penny.  We went out to the Saratoga Springs DI, as they are remolding the one in AF.

The girls got a real work out while we were there.

Penny tried on some four-inch heels and found she could not walk in them, thus the hugging the pillar posture. 

After our shopping spree, we stopped by and got Dad to go to lunch with us.  Here we are at JCWs, and here Penny shows off her finds, she got a stuffed critter, a hippo if I recall correctly, not shown.

Then she took to drawing portraits of me ... I love the crown.

So how's the likeness?

Dad took Eva to the pet store after we got back, she is showing off a tiny critter that caught her fancy. It was a snail.

The younger girls and we watched Pollyanna that night.  They had never seen it.  That was fun, as its one of my favorite stories, as you all know.  In the book she adopts a couple of critters, almost as soon as she moves in with her Aunt Polly, mangy cat and dog. 

I had showed Eleanor how a neighbor showed me to draw fashion models when I was a kid, and she got into it, making them, cutting them out and laminating them.  You can see two on the arm of the chair here.

Meanwhile Penny made a house.

On Wednesday, after I cleared the car of snow again, and headed to work, Dad took the younger girls to see the new Mario Brothers movie.

They had won cards at school to buy snacks at the theater. 

After I got back from work, Dad drove the older girls to Young Womens. Look at the fun activity that Eva got to do.  They watched an old Bob Ross painting show and voila!!

After the girls got back from YW, Dad and I headed home.  Nell and Trevor got there about ten minutes after we left.  I know they had a wonderful reunion with their girls.

I found a picture that Ian had posted online that day, its crazy to see just how much he has grown up.

I had another gal come in to work for me on Thursday mrning, so we could go and meet up some old missionary friends.  This is the Shurtz, who got to Finland as we were coming home the first time, we had a couple of weeks to get to know them.  They replaced the Londons in the office.  Then they trained us for a couple of weeks, when we came back to replace them.  Now they are headed back this summer to be the office couple again.

We got together to have a chance to visit with the Auras our middle  Mission Presidents, and Paula, in the black turtleneck, is the one who influenced me toward a vegetarian lifestyle.

The couple at the close end of the table are the Jamsas.

Here the Auras are telling us about a foundation for education in a country in Bangladesh.  We were excited about that.  They said LDS Charities is their biggest donor so far.  We werre thrilled because we are always interested in places to donate money, that we know the money ALL goes to the charity.

He's been an animated speaker, but in this case he is reenacting for me.

Here's their charity if you are interested.

And here we are afterwards. They wanted a picture against the mountains.

At the Jordan River temple the next morning, we did a session, wherein this popular LDS actor was also a patron.  Dad's big into those movies, and wanted to remember this.

Then I dropped Dad at Darby's where he started mudding her basement ceiling, which he had left open when he did the apartment, because he knew eventually he would be redoing the plumbing in the bathroom on the main floor. 

Which is part of what he also did, in getting the cement board in so he can get started on the tile surround, which is the final project!

I spent the day junking and ended up at the Goodwill Outlet, which is sometimes called the Bins Store.  I had been to one in Texas, but this one just had clothing and books, pretty much, and I found a black pair of my Jamu shoes.  Yeah, the ones I am wearing are almost gone.

There were well over a hundred shoppers there.  I  found some velvet clothing items to make mushrooms from, some cute clothes for Emily's little boys, the shoes and some books to resell.

That night Dad started counting the turkey vultures in our trees.  Not really little critters, but definitely critters ... His top count is 52 of them.

Here's another picture the next morning.

Up early and setting tables for our Spring Brunch and egg hunt.  This is the kids table.

The adult table,

and for the first time ever, a preteen table in the kitchen.

Here's the kid table populated.

Some of our pastel foods.  Pastel deviled eggs, cupcakes and Grandma Connie Pink Fluff salad. 

Now here's a cute critter who loves her mama.

Some of the girls wore dresses.

which didn't seem to dampen their speed in the egg hunt in the slightest.

More egg hunt pictures, as you know the weather was perfect, finally.

Hurray, she found one for each hand.

We had 11 of the grandest grands ever.  Swinging on Emily's swing was also a hit.

As you see.

Chatting hatting was also in demand for the adults, I use that term loosely.

and more ... including a little lady dragging her bag of eggs.

Trevor share stories of their trip to Italy.  

Van found another acitivty ... I thought he was yelling/screaming at the tree, but when I investigated, it turned out he was yelling at a tiny firebug.  When I asked why, he said he wanted to see if it would move faster if he yelled at it .... evidently it just continued at its normal speed.  I love that he is experimenting. That bug was likely the tiniest critter of the whole week.

I am just loving this kid's hair.  Isn't it amazing?

The "triplets" 12 years later, in fact they all turn 13 this year.

and one in training too.

It was great getting caught up with the big kids.

Mack also experimented.  He was able to get the swing to go in a circle.  Pretty smart, eh?

And guess who is taller that her Mimi now?

Today we went to church for an hour and listened to talks about the resurrection, and the influence of the Savior in our lives. When we got home I made sugar cookies, to take to our ministering families.  Dad was hanging out in the parlor, on his phone, and I came into take a rest ... sugar cookies take forever.  I heard weird sounds and he told me we had a bird in the firebox.  Yikes.  We called our ministering brother, who raised pigeons for years, to help us get it out.

When he got here, Dad pulled the cover off a bit, Clair took his flashlight to see what he was dealing with.  Then a black starling squoze out past him, we were all very surprised, as if we were in labor having a baby and ended up with twins. 

It was fun watching them, though the flight pics are blurry.

Here's Clair with one in his net and one of the black winged pesty critters in his hand.

I made him a plate of cookies to take home, this is the bagged ones we made up for our peeps.

Then I packaged the rest of the cookies and we went out to deliver them, to my ministering sisters, and to the ladies/families that Dad and I minister together. 

I was a great week, and we had lots of new experiences.  We hope you enjoyed the snow at the beginning of the week, and like us, are not sorry for the actually spring weather we enjoyed at the end. of the week.