Ah--all the odious and/or stressful tasks that I had scheduled for the month of April (and there were more than usual) are over now--jury duty, the church talent show, traffic court, junior festival for piano, two dental appointments, the P@gan Spr1ngtime R1tual and the school carnival. Done done done, all done! That's not to say that all the aforelisted tasks were odious--some were just stressful and that made them slightly dreaded. But now all those things are behind me and I'm quite delighted.

This weekend was the Ninth Annual P@gan Spr1ngtime Ritual and the Annual Baking of the Carrot Cake, which is the True Harbinger of Spring, in this family. The girls had lots of fun with the treasure hunt--to make it more interesting, I made the clues a little more cryptic so they'd have to work harder to figure them out and then I told them that at each location, there were 5 hidden eggs and they had to find all five before they could open them up to find the clue. It turned out well--they took turns reading the clues so there was no arguing and they enjoyed the goodie bags. I made sandwiches for them and then cut them with a bunny cookie cutter. They were mighty cute!

But the highlight of the event (for the moms) was the Eating of the Carrot Cake. This is no ordinary carrot cake, I may have mentioned in years past. It is dense and moist like a British pudding and it tastes incredibly delicious. I make it once a year because it is so delicious and so rich and so decadent that I don't trust myself to make it more often. It is all gone, now. And that's a very good thing because I'd eat myself silly if it were still there.

The school carnival was last night and I spent an hour in the goldfish booth. That was great fun, chasing after ping pong balls and passing out bags of water and goldfish. You want to know how to have a good time on a Saturday night? Try that one on for laughs. Afterward, though, we went to have sushi with Marcus and Stacey and Bayley and that made up for the ping pong ball chasing. For dessert, we went to B0rders and spent a few hours looking at books, listening to the live music and chatting in the cafe. Stacey is going to open a paint-your-own ceramic studio in their new town so we were kicking around ideas for the new business. It was fun--some ideas were serious but many were just plain silly, like the idea Marcus had for free lap dances for any men who come to paint ceramics. We laughed a lot and that was just what I was in the mood for.

Friday, Amy and I spent the whole day together. We went to Kmusik in the morning, then had lunch at our favorite cafe. After lunch, we kiped Joey out of school early (just an hour early) and went to the scrapbook convention downtown. We spent entirely too much money (but oh was it fun!) on some kewl new things that I'm dying to try. Little Aidan hung out in his front pack all day and was just as content as could be. Nary a difficult moment--he was just great. He's been the most contented, placid baby I've ever seen. I hope that persists when I'm babysitting him for 27 hours at a time.

After the scrapbook-a-rama, we went to pick up her stepson at the fire station. He got to spend the day at work with is daddy on Friday and what a day it was--he got to go out on a medical call, an automobile accident and even go on a fire call and got to run the hose (it was a chicken coop that caught fire). He was flying so high when we picked him up I didn't think he'd ever come back to earth! We went out to eat and he didn't stop talking the entire time. I don't know how he managed to eat because I don't recall seeing him put any food in his mouth the whole night. It was pretty cute but I got kind of tired of it after awhile. I was just over-stimulated from a day filled with crowds and noise. We didn't get home until 10pm which was about 3 hours later than I expected to get home, but it didn't matter. I had fun and got to hang with Amy all day. She'll be coming over tomorrow for a day of putting our new scrapbook purchases to work. Yay!

Today the sun shone in a blue sky with puffy white clouds. This may be old news for many around the country but in the pacific northwest, it has been the rainiest April on record. A rain-free day is news but one with sunny, blue skies is Big News. I loved it. Love it! Absolutely LOVED IT.

It's time to put Joey to bed so I'm going to head out now. Ciao!

--L