Great Expectations

Yesterday, my sister Tandy had her 20-week ultrasound and found out she's having a girl! They're planning to name her Korinne Dawn, after Kory's dad (also named Kory) and our dad. Tandy and Kory are such cute, excited new parents. After the ultrasound, they went and started to register for baby stuff. That kind of made me laugh. There's five months before the baby gets here! But, whatever. I don't begrudge them any happiness. After all, the odds were really stacked against them having kids at all. So they should live it up! I have to add that while we were looking at the ultrasound pictures, my mom commented that Korinne is going to be super cute. At first I thought she was talking about the name being cute, but when I asked her she said, "You can tell from that profile picture. She's going to be gorgeous." That's a proud grandma for you!

Progress

We've been working in the yard, and it's slowly taking shape. We've cleared out a lot of the dead and dying plants, and removed the wisteria from what will eventually be the grape arbor. If you recall, when we started out the area by the back fence looked like this:But after much hard work, now it looks more like this:I have to say I was mighty impressed with Matt when he was tearing out the wisteria. It had a huge stick base, and I thought we'd be digging at it forever to get it out of there. But Matt managed to pull it out of the ground, roots and all, with his bare hands. Impressive!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Our family always celebrates St. Patrick's Day - especially since we have an authentic Irishman in the family! (Hi, Sean!) And one annual tradition we've enjoyed the last few years is the arrival of Wendy's special shamrock cookies! Wendy makes the prettiest sugar cookies. And, having decorated a batch or two with her, I know how much time it takes to make them so pretty! Every year she makes some with our names on them. Here, Joey and Kristin show off their cookies. Joey insisted that it would look better if he pretended to eat the cookie while we took the photo. He is such a ham.

Simon, of course, didn't want to wait and pose with his. He knows the point of cookies. (Please note, I didn't actually let him eat this cookie. This photo is all for show.)

And then Joey insisted that I take a photo, too.Hope you all got lucky today! Hee!

Mystery Party

I'm so sad these first two pictures turned out blurry. My camera has been a little unpredictable lately when it comes to auto-focus. Anyway...

This weekend, we hosted a Murder Mystery party. If you've never gone to one or hosted one yourself, I highly recommend it. They're so much fun! This particular mystery was set aboard a yacht in the Mediterranean in 1925 and was titled "The Grapes of Frath." What's a mystery without a few bad puns, eh? The characters included (going left to right in the group photo) an Italian opera singer, a "war hero," a jewelry thief, a young Parisian socialite, an up-and-coming young business woman, a race car driver/scoundrel, an unscrupulous lawyer, and me: the Russian owner of a nightclub.
The party was also a joint birthday party for me and Cassie. Both our birthdays are in February - and since we were all getting together for dinner anyway, why not throw in a cake?


The cake was from Flour Power, and was chocolate with a peanut butter mousse filling, and a layer of fudge. To. Die. For. Thanks to all my lovely participants! We had such a great time!

A Girl of Many Talents

So, we're eating lunch and Kristin turns and says she has a trick to show me. I think the photo explains the rest. She is so much fun.

Joey's First Badge

Friday was the Blue and Gold Banquet for Joey's Cub Scout Troop. We had a delicious dinner, and the boys put on a puppet show. Joey seems to really enjoy being in Scouts. At the dinner, he was awarded his first official badge: the Bobcat badge. To get this badge, there were eight different tasks he had to complete. He was so excited to get the badge! I have the feeling there are lots of merit badges in his future.

Also, in the photo you can see the neckerchief slide he made in the shape of California. He was very proud of it.