a season for celebrations:

Kimberly's birthday, Easter, and spring

Easter weekend casuals

Back to the reality of the work week in the morning but, at the moment, everything's smiles and sunshine deep within. I've learned that microwaving a kid's meal is more complicated than cooking one from scratch, that a camera is a good excuse to play spectator, that we often miss what's most obvious, that a few minutes in a hammock swing is still worth its weight in gold . . . Other stuff too but I have those proverbial miles to go yet and it's almost bedtime :-)

a "park" of my very own . . .

5 more things to be happy about . . .

I never asked my daddy why he loved baseball so. I just knew that I didn't, especially after he died during the World Series and didn't get to see, this side of heaven, who won.

I thought of a million and one excuses on the way home from work today--reasons not to be at a baseball game tonight either.

Wouldn't have missed it for the world!

Mason may accomplish what his great-granddaddy never could--make a baseball fan of me :-)








More things to be happy about . . .

21. watching someone you love earn the game ball

22. celebrating someone's personal best

23. knowing that the top of the inning comes before the bottom of the inning

24. soaking in a spring evening on the sidelines

25. paying forward a free movie ticket



My son-in-law (oops, I stand corrected--it was my daughter :-) asked me tonight who won that long-ago world series. Here's the answer, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The 1969 World Series was played between the New York Mets and the Baltimore Orioles, with the Mets prevailing in 5 games to accomplish one of the greatest upsets in Series history, as that particular Orioles squad was (and still is by some baseball pundits) considered to be one of the finest ever. The World Series win earned the team the sobriquet "Miracle Mets," as they had risen from the depths of mediocrity (the 1969 team had the first winning record in Mets history).

A delighted Met fan held up a sign after the Mets won the final game: "There Are No Words."
The 1969 World Series was played October 11-16. There was no game on October 13, 1969. Maybe the teams paused too, on their way from Memorial to Shea, to honor the passing of a man who so loved their game . . .

OK, Daddy, were you going for the Mets or the Orioles? Knowing you, I'd suspect it was the underdog team. Glad that somewhere, that week, in the world of things you loved, a miracle happened . . .

21 months and counting the days . . .

until her second birthday!

April in Paris . . .

. . . is a rose. I bought two of them (yes, two bushes full of promise) today. One because today is Kimberly's birthday :-) Two because April (more likely June or July) in Paris is a someday dream we share.

This new for 2008 marvel has been on my musthave list since the first Jackson and Perkins rose catalog arrived in my mailbox last winter. The clincher, though was its parentage--yet another child of Pristine.

I seem to have a thing for "P" roses. Peace (but I have finally admitted I don't have what it takes to keep Peace alive). Promise (no longer available for purchase at any price but it's my personal icon on this computer). Any rose that's pink (which is why I decided to salvage Ultimate Pink today). And Pristine (see last summer's bloom above) . . .

Brigadoon, J&P's rose of the year in 1992, is another of Pristine's offspring.

13 springs ago--one of the more confusing, more difficult springs in my life--I bought two roses: Brigadoon and Pristine. Container-bound their first three, maybe even four, seasons, they became the anchors for my first rose garden here.

Too many other roses to count, to remember, have struggled and lost heart and hope and life in this too shady, too rootbound garden. Yet Brigadoon, a tiny shell of its former self, and frail but determined Pristine live on . . . touching my heart with their hope against hope against hope. . .

. . . to be happy about

Lake Erie at Presque Isle: March 29, 2008


Somewhere I have a book with 14,000 reasons. Here are a few (mine and others') from the first ten days of spring
. . .

1. seeing a Great Lake for the very first time
2. finding roses on the doorstep
3. being thrilled to come in ninth
4. negotiating snowdrifts in spring
5. sharing first-week-of-spring birthdays
6. blowing out trick birthday candles
7. circling lighthouses for the best camera angle
8. enjoying rocking chair layovers
9. looking down at cotton candy clouds
10. reading books recommended by grandbabies
11. not being vaporized
12. qualifying for level 10 and regionals
13. surviving hard sudoku challenges
14. earning Webkin points
15. giving and receiving reasons to smile
16. keeping the spirit of break in Spring Break
17. owning a bicycle . . . again
18. planting roses
19. sleeping in late
20. coming home

More to come . . .

kidz in action

Kelsey places 9th on floor at state and qualifies for Level 9 gymnastics regionals (a 7 state event) while

Mason earns RBIs for his allstars baseball team.

1st-week-of-spring birthdays: the third installment

Kodak for Garrett (smile!!!!) . . . and

Justice for Kira Rose (aka the princess)

Turn Garrett's 9 upside down and you'd have Kira's 6.

It took all three grandbabies to extinguish Garrett's trick candles :-)

1st-week-of-spring birthdays--the second installment

These babies know how to help Mama (March 22nd), Daddy, (March 25th), and Nonny (March 26th) celebrate!

bABY, lOOK AT yOU nOW ! ! !

Shhhhh,
don't
tELL
. . .

I'm supposed to be too old for this child's play, me and my brittle bones and out-of-practice self. But, hey, that's why this baby has only one gear and pedalinreverse brakes! I can pool all my mental reserves into remembering how to do what, they say, you never do forget!

Yes, like Campbell, I could forget to watch where I'm going, fall down, break something, learn to write left-handed . . . again! He did , at 7. And I did at 12 (only it was roller skates for me). His cast comes off on Thursday . . . and we're going to, one day soon, ride, ride, ride!

Bet this would make an awesome beach bike . . . Maybe this summer???

Couldn't go for that test bikeride today. . . I was wearing dress shoes and dressy pants and who could bike in that attire? Except my 7-year-old former self, all those birthday years ago, who learned to ride her 26" Huffy in dress shoes and a dressy dress!


Happy Easter!

Happy birthday!

Happy spring!

Thank you Mama and Daddy and Michelle and Rick and Mason and Campbell for touching this child's heart--then and now.

I've got a secret. . .

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Spring slipped in this morning

while we were sleeping.

Tomorrow, Aries!

Birthdays-all-in-a-row.

Pink knockout roses on the doorstep.

Time to breathe it all in.

Spring

break

at last . . .

did you know. . .

that March was once the first month of the calendar year?

Think about it: septem(7)ber, oct(8)ber, novem(9)ber, decem(10)ber . . .

I wouldn't have minded a year or more of no trudging through the minefields of january and february. . .but what might life have been without the january babies, Daddy and Grandmaman Yvonne, and without know-no-fear Mason, february and firstborn grandson?

Maybe I need those reminders that life isn't all about spring, reminders that cause me to appreciate all the more that

TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF MARCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!