Not too much has happened this past week but it was a good week all in all.  Today I made beef stroganoff for dinner - it had been a long time since I made this yummy dish.  When the kids were little I made it occasionally but Kelly had decided the name should be “throw up”  rather than stroganoff.  I guess in retrospect it could be misidentified... regardless of her description it was quite good and we enjoyed it immensely.  

As Jimmy mentioned on his blog, our old neighbors the Smiths came to visit us on Thursday and we went to a local Italian restaurant and thoroughly enjoyed our dinner and their company.  Marvin also brought several seedlings from our Japanese red maple tree from our old house. the seedlings look great, they are almost two feet tall - hopefully they will take to the WV soil and continue to flourish and eventually become as beautiful as the parent tree (see photo).

Talked with my sister, Terry, this past week.  Today is Ryan’s b’thday party. He turned five last week and has started to play soccer - he seems to enjoy it and is definitely having fun.  Kylee has been selected to be  Annie’s best friend (can’t remember the character’s name - think it might be Lilly) in the children’s performance of Annie.  She is looking forward to her role - hopefully Jimmy and I will be able to see her perform. The male members of the family aren’t quite the “joiners” as the female members. Dave was literally drug to so many of Kelly’s events that he didn’t necessarily want to commit to anything as a kid in grade, middle or high school. That was fine with us, we know he turned out o’kay anyway.

 

The weather has been absolutely crazy... Last week I took a picture of some of the blossoms in the orchard.  I had planned on blogging with the title “Blooming Blossoms” since the cherry blossoms were out and it appeared that the peach and apple trees would be blooming very shortly.  Then the cold front hit... The temperature at night has been in the the mid to upper 20s, daytime temps have been 20+ degrees cooler than normal.  But we are so much better off than our friends and family in Ohio - Cleveland has had over 10 inches of snow this past weekend (more snow this Easter than they had for Christmas) and Bobbie the Nun reports that they had about three feet of snow in Chardon.  Everyone is concerned  that the fruit trees have been damaged by the frost.  Hope the trees are resilient and survive this freaky spring.

Kelly and Chris were here for Easter. Unfortunately Dave was not feeling well so he chose not to come. Jim put Chris to work, moving the wireless network so that we’d have a connection in every corner of the house. We also moved this huge tabletop (weighing over 230 lbs) to the patio so that when the weather warms up we’ll be able to enjoy dinner out there. We still have to shop for a grill. We plan on dining outside enjoying the sunsets and view of the mountains, orchards, etc. Speaking of dinner, we had the traditional Easter meal, but I decided to make garlic mashed potatoes, went to the local grocery store on two different days but the garlic didn’t look good (that should have been a clue). K&C purchased some in Leesburg and brought it with them... roasted the garlic for an hour as directed but it wasn’t soft enough, put it back in the oven for several more minutes..  the end result was less than optimum - I was really disappointed as the last time I had garlic mashed potatoes at K&C’s - they were delicious.. oh well, next holiday dinner should be at their house.  Chris is obviously a much better cook than I.

There is so much more to write - will just have to make an effort to blog daily with shorter entries.

 

 

Today is the first  attempt at blogging.  One should learn something new everyday and today this is it.  Today is also the Rich (or Uncle Dick’s) birthday!!!  A very happy day and a great year to him. Last weekend the girls came to WV for a sleep over. We spent a couple of hours at the slots with everyone losing what they had planned.  Judy and Kathy were way ahead with their winnings until the house finally won. Both were playing a nickel slots and were almost $50 ahead when the house took over. We also had dinner at a great Italian restaurant, then came back to the house to “catch up” - the tulips were a gift from them - they’ve bloomed in  a special container with just water. Last week, Jimmy & I went to Antietam battlefield just across the river in Maryland. The picture above shows three rifles supporting a bucket - people had dropped a few coins-- generous Jimmy put a nickel in, he said that was all the change he had. Last evening we went to dinner and the movies with our neighbors, the Millers. We had Thai food that was delicious and very fresh tasting (Jimmy stated that Kazu was his new favorite restaurant on that side of the street) - we will definitely be going back there. After dinner we went to the Old Opera House to see Letters from Iwo Jima - I could see why it was awarded the Oscar this year.  

Next week we celebrate two family birthdays - Kim (the newest) and Ryan (one of the youngest) members of the family. That’s all for now...