Mid-March Madness

We are leaving for a cruise on Saturday, so I thought I'd write about what has happened so far this month before five days of a sunny vacation warps my memory and it all becomes a blur.

Mairin turned 5 on March 6th and had a birthday party that she "didn't need to invite Jesus and God to since they'd already be there." I still have not sent her a gift and need to get a move on it before Christmas rolls around. Donald had a birthday this month as well - his 34th - and a few of our friends came over for cake and ice cream to celebrate (Jesus and God were there too). Our friends just "showed up" per my request, and he was surprised, and it was fun, and it made him happy, which made me happy. You only turn 34 once.

March Madness has been extra fun this year, even though there isn't really a team I care about involved. I guess it's because there have been a lot of very close games and lots of OTs. Needless to say, VCU beating Duke in the first round was oh-so-fabulous, and sorry Adam...Jermile...James, but THAT was an exciting game. Winthrop winning their first game ever was cool, and I was absolutely not happy when Ohio St ended up beating Xaiver. OMG!!!!! That's when I hate OT. It would have messed up everyone in the world's bracket had Xavier pulled it off, and that would have been great. I'm looking forward to the National Championship game... but I don't really care who's in it.

I planted a garden this week. A flower garden. D is working on herbs and vegetables. I am working on flowers. I received my flowers in the mail in the form of bulbs and baby sprouts with teeny roots. I saw an ad in the coupon flyer that comes in the Sunday paper, and like any self-respecting grandma, I couldn't resist. Less than 20 bucks for over 50 perennials was a steal, and so far, I've been very satisfied. Of course I spotted the ad amongst other geriatric-aimed ones, selling things like flowered mu mu bathrobes, coin collections, and plates with dogs painted on them. Oh- and life size porcelain dolls named Rachel or Sammie. So- despite being the only person under the age of 72 who has ever ordered flowers through the mail, I am proud of the garden and will show you pictures if anything comes to fruition. Right now, it just looks like a cemetery because of the 50 kitchen skewer sticks I used to mark where everything was so that I can maybe distinguish my freshly sprouting flowers from freshly sprouting weeds. Hopefully the sticks won't truly be grave markers as they look like. P.S. Steph says you're supposed to plant bulbs in the fall, which makes sense, so I might not see any flowers until 2008.

One of the Carolina Jasmine that I planted last year has taken off and is doing well. See below. Thank you Lord for blessing us with beautiful and amazing creations...even the simplest of jasmine...

Steph and Ev and the kids traveled to Charleston to visit Robin's family last weekend, St Patty's Day weekend, so we decided to join. After all, all three sisters are only in the same vicinity two times a year, so we better take every opportunity that we can get. Of course we had an absolute fun, great, wonderful time. It was surprisingly cold in Charleston, which totally paralyzed those of us who had already welcomed upper 70's with a warm and unrelenting embrace. We really enjoyed spending time with the kids, even though Mairin and Rhett banged on our door at 7am and then proceeded to break in using the old credit card trick with the help of a certain big sister named Lexie. It was nice snuggling with them after the break-in, though. We are all ready for our beach vacation in June, which I can't believe is just two months away!

Green dots are in

So I married a fabulous handyman named Donald, who just installed a spotlight on the back corner of our house, which, until now, was a dark scary place where I had to stand in fear while Sadie did her business every night. She will no longer have any privacy as the glorious beam of light illuminates the night and shows me that there is no boogie man lurking in the shadows. Thank you, wonderful handyman, Donald, who ran the electricity from a switch in our kitchen all the way to the far corner of the house. Amazing. I just have to brag. Oooo...and he just brought me a glass of grape koolaid that he made and it's soo good. This boy's got skillz.

So that is it for now. I will give a full report after the cruise