To all our friends and family, we apologize for letting our website languish in a forgotten corner.  Today, I'll start filling in blanks, but since we have some new friends out there, we'll fill in more details than I normally would.

After the school's Parent Appreciation tea, I took the kids out to the farm.  One of the big reasons that we moved back from California to raise our family here is being able to have Grandmas and Grandpas be a big part of Calvin and Matthew's life.  My Mom and I are cut from the same cloth, we share the optimism that winter has finally released us and we can start gardening.  Yes, we'll predictably moan when it snows May long weekend.  I'm excited that I'm going to inherit some cuttings of perennials from Mom's many flowerbeds, and many of the flowers and shrubs I've never bothered to learn the names of but remind me of 'home' will become part of our collection.

The kids loved playing in the sandbox - Mom built the box and Mike's Dad Milton hauled the sand last year - where they spent hours working on sand castles followed closely by their demolition.  Usually it would be one kid building it, the second kid destroying it, the first screaming in anger, the second belatedly realizing a banshee is going to exact retribution soon and thinking fast of how to avoid it, the first gracefully or gracelessly accepting the offered olive branch.  Repeat.  Mostly they kept me out of it, but there are inevitably disputes where the mediator must get dragged in.

Saturday morning we built the birdhouse kits Mom had bought them for Christmas, since bluebirds have been sighted, and are likely looking for a place to nest.  Nothing like urgency to spur us women on to greatness.  Mom found a smallish hammer and over the next couple of hours we mastered hammering with gusto after I had started the nails going in straight.  Calvin was particularly persistent in hammering in every one flush to the wood, after Matt got distracted with the exciting business of painting the birdhouses purple, with a yellow roof and a teal roof respectively.

Running through the sprinklers was insisted on by the time it was warmer than 10 degrees,who was hot and clothing long ago stripped away, while Calvin was still bundled in his coat.  However, seeing someone else having fun without you is a powerful motivator to also shed clothing and don swim trunks, until your lips are blue five minutes later.  Ah but persistence is also a powerful thing, once it was 20 degrees it was much more fun, as much fun as turning the sprinkler on and off and on and off.

I went for a lovely run, although it was hot enough to wish for a hat and having gotten my butt in gear a couple hours earlier.  Nonetheless, a 5 mile run is longer than I've run since we went to Nanaimo, and my chest only hurt at the last, so I walked the last quarter mile.  I'm determined to get back to my favorite route along the river by the kids school, which is 8 miles, and get back to the routine of leaving worries and cell phone behind, appreciating how Rammstein can get me up a particularly gruelling hill.