Mountainbilly Insanity, May Edition

We're still here, believe it or not. In a mountainbilly nutshell, here are the highlights of May so far:

May 1 - Randy leaves early for his stint at prom decorating in the morning and chaperoning at night. A mere 160+ miles and 17 hours later, he drags home.

May 2 - We take a car (or two) to bring more loads from Katie and Matthew. Long drive/long day. News bulletin... not.

May 4 - Katie arrives home after finals, too tired to unload her packed car.

May 5 - Katie's car is emptied, and we are now turning sideways in our house.

May 7 - Katie returns to her college for graduation rehearsal and other activities.

May 8 - As we're preparing to zoom to Katie's college graduation, I notice a flat tire on the trusty '88 Camry wagon while I'm out on last-minute errands. That would be the buggy we're taking two hours away because our 'good' car (the 2001 Echo with 308,000+ miles) is still in the hit-by-a-deer ward at the vehicle hospital. Thanks to angel intervention and a couple of new tires, we make it in time to see our favorite daughter earn her degree in photography. Our favorite first-born, Matthew, earns his master's in education from a different college today as well, but he graciously opts out of his own ceremony in order to allow Katie to shine. Or so he says.

Happy graduates!

After graduation, brudder Paul and his wife, Jaymie, throw a humdinger of a fiesta celebration, as their favorite daughter, Bethany, graduated with Katie. After the party, Randy, Katie, and I stop by Matthew's apartment on the way home (2 hours away) to load up our cars with more stuff. We come home and crash... which beats the vice versa of that.

May 9 - Both 'kids' are home, albeit briefly, when Matthew arrives with the rest of his stuff. Happy Mother's Day for sure! We eat with Mom and have a great time. Chocolate is involved.

May 10 - Katie leaves for Charleston, SC, and not on a vacation, either. The girl is determined to get a job. And she will. The fact that she'll be closer to her boyfriend may or may not have had a slight bit of influence in her decision.

May 15 - My birthday. We won't mention which one, but it was good. Chocolate was involved.

May 17 - Spring football practice begins for Randy and Matthew, the defensive coordinator. Now if he can only get a teaching job to go with that....

May 18 - Jeffrey's 13th angel birthday! Wow. Chocolate is involved.

May 20 - Mow and weedeat by myself for most of nine hours. I will pay for it.

May 21 - Matthew leaves for a weekend visit with a friend, while Randy has fun gathering up large vinegar barrels for football practice.

May 22 - 245 miles later, Randy has collected enough barrels to make him a happy, if exhausted, camper.

May 23 - Katie emails early that she and Boyfriend Paul (as opposed to Uncle Paul) are on their way here to pick up more stuff, now that she's moved into an apartment. Boyfriend Paul's dog will be coming. Meanwhile, Matthew heads back home from his weekend trip. Randy and I scramble around, cleaning like crazy and running to the store for real food. We eat at Mom's and have a great time. Chocolate is involved. Don't get a thing accomplished on the Absolutely Must Do Today list, and the world doesn't collapse. Well, maybe it does, but it's not because of that. Bonus - the hairballs all get along just fine :) The two weary travelers make it back to Charleston.

May 24 - I start on prednisone to help combat a wicked case of poison whatever all over from my valiant yard work marathon four days ago. The dosage is substantial. Once again I mow the entire yard with my personal bubble mower (stopping briefly for rain), hike to the cabin to work, and dig up dirt in another flower bed for more planting. I am still going at 2:30am the following morning. Now I know what the Energizer Bunny is really on.

Throw in some bizarre behavior by Kali (on the verge of turning 13), a loose bird in the kitchen, switching the main blog (The Suite Life of Lucy and Ethel) to WordPress, etc., etc., etc., and it's been perhaps a tad nuttier than usual. Perhaps.

Which brings me to why I haven't updated this baby lately.

Let's just say the weather has been gorgeous, the flowers are blooming, and we had a bit of excitement this morning across the road.

Hope to see you at Angel Mountain! We promise not to stand too close to you in the event some of this lunacy may rub off. On the other hand, compared to the lunacy of the real world, you just might want to take your chances....

Spring... REALLY!

Spring - it's REALLY here!!! So many things to do outside...

Work in the yard (or just snoop),

feed the catfish, most of whom thawed out,

count the goldfish/koi... and continue repeatedly - and a tiny bit less optimistically - every day to see if it's actually possible to have lost SIX of them from last year, and wonder what the heck is going on, and see that the three left are hangin' with the grass carp,

(Make that TWO goldfish, according to Randy's latest count, and this isn't one of them. Sob.)

pick up all the fallen limbs from three months of snow/ice/wind,

roll and pretend to have a pleasant personality (Sami's rolling on ROCK should give her away),

remember to keep your (malfunctioning) eyes out for the leader on the mountain trail at all times so you won't get left behind and so that the leader won't have to lug her outta-shape self back up the mountain to call and call and call until she knows you SEE her because she knows if she doesn't, your visually-impaired, GPS-less self won't have a clue how to get back down to the house because, granted, we haven't seen the trail in three months, which adds to the uncertainty of your location, and, yes, Kali, I'm talkin' to you, dear,

go for a swim because 50 degrees is SO much warmer than 5,

play one of Kali's favorite games, Oooohhhh... just a tiny nudge and my ball will roll back down the hill into the pond. AGAIN. So sorry to be gettin' my freshly-brushed self grungy, Mom. Heh, heh (yep, that's the whole game),

take a nap with Emma,

or play ball.

Of course, there's never enough time to play ball, if you ask Kali.

Pout.

So when the ball throwin' is finished, it's time to put the ball up.

Kali's way.

That's okay. We're happy with mud noses (well, okay, happy may be a stretch), because we were tired of the white stuff. Hard to believe we haven't been fully thawed out a month yet.

Welcome, SPRING!

PS - Don't forget to check out The Jeffrey Journey, the reissue of Helen's book about their angel, Jeffrey! You can go here for order info (including CDs of the soothing original music written by Helen's mom, JoAnn Derden). There's also a new Facebook Fan page!

Oh, Happy Spring... and The Jeffrey Journey!

It's spring - officially, anyway - so we've said adios to the final souvenirs of our action-packed three months of winter bliss.

You can breathe now, guys

We know there's a very good possibility that there will be more white stuff before we dare put the snow shovel up, but at least we have hope that we are actually moving into another season. Here's a little proof.

Oh, wait - those aren't us; those are from Katie's recent photo trip to Phoenix - sorry!

Here's what some of the rest of us have been doing:

Sami celebrated her lucky 12th birthday with her usual charm.

Emma

Kali

Biggest news, besides the big thaw, is the reissue of The Jeffrey Journey!

It's currently available online thru Amazon.com (also in Kindle version), Barnes & Noble, and Milverstead Publishing.

A portion of the proceeds are earmarked for the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation, which is working tirelessly for research to squelch the devastation of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), the disease that affected our baby, Jeffrey (SMA is the leading genetic cause of death of children under two). More organizations will benefit in the future as well!

In addition, the book is available thru me as part of a package with CDs of my mother's lush original music!

(I have no idea why this is so small. It was a HUGE project!)

You can read more about Mom (alias JoAnn Derden) and listen to snippets of the music here.

Whew - that's a lotta hot links up there!

Happy SPRING!

So Long, February...

What an attentive blogger I am, I am.

If you care what's been going on in general, visit the Suite (the main blog) for a sampling, but suffice it to say it's been nuts!

Speaking of nuts, we've seen quite a bit of this guy this winter

We've also seen more snow than we've ever seen all added up over the years. FEET of snow, literally. We're still 'enjoying' (cough, cough) a bit of the snow that hit December 18, 2009, which seems a year ago. We'd never make it in snow country.

Oh, wait, we apparently ARE snow country this year.

You know, global warming and all. Thanks, Al!

Not ours, but we can sure relate

Tomorrow is March, believe it or not. While we often get the biggest snow in March and even early April (trying to contain my enthusiasm here), March at least sounds spring-y.

When we thaw out, which we surely will one day, we will rejoice - loudly - and mow.

Happily.