We're a week or so behind and we've got a lot of ground to cover, so let's get moving. Let's start with Easter:
Our church has an Easter Egg hunt every year after each of its Easter services. We went to the Friday night service. This year, Mace was old enough to appreciate all the finer nuances of Easter Egg hunting and Easter fashion. While only a few women in our church -- okay, no women in our church -- wear hats on Easter anymore, Mace is a traditionalist on this point of fashion.
That's right -- you work it, baby -- don't let the phrase "contemporary-style worship" and "casual atmosphere" keep you down. Easter deserves a hat.
Ohhh -- that's what the bucket's for. Mace also didn't realize that there was candy in the eggs at this point, so he was a hunting machine. He even found a golden egg:
Once he discovered the Easter Bunny, though, love was in bloom, and for him, the hunt was over.
MFEO (Made For Each Other).
On Sunday morning, we let the boys hunt for all their eggs out on the deck (after spotting both an alligator and more than one snake in a week, there was no way I was getting out in the yard to hide eggs).
This is when Mace discovered that the eggs had candy in them. So he would find an egg, open it, eat whatever was inside it and then go find the next egg. So Casey found this many eggs:
. . . and Mace found the other six, each of which contained two mini-Reese Cups. I'm a pretty lax mom, but even I draw the line at twelve Reese Cups before breakfast, so we cut him off after 6 eggs.
Last week, Casey finally talked dad into setting up the swimming pool.
Note the greenish hue to the water -- we filled the pool up the day before, so algae hadn't had a chance to grow yet -- that's just the color of our unfiltered water. Nice, huh? But the next day, the chlorine had kicked in and the water was fine. Note also the ladder -- why is the painting ladder in the pool, you ask?
How else will we get in and out? The irony here is that I justified not buying the $30 pool ladder last summer because I had spent $100 on the pool and that was pushing the budget for summertime fun. This year, Joe has spent nearly $200 buying the fittings, hoses, and accessories to hook up the solar heating panels we brought with us from the old house, so that he can heat the little $100 pool, but yet neither of us has thought to buy the $30 ladder to get in and out of the pool.
Right before Joe went out of town the last time, the dishwasher stopped working, so the entire time he was gone (eight whole days), we had to handwash the dishes. I know -- the horror. (And by "we" in the previous sentence, I mean "Grandma" and "Wilma," our nanny. I think I washed the dishes once while Joe was gone. Apparently I was sitting around eating Bon-Bons and watching Biggest Loser while all the dishwashing was going on.) So by the time Joe got back, we (again, Grandma and Wilma) were ready for the dishwasher to work again. Joe summoned the troops and they took care of the problem (kinked drainage line).
As no blog post is complete without a picture of some wildlife -- check out these birds:
I tried looking them up in my bird book, but I couldn't find them. Apparently an entire flock of rare and exotic birds has gone missing from some rich person's aviary and they have come to roost in the tree outside our bathroom porch (aka The Margarita Porch, or The Porch Where Tomato Plants Come to Die). Here's a closeup, so if you can identify this bird, you win a prize (a golden egg with Reese Cup wrappers inside):
As I mentioned earlier, my 40th birthday was today. Friday night, Joe took me out to dinner and then tricked me into telling him I wanted to go to Bern's dessert room. If you aren't from Tampa, you might not appreciate what it means to go to Bern's. Bern's Steak House is the nicest restaurant in Tampa, if only because it's been around forever and has really really really awesome food. Our only family legend regarding Bern's involves my father vomiting up his oysters onto a waiter's tray in the middle of the restaurant because he couldn't make it to the bathroom. The waiters at Bern's are so professional they didn't miss a trick -- as one of them was walking past the tray where my father had three seconds before lost his oysters, the waiter whisked out a napkin and laid it over the vomit. Another waiter, coming from the other direction, hoisted the tray to his shoulder and disappeared into the kitchen. It was amazing.
But I digress.
When we got to Bern's, we went upstairs to the dessert room, and all these people were waiting for me:
I like that picture, but the one below is better because Dez looks like the waiter is about to attack her with a dessert fork:
Here is why the dessert room at Bern's is awesome (aside from the fact that there are no vegetables allowed there):
It just makes people happy.
I need to hear more on how "Joe tricked me into telling him I wanted to go to Berns". I think that is an amazing ability that more husbands should develop...
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