Still alive!

To my dear friends who've wondered why this blog has been so quiet: Yes, I'm still here!

And as The Anchoress puts it, this post will be "All about Me, Me, ME!" If you're looking for trenchant political commentary or pithy cultural observations, please move along, there's nothing to see here. Of course, that's pretty much always the case... never mind.

Anyway, the last few months (but really more like the last year) have been nothing if not exciting. A re-cap: We moved my folks into their retirement community, cleaned out their house full of 80 years of accumulated treasured possessions, had a huge rummage sale, sold the house and had the closing, celebrated four birthdays (one in March and three in April), hosted Easter dinner (which was also one of the birthdays), took a family trip to visit Hillsdale College in Michigan, and then last weekend, had our Catholic Homeschool Conference with 39 vendors, 17 workshops, and about 600 attendees.

The conference (for which I was the chairperson) ended last Saturday. It was a wonderful two days filled with many dear friends, wonderful speakers, great vendors, and an almost tangible sense of joy and celebration. We had a beautiful Mass on Saturday morning, Adoration all day long in a classroom that was transformed into a chapel, a play based on a book by Regina Doman, put on by and for our teens, children's programs... really, it was an amazing weekend, thanks to the incredibly talented people in our homeschool group who poured their heart and soul into volunteering for the event. Just beautiful!

And now, I'm happily diving into all kinds of things that, by necessity, had to be slightly neglected -- or completely ignored -- over the past few weeks. Best of all was diving back into homeschooling; the younger two and I had some fantastic days last week, catching up on the time we missed because of the conference, and my high schooler and I also had a pretty productive afternoon on Thursday, I think it was, discussing her work and getting back on track.

Today - the first weekend in almost a year that I didn't have to worry about Mom and Dad's house or the conference -- I took pictures of the spring perennial garden (including that one of the daffodils, above).

Here is the "Little Reader" garden statue which I'd given to Mom some years ago for her garden. She generously said I could have him, now that she's in the apartment. Isn't he adorable?

Hmmm, should have gotten a close up of him. Google to the rescue: someone else has him and took that close up I missed.

Here's another view of the same perennial bed, with the herb garden directly behind, and the vegetable garden (raised beds) off in the upper right hand corner.

You can see the Iris stalks on the upper right and lower left edges of the perennial bed; the Lamb's Ear is just starting to come up in the front, the Autumn Joy sedum is gathering strength in various spots around the bed, and the Black-Eyed Susans are only just starting to peek up above ground.

Later this afternoon, we all gathered in the family room to watch the Kentucky Derby. Bets were placed, horses were cheered on, hors d'oeuvres were served (OK, so it was just Papa Murphy's Cheesy Bread), and of course...

Now I know what you're thinking: Those aren't real mint juleps! They're not in silver cups, they don't have short straws, and there's no visible mint!!

To which I reply, so what? They were made of simple syrup with mint extract because the store didn't have fresh mint and neither did I (the fury of the hoe was unleashed on the spearmint last year after it tried to take over the herb garden one too many times), they were in glass tumblers because, hey, we're not in Kentucky, so we don't have silver julep cups, and we ran out of time to cut short straws because it was post time. You can't dawdle when the Derby starts. It's like a small town on a road trip: blink and you miss it.

Finally, tonight, we had "Weekend Theater", arranged by our youngest. We'd all voted on the movie ("Princess Bride" won), watched it in the lodge downstairs, and enjoyed quoting all the best lines at dinner afterwards ("I don't think that word means what you think it means").

Thank God for days like today!