Our Europe countdown is at eleven days. I am getting super giddy and nervous and excited. I've been feeding my excitement by brushing up on my French skills and cultural knowledge. I took French for about seven years in high school and college, but of course my conversation skills are now minimal at best. I picked up Harry Potter from the library to get into the flow of the French language;familiar young adult books are the easiest to read in my opinion. I love the little differences between the American and French Harry Potter editions. The French title translates to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's School, Hogwarts is called Poudlard, and "muggles" are called "moldus". Fun huh? All this French immersion has this Francophile ready for une aventure française!
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Happy mother's day to all the wonderful moms, grandmas, great-grandmas, aunts, and motherly ladies out there. Happy day especially to my mom who lets us call her granddogma and send her cards from our dogs. It takes a special lady to endure that kind of weirdness.
The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the trees have baby leaves, and the flowers are in bloom! FINALLY! I feel like I finally woke up from a looooong winter hibernation, and I love that I can walk outside and feel the sun on my face without shivering from a brutal chill. My morning dog walks are actually pleasant again, and I'm driving with the windows down doing a little car dancing on the way to work. This is officially the best time of the year. What's your favorite part of spring?
You may have noticed that I've been a little shotty on the posts the past few weeks. I am sorry for slacking, but I have a totally legitimate excuse for being MIA. We recently have had our biggest influx of visitors to date - and it was amazing! We started with a visit from my fantabulous sister-in-law Naomi who was in from Portland. We enjoyed a delicious lunch at the Milwaukee Art Museum among other mini adventures. Pedro loved having Naomi around. She practiced for having more neices and nephews by spoiling Pedro rotten. All the couch and kitchen roaming time he wanted! Libby's visit overlapped with Naomi's, and I am proud to say that I stayed up past 10:00 every night Libby was in town! We made a stop to Libby's bar, an .... interesting establishment off Brady Street in Milwaukee. We also laughed and talked a lot - and that's a good as summary as any for time spent with my sister. While they weren't technically visiting us, we got to see Sydney and Chris - Jesuit Volunteer friends - and their little bambino Ford outside of Chicago. We had our reunion at a Dunkin Donuts (apparently it's a Hartford volunteer thing) on our way to pick up Diego. Yay for JVC reunions!! It feels so special how quickly we can reconnect with people we rarely see; it's a magical JVC thing. The trade off for being "ruined for life" is that you meet some amazing people who are just as runined as you! (Little bit of trivia: Chris and Sydney met in Jesuit Volunteer Corps at a party Paul and his roommates hosted!) We met up with some more Jesuit Volunteer friends in Chicago at one of our old semi-haunts, the Heartland Cafe. The weather was beautiful, we had a great time laughing and catching up, and we were even inspired to make plans to see each other again! We just can't get enough of each other. And finishing off our round of visitors was our great friend Rachel - who has the distinguished honor of having lived with both Paul and me (Hartford and Chicago respectively). Rachel has a love for great music, bright colored scarves and ice cream. So of course we had to take her on a custard tour of Milwuakee. Every stop was delicious, but none of them quite compared to the amazingness that is Ted Drewes frozen custard.
And that was our whirlwind of visitors. The best part of having family and friends all over the country is the excitement that comes from reunions and visits. I always feel so lucky and blessed thinking about all the wonderful people we love and who love us! Things are pretty quiet now, so hopefully we won't have to wait too long for our next visitor to come along. (Hint, hint...) In 18 days, Paul and I will be leaving on a jetplane for London and Paris. I can't stop smiling talking about our plans and reading about the places we'll be visiting. Feel so lucky and so excited!
First we'll make snow angels for two hours... then we'll go ice-skating... then we'll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse Cookiedough as fast as we can, and then... we'll snuggle.
If first impressions are any sign of what's to come, Pedro and Diego are going to be best buddies. As long as Pedro can keep himself away from Diego's food. (In the pictures above, Pedro's the one with the extra red harness thing around his body.) This weekend, Paul and I drove to Indiana to pick up our new beagle Diego! He's already been making us (asmile and bringing us lots of joy. Check back for more photos tomorrow.
Josh Ritter came to Milwaukee this week and played at the beautiful Pabst Theater. Paul and I went to the concert with some friends to celebrate his birthday, and we had a blast. I love going to see shows at the Pabst; the musicians usually make comments about how much they enjoy playing there, and I like to think that improves the quality of their performance. I think Josh Ritter smiled through his whole performance. He was so happy! The show had a great energy, their set was really long, and it was super fun to hear our favorite songs live.
This is his song "Kathleen": if you haven't heard it, I recommend taking a few minutes to listen. It's good stuff! Unless you live in Hawaii or some other goregous part of the country, you've noticed we've been having a crappy, cold spring. Despite our extended winter weather, our community garden's second season is now underway. We had our first work day this past Sunday; it was so nice working outside and getting my hands dirty again. Though we couldn't start preparing our garden beds yet (the rainy weather prevented delivery of the soil we needed), we built an herb circle and worked on our mulched paths. I was so pleased with the result, and I will be very excited to see the circle when it's full of herbs. Taller herbs will go in the very center, perrenials in the second ring, and annuals in the bottom ring. Soon this space will be bustling with life! The little bit of green popping up everywhere is a nice preview of things to come. We began working with Reflo, a local non-profit, last season to install a rain catch system. They got our system all hooked up again this system, and we discussed some exciting plans for the future. I feel proud of how professional our rain catch system looks, and I'm happy that we'll be conserving resources by using rain water for our garden beds. Even with the cold weather, a few plants are popping up around the garden. Some of the plants in our edible fruit forest are beginning to bud, one plot has some greens that over-wintered, and I even found some volunteer tulips on the hill overlooking our garden. I must have spent too much time outside Sunday, because I think I caught garden fever (har har). Can't wait to get our beds prepped and ready for the season and to get some seeds in the ground!
Are you growing anything this garden season? |