A Happy List

We had a mostly happy week. We ventured out on a hike. It wasn't perfect. Our first place to hike was a lake that we discovered on arrival had been drained for cleaning and smelled of rotting fish. So we followed MapQuest to another site and never could find it. We finally found a pull off on the side of the road near a river. We wandered through the flood plain next to the river for a bit. I am glad we pushed on and found some fun. We are trying to add more hikes into our weeks this year. 

I have been using a new cleaning system for a few months. It is an adapted FlyLady system that The Secret Slob on YouTube created. It is working great for me. I am even getting to cleaning things like the oven on a regular basis. This week I learned a trick to clean the racks. You soak them in the bath tub with dryer sheets for about four hours. Then you rub them with the wet dryer sheets. They are like brand new again! 

We watched television just about all day on Inauguration Day. We even had cake and tea on china. We are praying that the next four years will be filled with kindness, cooperation and honesty. We really need to come together and knock off all the mud slinging and hatefulness of the last administration. 

These three kitties are getting along pretty well. Salem and Eve are best buddies now. Rosie is struggling to come to grips with not being the only cat in the house. She is slowly adjusting and there have been no fights...just lots of hissing on her part. 

My Mother-in-Law gave me a Roomba for Christmas. I love it. It is so easy to use, "train" and clean. This little machine that we call Ramona is my new best friend. 

We are just loving board games as always. This week we played Stupid Deaths, Uno Dare, Beat That (a game filled with lots of challenges) and Sequence. There is always laughter with games. 

I had the pleasure of watching my daughter perform twice this week. She participated in a dance festival in our city. They performed in a vacant lot and in a parking garage. I watched her parking garage performance (below) from "back stage" instead of going outside to watch with the crowd. There were eight dancers, one on each level of the parking garage stairwell. They danced coordinated phrases with solos and freeze frames mixed in to their performance without any music or being able to see each other. They just used counts and a cow bell to tell them to transition to the next phrase. I decided to stay back stage in case security showed up to kick them out. I wanted to be able to whisk her away quickly. They managed to complete the 13 minute dance without incident and to great applause. (Sorry the window is so dirty).

We sat down and looked at some of our blog books this week. These books are our family's memories. We love them so much. They always bring laughter and happy memoires. I am slowly converting our blog to books using the website Blog2Print.

We had the pleasure of making a mom-to-be care basket this week. One of Anne's dance teachers just found out that she is having a medically fragile baby in a few months. She is a first time mom. I remember how scary it was being a first time mom and finding out that my baby was going to be born with life-threatening conditions. The people who gave me cute clothes and presents for him were so encouraging. Through those gifts, it was as if they were saying that he was loved, accepted and deserved to be dressed up cute and adored. I wanted to pass on the same sentiment to her.

Blessings, Dawn