Week in Review

It's been a long week. Mom came up to visit last weekend to bring us a pick-up truck to borrow for a couple weeks. She painted a step stool for us, listened to Silas read Calvin and Hobbes cartoons endlessly, cooked us lasagne, and commiserated with me about the overgrown landscaping.
Orrin bought the necessary lumber for four raised beds in the front lawn, and assembled two of them. I spent the day pruning the front bushes and packing them into the bed of the pickup.
Monday, we hauled the brush to dump and loaded mulch in the rain. The boys squealed and fought while crammed int eh backseat of the pickup.
Silas played a double header Tuesday night. Three hours of baseball is a bit much for 6 and 7 year olds, especially over the dinner hours. The rest of the games are just one at a time and I think the kids are all having a good time. Silas loves playing, and it's fun coaching, even though I hardly know what I'm doing.
Wednesday was piano lessons for Silas and a blacksmithing/woodcarving class for Orrin. Silas is preparing a recital piece and is not enjoying the polishing phase of music. Orrin made a woodcarving gouge but had troubles with the headlights on the truck and didn't arrive home until 12:30.
This afternoon, Silas participated in the youth parade for Blossomtime, the spring festival here in St. Joe. His school made a Where the Wild Things Are float. The parade was small, just around the track at the high school, but painfully slow. They placed second, so they don't' get to be in the big parade on Saturday, which is a bummer. But Reuben got to play with a toy ambulance, and a bunch of llamas. I talked a lot to the llama group. One of them owns a co-op farm that "hosts" 4-H animals for city kids. So we'll have to look into that since we can't even have chickens at our house.
We had picnic number 24 of the year, on the bluff eating Jimmy Johns. Then went to rescue the truck over on the other side of Benton Harbor. No troubles getting it home but we suspect the alternator needs to be replaced.
Tomorrow I'm popping popcorn for Silas's entire school and in the evening is another baseball game.
I'd like to say we'll just collapse on the weekend, but we'll be running a 5k and watching the parade, and plan to finish the other raised beds, and pick up topsoil and mulch.
On top of all this, I started watching Mad Men, and have been staying up far too late.