You mean I can actually blog tonight!?!?

I have an unfinished daybook on file, so I haven't ignored this completely.

Sitting here with my lovely Blaise on my lap. We'll see how long this lasts!

Whew! What a spring. It's flying.

I don't even know if I should catch up. Easter: Hmm...Mass was lovely. The kiddos looked great. I did NOT host Easter, although it crossed my mind. We went to Lorraine's for a bit, then over to Dan's folk's. A really busy day. Tiring. But beautiful.

OH, the great krust cook-off on Holy Saturday was the best! I did host that, kind of at the prompting of my two sisters. They came over with their kids. We started at about 9am. For some reason, I was amazingly prepared to start at that time. So my sister and brother came with their kids. We started the mixing, then the rolling, then the cutting, then the frying. Over and over again. When all was said and done, we did TEN batches of cookies, all by 2pm! We never did that many in that short of time. My nieces and nephew are really getting good at this! It was great fun.

Moving right along...

I took a week off after Easter. Ha! Just kidding. I was changing over Spring clothes and still trying to stay afloat from daily mother/wife things. Then we started planning for Dominic's 5th birthday party. We were having parties every year for Rose- even if it was just family (which is a lot). So we had to scale back and we're trying out having a party at 5 and 10. So this year was DD's turn.

Oh what it turned into. I guess I knew I had to start planning it right after Easter. I think it took us that week to figure out a theme.

GI DD's army party was born.

Long story short- it was a bit of work. Lots of creative fun. Lots of happy little boys. I guess it was hard having to do like all of our Spring cleaning in those weeks, and do things for the party.

Only downside was the weather. We had to have the party outside for the number of guests we had. We were going to postpone if it rained. They called for cloudy, but no rain. We saw a few raindrops. And was it ever cloudy. But the worst was the low fifties temperature....when it had been in the eighties several days previous!!! Urgh! We made a bonfire and wore jackets. The pictures show a lot.

Uniforms for GI's on the left, medics on the right (the girls were the medics/nurses)

The medic tent.

"Chin up! Chest out!"

Issuing uniforms.

For boot camp they had to army crawl...

roll down the hill....

and then climb,

over the wall...

to be issued their firearms (rubber band guns).

They practiced on the target (seen in the background of the rolling down the hill picture). Then they turned on each other! And had a blast. The nurses were getting kinda bored,

but after a while, the soldiers thought it great fun to be wounded and get carried to the tent.

After dinner, we had cake,

and presents

more than he's ever gotten in his life

He really enjoyed acting so goofy.

And finally, after going on a mission for enemy recognizance,

they were rewarded for their hard work.