Twas the Week Before Easter

I have been a bit tired and snappy lately. I have a head cold. I could use more than one day off at a time. I'd like to lie in bed for a couple of hours in perfect silence and then go for a walk without intense negotations.

That being said, it has been a wonderful week full of ALL KINDS of awesomeness.

Today, I stopped to take a pic of this: gotta love a golf cart with a license plate. Belongs to the King and Queen of our town, who were in for coffee at the store. 

I woke up extra early last week and took my first trip to the Amish farmers to check on the spring crop. It made me intensely happy.

Me and my girl hung out on m day off and she made us toast. Then we sat on the porch in spring sunshine and ate toast and pulled up our jeans to feel the sun on our legs and looked out past the barn while the dogs lay on the grass. I love her.

And this one: Oh, he breaks my heart in all good ways. I checked in with his teacher at school the other day about how he was oing and he received rave reviews. Smart as a whip and sweet as pie.Not to mention kind of stunningly handsome, no? 

K. would be stunningly handsome if he'd climb out of his stupid brown turtleneck that I hate. We went on a date last weekend and ate french fries and went to the movies and it was super fun.

All is well. We rented our house for a year-- the old one-- which is a good thing. Nice to feel like we're bringing interesting people to town. April promises to be very hectic, with a visit from my family, a four-day photoshoot for the book, and the commencement of produce season. We're going on a long weekend to Biloxi in mid-May as a family, and I can't wait.

Yesterday

A LOT of supremely frustrating things happened yesterday. Shoes. Dog. Car. Deli slicer. Combinations there of.

But since it seems like I might perish if i hold my breath for a day free of frustrations, I am going to blog instead about the good things that happened.

First, I have made peace with the fact that Annaliese prefers to wear pink + dresses + smatterings of extra-girl as her daily wear and thus we are having fun getting her dressed in the mornings.

How cute is she, right? Couple that with her fondness for helping me check customers out and take sandwich orders and she is heart-breakingly adorable.

 We went stomping around the pastures yesterday, looking at the new spring grass popping up because K has cleared so much land with his bush hog, checking on the new trees we planted, and it. was. fun.

The daffodils the kids and I planted are UP and beautiful! Plus the first tulip bloomed. This is the one little flower bed that is actually ready for me to mess around with and i am cramming it full. Every spring I resolve to plant more bulbs. They are wildly satisfying.

Mississippi spring...

March

Typing this in the new kitchen. It is not FINISHED but it is so FAR removed from what it was that it feels wonderful. Fully functional, folks... dishes on shelves, pantry, fridge, hot water, the whole shebang.

Not surprisingly, we are all eating better, feeling more connected and less harried, and much happier. Imagine how it will be when there's more than 1 hideous wall-papered bathroom!

Nice times with these 'uns lately.

 Stunningly beautiful cabbages at the feed store, no?

Family walk, Annaliese-style. They picked flower-weeds and played floral delivery: leaving handfuls on neighbors' porches.

I like to think of folks opening their doors to a small mound of wilting weeds.

Now, if only I get the monkey that is book revisions off my back...

My husband is under the floor this chair is resting on, making loud noises, installing the radiant heating.

Renovations are odd.