May Showers

Another cloudy, foggy, rainy day. It's all part of the cycle. We often have rainy Mays as well as rainy Aprils. In fact I think of May as a rainy month. My cool-season plants are really happy-the lettuces, spinach and chard are progressing really well. Everything else is healthy and enjoying the rain, but waiting for the sun to really start growing. The hot and humid days will be here soon enough, so I choose to enjoy the coolness for a bit longer.

For the most part, everyone is healthy and happy. Jeff, home from university for a short spring break of 6 weeks or so, has found some work through a temp agency, and he is glad to have a few checks to deposit before he goes back to school in June.

Johnathan continues to thrive in Chile and is enjoying the wonders of the southern hemisphere and the advent of Winter in June. It is temperate where he is, but he has mentioned cold nights and had us send more winter gear.

Sam, even though he is a junior, has many of his classes with seniors, so he is, for all practical purposes, done with school. The seniors all finished class last week, and Sam has taken all his AP tests, so he has for the last week and will continue for the next 3 weeks to pass the time at school playing frisbee, watching movies, and helping his teachers pack up their rooms. As you can imagine, he is loving life.

Sara is doing well, wishing for more babysitting jobs and looking forward to her summer plans. She has experimented some with dying her hair, and liked it the first time around so we're going to do it again. We're still trying to figure out her medication situation for her ADHD, so in June we go to a new doctor to basically start the process from scratch. I'm really proud of her, though. It seems that just being more aware of her challenges has really motivated her to work harder at having routines and other tricks to help her stay on track. She's been playing the clarinet this year and while she likes it, she doesn't like the band teacher, so I think next year she is going to focus on the guitar again for a while. It's good to have options.

Evan is finishing up the lacrosse season and getting ready for swimming. He is on track to have his 7th consecutive quarter with straight A's at school. Amazing. I think I had 2 quarters my entire life with total straight A's. Thus, he doesn't get it from me. In fact, I have little to do with it even now. He is one of those naturally organized people who just stays on top of things. He had his school concert last night and played in the percussion ensemble. I love percussion, so I look forward to the day when we can get him his drumset. Really. I might even learn to play those drums myself.

My extended family is having all sorts of milestones all over the place. One niece just graduated high school, one nephew gets baptized this weekend, another niece graduates and my brother and his wife are expecting their first baby together at the end of June. Oh, and my sister will defend her doctoral dissertation here in June. My mom traveled out to Arizona for the first graduation, and is now in Tennesee for the baptism and will head to Kentucky for the other graduation that night. The Tennesee sister and the Kentucky sister only live 3.5 hours from each other, so everyone is going to both the baptism and the graduation. Whew. I am missing it all, though and feeling a bit sad about it, but there it is. I suppose the upside is that during my mom's travels, we have had the fun of taking care of her pet rabbit. He's a cute little guy, very friendly and happy to live in his cage in the yard (we do go out and play with him). We thought about going down for the baptism and graduation, but it is too much driving (12 hours to Tennesee) for just a weekend trip. If the kids were out of school we'd have gone down for the week. Oh well. Soon, when my folks leave and go west in the next year or two, we'll be all alone out here with no family. Can't complain though, as I've lived all but 3 of my 23 years of married life near my folks. They deserve to go wherever they want to retire. Fortunately, I'm pretty good at adopting people to be part of my family, so we'll be okay.