Spring and snow

During the past two weeks we have had gorgeous spring weather mixed with snowstorms. One recent snowstorm dropped about 5 inches all over everything here. Today we had a bit of snow, but it melted when it hit the ground. These are some of my beautiful flowers, covered with snow.
When the snow melted, the flowers tried to stand back up, and the daffodils mostly made it to vertical positions. The other flowers are still bent.
We have some very beautiful daffodils this year.
Besides the snow and spring, we have been busy with various projects. Kirk finished the marble towers he started last year.
The children are thrilled to play with them. Now, I just need to buy some more marbles. Most of ours have disappeared. I know some of them ran into a hole in the playroom floor and are sitting inside the dining room ceiling. When Kirk took apart part of the bathroom wall, he found some toys and things that had fallen into the wall 50 years ago, probably from the playroom.
Here are our beautiful children, sitting outside on one of the nice days. We are thankful that we haven't been sick for a few days.

Kirk finished the semester and will start teaching Spring term in a few days. He is still working on the book revisions. We are also working on remodeling the master bathroom. I've been taking some photos and will post them so you can see the change. Right now we are in the demolition phase.

Easter celebrations

This Easter we celebrated having healthy children. We didn't do as much as we have done in past years, though I think it turned out just fine. I'm not up to dying hard boiled eggs with the children, and Kirk doesn't like eating them anyway. The prospect of cleaning up dye from all over everything isn't my idea of a fun Easter. We had our traditional Easter basket--I put treats and a few gifts in a basket for the family. I do not put any Easter grass in for obvious reasons. At some point the children may figure out that most children get their own Easter baskets. Until then, we will stick with the one basket. The boys got new ties, Lucy got her new dress, and Kirk got a new bread knife.

Starting the week before, we read parts of the Easter story each night with the children. We had a small Easter egg hunt on Sunday afternoon. I put one or two M&Ms in each plastic egg and then Kirk hid them all over the yard. The children had fun finding them.
Edward was very careful to give Lucy all the pink eggs he found.
Lucy had fun holding eggs.

Andrew found the one egg that was placed higher than his head (all the others were on the ground or close to it).
The children enjoyed eating the M&Ms out of their eggs. Edward fed as many M&Ms to Lucy as he could until I caught him and told him to stop. Lucy really liked the candy. Isn't she cute in her new dress?

One of our frittilaria is getting closer to blooming. I'll post a picture when it does, assuming it doesn't get frozen this week with all the forecasted snow.

Lucy and RSV

Over the weekend, all the children got sick: Andrew first, followed by Edward and Lucy. By Tuesday, Lucy and Edward were still really sick, so I took them to the doctor. Edward didn't have anything really treatable (strep, ear infection, etc.). Lucy, however, had all the symptoms of bronchiolitis, probably due to RSV, so we started treating it as RSV. Given how illnesses spread, and the similarities of the coughs in our house, all the children have the same virus, but it just affects them differently. A 5-year-old gets a fever for a day and a nasty cough. A 3-year-old gets a fever, an earache, a nasty cough, croup, and a wheeze. A baby gets everything, but it's much worse because her lungs are too small.

Since she is 11 months old, and they have too many cases of this here to handle all babies at the hospital, they try having the parents care for the child, with trips to the outpatient RSV clinic at the hospital as needed. We had a pretty bad night on Tuesday listening to her wheeze, wheeze, stop breathing, wheeze, wheeze, wheeze, stop, and so on. She got to sit in the bathroom with the hot shower on for a while, besides having medicine.

This is our friend the breathing machine (nebulizer) that delivers her Albuterol dose every 4 to 6 hours. The hospital delivered the machine to our door and I got the prescription at the pharmacy. She really does better breathing and her color comes back after we use it. Last night she started to feel better and slept all night; her breathing got better and her fever went down. She even smiled at us! We are hoping that she is on the mend, though, of course, we will be watching closely. We are thankful for access to health care and for modern medicine. We are thankful for prayers.

I haven't had very many bright spots the last few days, but here was one funny thing Edward said. I asked him, "Are you skinny?" He pointed to his skin and said, "I have skin! And when you are bleeding, you have blood."

New dress

My goal this year is to sew something each month with the new sewing machine. I've decided, beforehand, that I will even count fixing an item as the "one sewing thing per month" (just to keep the goal obtainable). So, for March, I sewed an Easter dress for Lucy.
I finished the dress last week and the panties last night. Here are some close-up photos.
The front yoke and collar.

The back yoke with buttons (and buttonholes!).
Detail of the hem with rows of pintucks.

The dress will look much better once it is on Lucy, of course. I tried using the different feet and techniques and stitches in an effort to help me remember what I learned during the Bernina sewing class. So, for example, I used a #10 foot to sew on ribbons and make straight seams; I overcast the hems with #2 foot; I sewed pintucks (#30 foot with a double needle); I did buttonholes (lots of practice ones before I actually did one on the dress); I used stitches #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #10; I took a very long time and only worked about 1 hour a week on the project.

The reason I'm so pleased with something that for many would seem quite simple, is that I've never sewn very much before.