Yeah, Spring is Great, But.....

I do like Spring. The green, the flowers, the warmth, you name it. They're all great. HOWEVER, with the warmth and flowers come the bugs. Now, I don't mind most bugs. They fly around, they crawl around, they do what they have to do. What I do mind is finding spiders in my house. They hang out on the front door...those little jumpy ones. I opened the back door the other day and a little black spider fell onto my arm. Then yesterday, we noted the presence of a *very large* black spider in our bathroom(and I'm not exaggerating, even Dave called it "big"). Spiders are NOT my friends. I do not like spiders by any stretch of the imagination. They creep me out. So, on finding this big ol' spider in the bathroom, Dave tells me to go get it. Me, who in an extreme case will refrain from running from small spiders long enough to drop a shoe on them from as far away as I can stay while still holding the shoe over their location. I declined his idea and informed him that as man of the house, spider killing fell under his jurisdiction. OK. A little while later, I walked into the bathroom to find....the big ol' spider under a bowl. I'm not sure what the idea was behind this unless Dave was just making sure I saw what my fate could have been. Apparently, the big ol' spider had been hanging out on the hamper, which I had just carried across the whole house the day before. I shiver when I think of it. Anyway, bowl and big ol' spider were gone this morning, but don't think I wasn't shaking out my towels and checking behind anything I had to pick up in there this morning. He might have had friends...

German Cuckoo Clock

This is the German Cuckoo Clock Dave brought back from his last trip. Isn't it pretty? When it cuckoos, a little bird comes out the door at the top, and the little guy chops on his wood.
Here is a close-up of little wood-chopper guy.
This is the owl from the opposite side. The clock is very detailed.

And of course, no home is complete without a cat. So I took this tiny blown glass cat I had gotten in Massachusetts and set him in the scene. He was the perfect size!

Snow in April??

OK, maybe it wasn't quite THIS MUCH snow. (this picture is from last year) but we did get about an inch of snow on Saturday night, the 7th. And it just finally got warm again yesterday, but windy. The snow didn't hang around long, and was melted by Sunday night except in the shady spots. However, it was long enough to kill all my lilies, which had started to come up since it was so warm and nice. No lilies for me this year!! :o(

Most Recent Painting

Here is my most recent painting. I decided to try something other than landscape, because I don't seem to be much of a landscape painter. I thought this little chickadee turned out quite well for a first-time bird painting.

Somebody had a Birthday!

Delilah turned 3 on April 10. Here she is in one of her new dresses. She said she looked just like Belle (the princess from Beauty and the Beast).

Easter Egg Hunt

Sunday evening, we got together and hid some eggs for Delilah. Some of them had fun things inside, like stickers, ducky soaps and toys...even some jelly beans! She had fun finding them all and opening them up.

Visits

Here is a pic of us with Maggie, Bob and Oliver and Mom & Dale. Maggie and Bob came down for Easter. We had a spaghetti lunch and played some games (Apples to Apples and Swipe). Before that, we had a visit from our Carlson parents...unfortunately, Dave had to fly out to Germany the day after they got here, but he did get to see them a little.