"Baby what a big surprise"

I surely enjoyed my week off. I rented a couple of movies...I watched "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Running with Scissors"...loved them both. I also read The "Time Traveler's Wife" for my book group this month.

I started "housecleaning" the downstairs. Monday and Tuesday I took everything off the walls in the dining room, hallway and bathroom. Cleaned all the moldings, baseboards, light fixtures, etc. That took me two days. Then on Wednesday, I had to do transportation for the Children's Home...drive a 14 year old girl to Philadelphia for a supervised sibling visit. That wasn't too bad, except on the way there I got into a little fender bender. Hopefully the adjuster will be coming out today to give an estimate. Thursday, I was going to start cleaning again, but I started thinking that if we're ripping down a wall and remodeling the kitchen, everything's just going to get dusty again, so I may as well wait. That sounded good to me, so I stopped.

The rest of the week was pretty much uneventful. JJ decided he wanted to go visit his aunt, so we took him to the bus on Thursday. On Saturday we went to go pick him up from the bus station around 7:pm. After we got him, we arrived home and I walked through the back door and my house was full of my friends and family. "Surprise!" they all yelled. Braden and JJ had planned a surprise birthday party for me, and I was totally clueless. Earlier in the day, while I was preparing my desserts for Easter Sunday, Braden asked me, "Mom, would you make up some of that iced tea/lemonade punch for tomorrow? Everybody loves it." Of course I did. During the party he said, "I hope you know I lied to you. The punch was for tonight" I told him I didn't care. Braden and JJ did most of the work themselves. They took my address book upstairs one night and called all my friends, they told Keith what kind of food they wanted to have. When Keith and I ran to get JJ, Braden and my oldest son (who I thought had just come early for Easter) vacuumed the downstairs and did a quick cleanup. (I still can't find where they stashed half the things that were laying around) It was a very nice night. Except for all the "you're really old now" ribbing I took.

Yesterday my family came for Easter dinner. The day was fairly uneventful. Except the tea lady loaded her plate up so high, then was holding it crooked and half the stuff ran off onto the dining room floor. Keith yelled, "Jesus Christ, Jane" when he got up to fix it, which made her feel bad, but other than that, everything was nice. Except the weather. It was colder here yesterday than it was on Christmas day. That's a bunch of crap.