The weather has been so nice the last week or two. It’s like winter ended on a Friday and by Monday it was full force spring! It is so nice. We can have the windows open, play outside, think about the garden, etc, etc.

A couple of weeks ago we made a trek up to Ann Arbor/Ypsi in Michigan to visit our fabulous friends (family, really!), J & J and their two kiddies. On the way up I stopped at Little Saigon Vietnamese restaurant, which was yummy. I always love seeing them, wish I lived closer so we could visit more often. Parker and I had a really fun time. We visited the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum with the kids…it was crowded, but still fun. The girls and I went out for a fabulous dinner Saturday night, sans kids – which was really nice, we rarely get to hang out anymore with no kids in tow. We made plans to go to Family Week in Saugatuck in July, which I’m really looking forward to. The kids had a great time playing together. I’m bad and didn’t take many pictures at all – grrr to myself!

This past weekend was super-nice, temps in the 60s and very sunny. Parker An and I did a little yard work to get some remnant leaves cleaned up and cleaned the garage a little. We made a trip to Home Depot, which Parker just loves, and Parker “rode” the mowers, and we bought some seeds and seed starting stuff. We’re both really looking forward to a nice garden this year. I did a crap-load of laundry, too. I had my Vietnamese lesson Saturday – I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I’m doing pretty good. I only needed Ha’s help on a couple of words I’d never seen and a grammar construction which didn’t make sense…Vietnamese has several of those – you just have to try and not understand them, simply accept them – hard for me to do, but trying I think my pronunciation must be improving, too, because she only corrected me a few times while I was reading aloud.

We stopped by the local park yesterday afternoon. The ducks were out in force, and all the bulbs have sprouted, so the spring flowers are on their way! Then we went grocery shopping, and after taking a couple weeks off from having salmon, we got some really nice salmon filets and I cooked those up last night.

Things are good, and [as I’m writing] health reform passed, finally! It’s certainly not perfect, there’s pieces I don’t like…but, in general it’s a great thing.

Some pictures:

Parker in the ambulance at the Hands-On Museum

They had a Bob The Builder exhibit at the museum