Spring and activities

The side of my driveway looks like this and I love it.

David took me on a date on Friday two weeks ago because D&D was canceled and we had already arranged babysitting.

We went to Brewers Alley and had good pasta and strawberry rhubarb upside-down cake. We walked around Frederick and congratulated one another on our living situation.

I really like Frederick. There is good food and its not too crowded. It feels like a small town with big city food ambitions.

It was Bring Your Child To Work Day. I brought both my children to work. Megan was finally old enough to go too.

She was so excited she chose Qiagen over her own class field trip to the petting zoo.

I am going to take her to the petting zoo later but it was pretty sweet to have her there and happy.

Kiernan was there too. He had been deeply sick the day before and looked like it. He was happy to be out of school though.

He got on better with the other kids this year. They were mostly excited to talk about Fortnite and he can do some pretty funny Fortnite emotes.

We had an unexpected fire alarm right in the middle of the whole thing.

It saved him from his worst part of the day.

They were doing an exercise on making chaotic systems manageable and the chaos was making him so frustrated and unhappy that he was on the verge of tears and miserably begging to go.

That there is my German boy who needs order in his life to feel ok.

After the events were over we went with my labmate Mirellie and her son to the playground and then to get frozen custard.

All was right with the world again.

David has a new guitar project and it is a doozy!

I said earlier that I was having a really hard time at work. One of the things that I did about it was to force myself to go talk to my bosses about how I was feeling. It did absolutely no good but I promised myself if I said everything that I had to say and didn't chicke-out or blow up about it that I could spend <100 cool.="" dollars="" nbsp="" on="" p="" something="">

I present the begining of my new viking costume.

yay

I took a great workshop class at the haven and learned a little about how to use a laser cutter.

You make an image that is readable to the laser cutter computer like the above.

Then you sit by the laser cutter and make sure it doesn't have any problems while it reads the image.

Then you watch your cool new bag with a dragon design get cut/embossed.

Then you sew it together and feel all accomplished and enthusiastic about laser cutters.

We went to our 25th High School reunion. It was very hard.

I got major I can't do people today anxiety.

Its a shame. I was really looking forward to it. 

It was time for the annual Cub Scout Cub Mobile races that weekend too so it was easy enough to get out of the reunion stuff.

These girls might just be Cub Scouts next year. That would make my schedule a heck of a lot simpler.

They are down for all the activities that s for sure.

Their brothers were ready too.

Kiernan always starts slow and nervous and picks up as he gets a feel for it.

A few kids got into some major crashes by being gung ho from the start. I think I prefer Kiernan's method (minus the nervous bit).

I discovered a new favorite sandwich.

Potato!

Toasted rye or multigrain with butter and salad greens and then sliced cold potato and garlic aoli and crispy onions. Oh man so good!!!

Its from one of my Danish cookbooks.

So good...

I'm still playing my lyre and this time strung it backwards because I saw someone on Youtube say that he was doing it that way to emulate a Celtic harp (positionaly the high strings are closer to your body in this style instead of away from your body like with a guitar).

Megan says that my olaying maks it too hard to hear her games so I'm being kept humble about hte whole process lol.  

We went to the D.C. chocolate festival again this year. It was again delicious.

For reasons of dread we are going to the pool more. This dread has nothing to do with the pool and everything to do with a wet spot in the back yard that is probably the sign of expensive septic repairs in our future.

We are taking no baths and spreading out the laundry and getting septic field plans from the county before we can go any further but the guy who pumped out the septic system last week says that it dosen't look good.

Oh man

All the mondy

:(

We went to a goat farm and Megan made a new friend.

I had fun too.

She asked for more hair dye.

I especially love how the purple tips turned out. This dye is lasting a few weeks at a time and her head smells like grape soda and she feels fancy so its good.

Warm weather means checing out local ice cream shops after work.

It means beautiful purple flows on the drive.

It means Star Wars day (May the 4th be with you).

We had team building and went bowling for half a work day. 

Oh man my wrist!

Its duckpins for me from now on. I love the bowling and my labmates but my wrist hurt for 4 days after and is still twinging when I open the milk.

I took Megan out on a fancy date/girls day.

She dressed way up and picked a dress for me.

We got to some serious yard work last weekend and I found that we have been hosting a fair sized snake. Yay!

It was for sure time to mow.

Mom mulched the back beds. We are trying a colonial style garden back there this year.

We shall see how that holds up with the septic work.

Will they dig up the whole back yard?

I wish I knew.

The hosta were happy and David did the front and I did the back and it looked pretty good.

We got everything done before the rain set in. That left the whole next day for a good house cleaning.

David crashed hard after the mowing and went to bed for pretty much the rest of the day. His whole being chronically ill sometimes sneaks up on us and we remember that he is indeed not perfectly healthy.

It is a reminder that I hate.

I doubt he loves it much himself.

I bought an entire case of Stroopwaffles.

An excellent reward for all day cleaning is a tea with a stroopwaffel.

Kiernan won his first ever battle royal. He was pretty darn proud. 

We have started a new rockband tour with a family band called black beans and rice after our favorite dish. If you click on the picture you can see that we did a fair job replicating ourselves in the game.