Softball/baseball season has started, and they are pretty darn happy about that!

Thank goodness generic acetaminophen is white or else I would not have had anything to photograph this week.  My entire family has been stricken with a terrible virus over the past two weeks.  It started with my son, then MacGyver got it, then my daughter and I together.  My daughter is on the upswing right now but I am still miserable.  My doc sent me for a chest x-ray yesterday to rule out pneumonia.  If I could just get this fever to break I know I would feel so much better.  My throat hurts so much that I can barely swallow.  If there is a silver lining to this cloud, it’s that I lost 5 pounds from being unable to eat.  LOL!

per·spec·tive, n. : A mental view or outlook

My kindergartner has been fortunate to participate these past two months in the accelerated reading program at his school which normally doesn’t start until second grade. The first level of achievement in the program is the “cardinal pin” (the school’s mascot). Taking comprehension quizzes and earing points has completely changed my son’s perspective on reading. It has given him a new determinaton and purpose and he pretty much drops everything to make sure he has time to read each day. This week he got his cardinal pin and the excitement level was thru the roof. His teacher gave him a hug and spun him around. He called from school to tell me when he got the pin. And this was the happy face he came bounding off the bus with.

I have to admit that this image idea looked a lot cooler in my head. This is the Leaning Tower YMCA in Niles, Illinois or as my kids call it, “The Tipping Tower of Pizza.”  I envisioned a picture shot from low down to make the tower look kinda ominous, taken at night with blurred cars going by.  In order to get cars in the shot, I needed to be across the street.  And I couldn’t get low enough from across the street to get an ominous view of the tower and a view of cars at the same time. To make matters worse, the tower tips a lot more perpendicular to the street so it doesn’t even look that tippy here.  Oh well.  Week 15, done!

We get an amazing cookie care package at almost every holiday from my Auntie Karen, and the other day an Easter package arrived at our house.  My aunt has been making fancy cookies ever since my cousins and I were all little kids celebrating holidays at my mom’s house.   Today my cousins and I are grown up and living spread all over the country.  Auntie Karen is now a grandma, baking cookies for her grandkids and great-nieces and great-nephews, packing them up and shipping them to everyone in the family.  Even though my parents and I still live in the same town, these cookie care packages from Auntie Karen make me think of childhood holidays at home.

We had a little spring break lunch adventure at IHOP to get “The Lorax” pancakes.  The lunch came with some seeds, inspired by the movie’s message of conserving nature.  My kids are planting these seeds, really thinking they are going to get a truffula tree to grow.  Hopefully something (anything?) will sprout!

The word of the week is “sparkle.”  What can I say? She sparkles in so many ways.

It’s amazing how inanimate objects can have so much personality.  These are my kids lovies.  You can see by their condition that they have been loved really hard for several years.  Big sections of the duck are actually bald.