Happy St. Patty's Day?

Wow... It's been so long I almost forgot I had this blog to begin with. Nobody's sent me any nagograms to update it, so I guess it slipped by the wayside. Of course it didn't help being sick in February and recovering from that, then preparing for Mom and Dad's visit, which concluded last Wednesday. I missed the last home hockey game of the Prowlers thanks to being sick, so that was a bummer, but the Prowlers did pretty well, going to state for the first time in 41 years and section 8A champs for the first time in 46. It was almost like a Cougar Rose Bowl story.

We've had great weather for the most part with some warmer 40+ days that melted off some of the snow on the streets, but just when we started to think of spring days ahead, it snowed yesterday and all the slush turned to ice overnight. That's normally not too bad, but the neighbors across the street had an ill or injured child this morning and the Great Plains ambulance medics almost fell down a half dozen times in walking between their front porch and the ambulance, so after watching the 2nd or third near fall, I ran over there with a full bag of kitty litter and spread it all on their front walk less than a minute before they all came out together carrying the child in their arms instead of a stretcher. I don't think they saw me, but thankfully they got to the ambulance safely and hopefully all's well that ends well.

We got the house in pretty good order for Mom and Dad's visit and they stayed here at the house with us from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday afternoon, flying out of TRF. The boys really enjoyed the visit and playing games with Nanna and especially making the Crazy Chocolate Cake. It was nice to visit the boys at lunch together at Challenger on their last day of school last week. They closed the entire school district because of the boy's hockey win against Warroad and placement in the state tourney. They don't go back until Tuesday this week. We had Mike Lehrer over for a giant ham that Andrew had bought shortly before Mom and Dad's arrival and we feasted like kings. It was like Christmas dinner in March... The only downer to the visit, besides its brevity, was the roof started leaking on the house. Thankfully I had one of the boys' sleds available, though, to put up in the attic and we're relatively dry now. I think most of the snow and ice has melted off so it shouldn't be much of a problem for a while.

The Prowler Hockey Team lost their first round game with Hermantown Hawks and won the consolation game against Orono, then lost a second time to Blake yesterday, so that about does it for the season. Michael Forney, their star forward, suffered a grade II separation of his shoulder, so he wasn't able to play much of the time. Aaron has asked if we can go to every single home game next year, so I guess we'll be busy again next winter. They ended up with a 22 or 23-9 record, the most ever by any Prowler team.

The boys continue to do well in school and are having fun with the snow they have left. On their days off, I've put a cook's timer on the front porch and told them when it goes off, they can come back inside (60 minutes) and more often than not, they forget all about the time and stay out there. I had enough of the inside time and noise, so that turned out to be a good solution for all of us (and Andrew could hear himself think).

Not much else is going on these days over here. We're not due to have a combined choir performance until late April/early May, so it's pretty much just the routine stuff for the time being. I gotta find another big St. Patrick's hat for the boys to wear to school...