Just regular folks.

On Sunday, we drove to the MD/PA border to see a 100 acre plot of land that my parents own. It’s about 90 minutes from our house – it’s completely undeveloped – and we haven’t been in a while. My parents are going to have the trees harvested from the land in the next few years so it’s kind of nice to see it before that happens. I haven’t seen it in about 10 years. My parents have owned this for about 40 years. I remember coming up as a child and being pretty bored about the entire thing, but yesterday, I was a little enchanted by it. And realizing that 100 acres square is less than 1/4 mile on each side, so…not enormous. I could explore it pretty easily, running through it and the skills I have from orienteering would allow me to map it with landmarks.

I bought Elka this backseat car cover so it doesn’t get muddy after trips to the dog park. We are loving the public dog park. I’m starting to make friends at the public dog park – I tried to not be too friendly at the paid dog park…it’s complicated.

Jeremy’s out of town on Valentine’s Day, so we celebrated on Friday night the three of us. We had a *wonderful* dinner at this new Italian place I found in the neighborhood. Perfect, like not at all crowded when we sat down at 5:30, but by the time we left an hour later, it was bustling, but not so crowded that you’d have to wait in line forever. I try to not eat carbs and cheese in the house, so when I go out, I want pizza and pasta. Sooo yummy.

We had two desserts including this delicious pistachio ricotta cake. Yummy. Thank you for being my valentine.

I went hiking with Kristen yesterday – a beautiful day! The trails were still snowy/icy, but we managed just fine.

Elka came with and we found the actual spring that is Sandy Spring. It was dry tho. We’ll have to come back in spring, I hope it’s running then.

I volunteered with Megan at Main Street at her creativity club event. We made resin coasters. Sometimes I think something will take 15 minutes and then we’ll be sitting around for 45 minutes with nothing to do, but this took the entire hour. This was a great craft and I’m looking forward to my own coaster which I’m going to use as a plant dish. I’ve watched these resin videos on youtube, but never had a chance to try it myself.

Went to Friday Vibes last night. Note that Edda is sporting her own name tag – I bought one for myself a few months ago when I realized I’m going to things regularly where not everyone knows my name. So my general rule is that if I don’t know everyone’s name at a gathering, I try to wear it. So I wear it at church, choir, guitar lessons, vibes. I probably should wear it weightlifting. Anyways – Jeremy liked it so much, he wanted one and then Edda wanted one and now we look like we are a weird religious cult. Oh well. So be it.

Edda was not only in a good mood yesterday, but also a good mood this morning too!

I’ve been spending a lot of time this year trying to find a good day program for Edda next year once she graduates from high school. It’s not very straightforward, it’s hard to find providers, the funding has been extremely stressed this last year. We visited one yesterday that seemed a good fit for her and Edda seemed to like it. Hooray!

To celebrate, we dropped Edda back at school after the appointment and Jeremy took me out to lunch!

I’ve been bad at taking photos of people I hang out with, I get lazy. But I shouldn’t be lazy, it makes me remember that that’s the whole point of life, to hang out with people. Ahhhh, home is so comfortable and easy. It’s so easy to stay at home and Netflix and chill. And it feels good. xoxo.

Ning came over to say hello and then goodbye. She’s moving to Dallas – I’ll miss them, but we are planning family trips in the future with the Scotts.

Felix is here too. He’s trying to find a job, so if you need a young person to do something or other, please let me know. He brought swedish candy – a kind of compressed marshmallow. (Sorry so serious Felix, it’s the only photo I have).

Apparently the tag line is – sweden’s most sold car. They are supposed to be car shaped, lol.

The weather outside is frightful. But our heater works and is keeping up. Edda’s school is opening 2 hours late almost this entire week. Some friends are in Hawaii this week. Lucky them! Felix (Jeremy’s nephew) arrived last night, here for an American gap-year adventure.

We had a nice, quiet weekend. We had Friday dinner with my parents, Saturday was guitar lessons and watching Bladerunner with our friends (I liked it more than I thought I would!), Sunday – I sang in church – 4 songs! – it was glorious, (sometimes I can hold the harmony, I can hear the harmony with the rest of the voices. Sometimes the alto part splits into two and I’m only one of a couple of voices and I can hear my contribution, but most of the time, I just tuck in a note that sounds OK with the rest of the notes. lol) celebrating MLK day. I do love so much music in my life, lots of singing and lots of guitar practicing, and I love the social aspect of it all, but I struggle with being OK with…never being very good at it. Is that OK? Of course it’s OK, but it’s disheartening in a kind of over-the-hill kind of way. Monday we had lunch with the pared down DC Martins.

A long time ago, almost a year ago, Vince ask – for his birthday – for us to get pajamas for Elka. So we finally did and it provided some much needed happiness on Monday. Elka is so accommodating to our whims and silliness. What a girl!

Well it got to the low 50s inside the house, and it was cold. (The bedrooms were still warm). And I was kind of grumpy – I’ve realized this recently, if I try to skimp a little on the heating/cooling and it’s too warm or cold in the house, I get moody, grouchy – work seems like a pointless burden. It pains me to think that I’ve turned into some sort of climate control princess, but I think it’s, unfortunately true. Though, I’d get hardly anyone would be happy at 52F in the house. But our nice HVAC guy came late on Thursday night and installed a new blower and it took all night for the house to rewarm itself.

I didn’t want to go out to eat every night, so we temporarily set up a dining room in our primary bedroom.

But then by Friday, we were back in business, my parents came over for Indian food.

And there are no eggs at the grocery store.