Spring in South Dakota

This picture was taken this morning. We got A LOT of snow last night, and it all fell straight down. There is a 7" blanket covering everything, even the top of our fence! It is quite lovely, but I am a little worried about getting to work today. My car is completely buried in snow... but at least it is warm enough so the snow is already melting. And the dogs are having a wonderful time. Apparently they haven't heard that it is supposed to be SPRING and we are VERY CRABBY that we have to shovel again!
This is Rose with her snowball feet. Rosalyn has a lot of hair between her toes (although we try not to talk about it because it is a sensitive issue for her). Every time she goes out in the snow she comes in festooned with these quite decorative snow balls between her toes and hanging off the long hair on her legs and belly. She doesn't seem to think it is as funny as I do...

Easter Dinner

I just had to post to tell my mother that she was wrong.... absolutely and completely wrong about the wisdom of putting dark chocolate chunks in our cherry pie. I know you thought it would be overwhelming, Mom, but it was completely delicious- even though it was still funny looking. I also made a cran-apple reduction sauce for the pork roast with cinnamon, a little bit of curry powder, a little balsamic vinegar and some crushed red pepper and that was also way better than I thought it would be. I decided I should post a picture of our Easter dinner so that Mom can stop feeling bad that I couldn't get there for Easter this year. It probably wasn't as delicious as your chocolate trifle, but it was pretty delicious anyway. And I bet you didn't have an Easter bunny on top of the trifle, did you?!

Happy Easter!

This is my slightly sad attempt at an Easter pie. If you can't tell, it is a rabbit on the top. It is actually harder than you might think to make a rabbit out of pie dough... and I think the spot where the cherry pie filling is leaking out makes it look like the rabbit is bleeding. Oh well, I will just cut it up before Nathan gets home, and then tell him how beautiful it was!
In keeping with our grand Easter tradition, Stewart and Rosalyn nearly killed each other today. I heard awful noises coming from the back yard and thought the dogs were killing a cat or something. I ran outside with only my pajamas on, barefoot, to find Stewie's collar twisted around Rosie's lower jaw. I am not sure how they accomplished it, but Stew was choking to death and Rosie's mouth was bleeding. I had to run into the house and get a knife to cut off Stew's collar. I was a little afraid that Stew would have suffered some brain damage from lack of oxygen (if you have met Stew, you know that he barely has two brain cells to rub together anyway and certainly has none to spare), but a minute after I cut them loose he was sitting in the kitchen trying to figure out why I was having hysterics and asking for a treat. Plus, I have to clean the carpet in the kitchen again, because as I was running through the snow barefoot I stepped in a whole lot of frozen dog poo. It was pretty dang exciting for a Sunday morning. Happily, the funny looking pie is cooling, the roast is in the oven and the dogs are sleeping peacefully at my feet. Maybe it will turn out to be a good Easter after all!

Braiding hair...

I can't figure out how to do corn rows. In anticipation of having to learn how to 'do' little girls' hair I have been trying, but I can't get it to turn out. One of the girls on my caseload did my hair today, and I think it is funny that I have spent the last month trying to help her figure out how to count to 20 but that she can do this with my hair. The human brain is a funny, funny thing.

Go Barack!

This speech is very long, but I am a little bit in love so I thought I would share.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/hisownwords