Happiness. Lately. March 2015 (vol 10)

first off - Welcome new Facebook followers :)  Please believe me when I say that very soon I will start blogging real content again, so don't go away!  I really will be back with posts other than random tidbits.  Pinky swear.   But seriously.  Welcome!  

You know how I don't blog much lately, right?  My plan was to take a break during March so that I could jump back in on April 1st with a bang, but on April 1st I spent the early part of the morning at the pediatrician with three kids, and then the later part of the morning and the early part of the afternoon at the ER with a dehydrated, ear-infected, miserable baby boy.  That afternoon I took a nap.  And that evening I thought it was best not to blog because it was Russ' and my 10th anniversary, so instead of blogging, I did romantic things with Russ, like eat Red Robbin takeout on the living room floor and chat about how crazy and wonderful life is.  

That crazy, wonderful life?  Yeah - we were living it hard core last night with Russ cleaning up one vomit-y bed around midnight and me getting a vomit-y baby out of his crib around 5am.  We have had some version of illness in the house for over two weeks now.  I'm soooo over it.  But, apparently the germ hasn't gotten the message.  I'm really praying that it's all over by Easter Sunday.  A girl can hope and pray, right?

So here, I am.  But it's not with the "It's April and I'm back!" bang that I had planned.  It's just a brief little photo doc on the past few weeks so that when I look back through my archives I can remember more than just the illness of March 2015.   

(As you shall see, even though it was the middle of Lent, we ended up having a lot of special desserts this month...)

We had our last fires of the season (even if it gets cold enough in April - which it probably will! - we're out of fire wood for the season.)  And we burned our scented pine cones from Christmas.  It was pretty!

I turned 36 and made this decadent cake...

I also got a new phone for my birthday which has increased the quality of my mobile phone photos by a factor of 127.  So, if you're not already following me on Instagram that's good, because you were spared all the grainy photos.  Now's the time to follow me so you can witness my transformation into a world class iPhone photographer (or something like that...)  Won't you join me at https://instagram.com/ordinarylovely/ ?

Most of the snow melted.

Russ bought us a shamrock plant and I made some cookies and we celebrated St. Patrick's Day :)

Russ also bought a sprig of lilies, but then he was out of town for St. Joseph's Day, so we prayed for him, but he sadly didn't get to pray and feast with us.  My mom joined us though!  (She had to bring me the heavy cream for the cream puffs, because the cream in my fridge was solidified... obviously, it had been in there longer than I realized...)  These were the best cream puffs I've ever made.  I was sorry Russ had to miss it :(

St. Joseph's (cookie) tools :)

 Then we celebrated Clare's birthday, even though some were a little under the weather and some were a lot under the weather.

Everyone was way too sick on the first day of spring for our traditional "Welcome Spring" cake, so we had it a week or so later after Russ was home and while my sister in law was here visiting from Australia!  

We've been playing a lot of games lately, which usually translate into lots of family fun...

And in other notable March news, since Russ was gone and lots of kids were sick at the time of a crucial library due date - I now owe the public library even more than I did back when I wrote this post.  I'm a blocked user.  I'm now a repeat offender.  You officially follow a blog run by a good-for-nothing shirker of library responsibilities.  

There was a lot of other lovely and smile-worthy things that happened during March, but this is all I can come up with for now.  

I hope you have a blessed Triduum and a very happy and holy Easter!