A modest update

I have been lazy about writing on my blog lately. I don't have any good excuses. I guess I've been busy, but haven't we all? We had friends from MS stay with us on Friday night, which was nice. They were in the area for a wedding and were able to stop in for a visit on the tail-end of their trip. The wedding had been in Tarrytown, NY, which I remembered as the locale for most of the story in Otherwise Known as Shelia the Great, which I read when I was 8 or 9. It's also the town made famous by Washington Irving's Headless Horseman (the town of Sleepy Hollow is just next to Tarrytown). Anyway, they have a three-year-old daughter who is super-cute, and she and W really seemed to enjoy one another.
I've been sewing some on my new machine. To quote Mike, "It purrs like a kitten." It's wonderful. I finished the skirts for the daughters of some of our MS friends and need to get those to the PO this week. I am also nearly done with a little sheath A-line dress for my niece who lives in Tokyo. I ALSO finished an A-line skirt for myself. Oh, and I've started on a calf-length skirt with flared panels and a draw-string waist for myself that should be an easy-breezy summer wardrobe staple. I am using some beautiful batik fabric with a floral print that looks like it's done with watercolors. Did I mention that it's beautiful??
W is really into cars and trucks. He especially likes these little trucks made by Playskool/Tonka called Tonka Wheel Pals. He has the fire truck (pictured here) and a little orange SUV that actually looks a lot like our friends' Honda Element (which is also orange). He has figured out that it is fun to make the vehicles race, as well as crash into each other. His big "prize" right now is the little free car from the Cheerios box (the SpeedRacer car). I have to keep an eye on him with it since it's so small, but he adores it and has figured out how to pull it back to build up the tension in the wheels and let it go forward on its own. Fun times, if you're 22 months old. He is also getting into superheroes and action figures, thanks to the little boys who live near us. Each afternoon, they bring their Star Wars guys and other miscellaneous dudes out into the big common yard in front of our house. They are sweet enough to let W play with their "less-prized" guys. So that W would have his own "guys", as the little boys call them, I got him some specifically made for the under-3 bunch. They are made by Learning Curve and are part of the Play Town group. We already had a firetruck and firemen made by this company, so I knew their stuff was well-made and durable (they're made of a combination of wood and plastic). W has the Spiderman and Hulk. One of the little boys (who's 5) wants to know when W will get more (they also sell Wolverine and Captain America). I told him W might get them as a reward if he's a good tooth-brusher. That seemed to satisfy him.
We had a nice Mother's Day around here. Mike had to work, of course, but we were able to do some stuff together in the morning. To start, Mike chalked "happy mother's day!" greeting on the back patio. For breakfast, we got bagels at a yummy bagel shop that's close to our house, as well as right across the street from "our" church. Then we went to church (for the second week in a row!), and the service was really nice. Because they were doing communion, the service went a little long and Mike had to slip out, but when the service was over and I got W, we sat and had a slice of cake in the fellowship hall (they had cake to welcome some new members). It was delicious. That afternoon, W was sweet enough to accompany me to the fabric store, where I got the fabric I described above for my paneled skirt. To top things off, Mike surprised me when he got home with a bouquet of white tulips. I have a great husband.
Unfortunately, we had to stay inside today. The weatherman's adjective for today's weather was "raw" and boy, was he right. It got up to around 47 and it rained all day. It IS May, right? To break up the monotony, a couple of W's friends came over. I'm friends with their mommy, so we were all able to visit and forget about the yucky weather for a little while. Tomorrow should be an improvement, with a high of 70, but it'll be windy, so it'll probably feel a little cooler than that. But hey, I'll take any sort of increase in temperature after today!