Happy Birthday to Tom! Saturday night we celebrated Tom's birthday with most of our neighbors. We decided we were going to have a wine tasting party with hors d'oevres, but as usual I ended up buying too much food and it became a dinner/hors d'eovre party! I just couldn't pass up the spiral cut ham on sale. We were going to invite all of Tom's work people and the neighbors but decided it would be too crazy to try and keep up with everyone. And it is never easy to keep an eye on all the kids. As it turned out, we cannot host a party without someone bleeding. This time it was one of the neighbor boys. He and Scott decided to play with our gerbil. Unfortunately, he decided to hold the gerbil up to his nose and the gerbil decided to bite him! Of course there was lots of blood but just a tiny bite on the tip of his nose. With a house full of medical personnel(OT, nurse and pediatrician we had the situation quickly under control) So we have now added-do not hold the gerbils up to your nose on the list of How to Handle Gerbils for our housesitter/petsitter. We head out to Florida on Thursday. We will stay with Mom and Dad Seitz over the Easter weekend, and then spend some time playing in Orlando. Our neighbor Jane is manning our house while keeping an eye on the killer gerbils and Pika the cat. Cookie will be heading over to Matt and Di's house for the week.

Saturday night we also enjoyed watching MSU's men's basketball team win and now head to the Final Four competition which will be held in Detroit. They can certainly use the income there in Michigan. And while we were drinking wine, eating cake and watching the game on tv, we were also watching our neighbor's daughter model bridal dresses live from a fashion show in New York on the internet. She texted us and told us the whole zipper on the back of her dress ripped so they threw a shawl around her. We actually thought the shawl was the prettiest part of all the dresses being modeled. Strapless dresses seem to be in this year Stacey, but we all agreed they didn't quite work in the church. Overall it was an enjoyable evening(except for the gerbil incident) and Tom enjoyed his presents. His big gift was a new coffee maker(imagine that!). He wanted a new coffee maker with a built in grinder that did not need to be cleaned every morning. I had fun shopping at William Sonoma. My favorite part was when they wrapped it for free(and did a beautiful job). Of course Tom had it ripped open in a few seconds and up and running and making coffee for all our guests. Then this Palm Sunday, he set the timer and we woke to coffee-just in time to let the dog out. How nice. It gave us lots of time to get ready for mass and then Allison and I took off to puppy school. Only one more class left. We are doing pretty well with sit, lay down and working on stay. I then spent the afternoon studying with Allison and packing for our trip to Florida(lots of laundry too). Allison had some make up work to do since she was out sick last week for a few days with a bad headcold. She stayed home on Friday but I did drag her out with me to school so my Girl Scouts could run a Brownie meeting. The girls ran a Safety badge for the brownies and it turned out pretty well-they talked about everything from fire safety, first aid to stranger danger. Then we made emergency cards for each of the girls and I got to try my new laminator out on the projects. The girls really enjoyed doing that part. We had to get home so Allison could get to her piano lesson. I expected Tom to take Scott to a make up gymnastic class and karate class, as well as his Cub Scout pack meeting, but he was feeling pretty crappy too. So the kids sat around full of cold medicine most of Saturday. I spent most of Saturday putting away my snowmen and getting out the spring bunnies. It was such a job! Sadly we missed getting down to DC this spring for the kite festival and the cherry blossom festival. Last weekend they were flying kites, but the weather was pretty rainy so it probably was not as fun. This Saturday was incredibly windy which would have been more fun with the kites, but it was the kick off for the cherry blossoms. The DC mall looked packed today. And it would have been such a beautiful day to walk around DC with the other billion people! I am sure Tom would have loved that!
I was trying to let the kids get a little bit of rest before we head out to Florida on Thursday. I was busy washing clothes and packing today, including the Easter stuff. I didn't want Allison wearing herself out too much since I already took care of that last week. Besides the GS meeting on Friday, Allison and I sang at a wedding reception with the GS choir in the middle of the week. Turns out the groom has cerebral palsy, was in a wheelchair and is an artist. His life was featured in the movie King Gimp-I will have to ask Tom to get it on Netflix. He auctioned off some of his paintings at a movie theatre where they were married. The theater is the oldest in Baltimore, The Senator, and it is going to be sold. They have shown several Hollywood previews there-movies filmed or written in Baltimore like Hairspray and John Travolta's firefighter movie, Station 49. They need to raise money to sell the building as a historical facility to be used as a museum, theatre and for stage shows. The groom donated the money to the Senator after the wedding ceremony there. Then they headed down to our VFW hall for the reception where we sang for an hour. We sang their favorites from broadway musicals and some GS songs too. The wedding theme was all retro, 20s. 30s and 40s. Even the guests came dressed in costume. They also donated $500 to our GS choir. We had a lot of fun, but it made for a late night. We did not get singing until 1hr after our scheduled time. And Allison did not have much time to catch up with anything since she also had a 3hr meeting on Thursday night for her Peer Confirmation program. She is training to help out with the 8th grade Confirmation training and retreats this Fall. It is a big commitment, but she is enjoying the time.
I also had to drag the kids out early Saturday morning for their eye exams. I stopped in too and picked up my glasses. Now I can see teeny tiny stuff again!
So I will wish you all a Happy Easter. We will be busy enjoying the sun and beaches over the next week. Big Birthday greetings to Dad Bozyk and Sarah Bozyk this coming week!
Kathleen and Family(Tom included a video Allison made of all our puppy guests and the kids playing in our backyard the night of Tom's Bday party).