Family

Souther, Wester, Easter, Norther

Fun in every direction throughout the last week of March

kitten (Athennia)

Mar 31, 2024 • 9 min read

Souther

Tuesday evening I picked Taylor up on my way home from work. I made chicken farfella with spinach for all of us for dinner and then helped her with homework for a couple hours.

I picked her up again on Wednesday and we had a Stauffer's lasagna.

🤣

Kevin said it tasted like Chef Boyardee ravioli and none of us could really disagree.

But at least it wasn't dry like some lasagnas.

Taylor had a big exam for her manufacturing class that was basically pass or fail and she was super nervous about it. Imagine our surprise when we saw just how tough some of the questions were:

(Not every question was quite this easy. But Taylor still ended up getting a 93%!)

Also, Kevin continued his recent documentation of the sky. Here's Tuesday and Wednesday:

But what you can't tell from these pictures is that it has been cold again here this week!

And since maintenance has been working downstairs ever since the dirtballs underneath us moved out, they've had the windows open around the clock (probably to air the place out, help fresh paint dry, etc.)

So our apartment has been freezing for the past few days! Our tile floor in the kitchen and bathroom is too cold for Riley and me to even walk across without socks on!

(But of course Kevin is in heaven since it's cold and quiet around here for a change.)

Wester

Thursday evening we had no dinner plan so we caved and went to Burger King.

It's on West Trenton Road... even though you have to drive east to get to Trenton.

And of course, you'll almost always find that you don't even need to. Trenton almost always comes to you first:

"Isn't the handicapped plate superfluous at this point? I mean, clearly the car is handicapped."

- Kevin

Lovely rainy sunset a short time later though!

Friday night I surprised Kevin and Riley with Qdoba and McDonalds on my way home from work:

And since it was the weekend, Kevin and I were able to binge watch a bunch of Orphan Black before bed.

Easter

On Saturday Kevin and I got our taxes done at H&R Block. The woman doing them got about halfway through crunching the numbers and then thought to mention that she probably should have given us a quote before she started.

(In addition to my W-2, I withdrew funds from my IRA to put toward a house. And Kevin had half a dozen 1099s from miscellaneous projects and capital gains from selling stocks and gold and silver throughout the year. So it was nice of her to wait until we had been sitting there an hour before announcing that she would be charging us by the form instead of charging the standard H&R Block fee I was accustomed to from prior years.)

When we finally got out of there (still with no idea whether to expect a refund, since the woman decided to save half the work for later) we raced back to the apartment to grab Taylor and Riley and shot over to Kevin's parents' house for a cookout.

But first, an egg hunt in the rain, since Kelly and Steve were kind enough to wait until Taylor and Riley arrived to join Liv and Hannah :)

There were four participants, and so four sets of eggs.

Riley had it easy: Hers were the shiny metallic looking eggs.

But Taylor's looked identical to Liv's and Hannah's (which were of course right out in the open all over the place), and she had to check to see whether every egg had a "T" on it to indicate that it was one of hers:

Liv had a blast!

Hannah was... a little confused :)

Looks like Riley walked right past one of hers. Hope she's not too shocked when she backtracks and finds it there on the electric meter:

Good job Hannah!

We also took the opportunity to check on the garden. It looks like some volunteer mustard greens have infiltrated the garlic:

And despite not being turned for more than a year now, the compost pile has had enough time to finish naturally:

"Black gold", as Kevin calls it:

Ron grilled hamburgers and hotdogs for all of us, Catherine made deviled eggs, baked beans, and pasta salad, and Kelly and Steve brought ice cream and cookies for dessert :)

Norther

And finally, I woke up early yesterday morning to take Taylor to the train station so she could ride up to Connecticut and spend her Easter break with Ahlina's family.

And of course, we have a few cat pictures from the past month. Enjoy!