New  project...........the house is a mess, because after thinking about it for years we finally tore out my closet in our bedroom and busted the wall through to Erin's old room and are making one big room or a suite of sorts.............sweet!  It is a huge project as we have to  paint both rooms and will wallpaper our old bedroom (which will now be a sitting room) in some vintage wallpaper..........silk.........no less, from Italy.........it's beautiful and I found it at the Humane Society thriftstore in Durango and talked Mary into buying it.   She loved it, but never found a use for it, so is gifting it back to me as an early birthday present!  Aren't friends awesome!!!  How sweet is that?  I asked  Doyle if he could make the passageway between the rooms arched, and he is doing that.......a whole new learning experience for him......but true to Meyer form............if someone else can do it, well so can he!  I'm so thankful to have a handy husband for the "man about the house!"  Stay tuned for the finished product!  (And this all came about because we bought a new mattress after 35 years!)  Oh my!

  Easter weekend was busy with family over on Friday to dye the Easter eggs and Saturday to hunt for those eggs and share a meal with friends and family.  Our friends, Ken, Glenace, their daughter Laura, and Bil, Jody and Rachel  and Rob and Kevin joined our family for an  afternoon of hunting and then eating.  No, we didn't kill the proverbial calf, but we did have some yummy food.  The boys had a great time and Rachel did a great job of hiding the eggs.  She's done it the last few years (don't even know how many years she's been hiding the eggs).  The only flaw in our day was that Chris, Megan and Analiese and Nathan and Erin couldn't join us.  Too many miles to travel for a short weekend!

   "The Boys" as we call them, came Friday afternoon and spent the night and half of Saturday with us.  Daniel has graduated to spending the night at our house as a "potty-trained" graduate.  We make a big deal out of having the kids over when they have officially graduated from Potty-Training (P.T.) School.  We are proud of him and as you can see, he is quite the "cool dude" as is his BIG brother!  These boys keep us laughing and young!  Anyway, a good time was had by us all, even though Doyle and I spent Saturday morning getting our living room back in order, hanging all my state plates on the wall and putting the curtains and curtain rods back up.  Only one catastrophe (which the boys thought was quite exciting) and that was when Paca dropped one of my state plates and it shattered everywhere. 

On Sunday we had them back (with parents and baby brother) with  Pam Carlisle (long time friend) with her friend, Ray, her daughter Jessie and Liz Coleman/ Bannosky with her two little ones, Casey and Bella and Liz's parents,  our longtime friends George and Jennifer for a Post- Christmas, Pre-Easter potluck!  There is no excuse for letting time go so long between visits!  These are very special people, and we  need to find the time to see each other more often!  Why do we let "LIFE" get in the way?  What is life anyway, if there is no time for spending it with people we love?

But, do notice the silly way Daniel wears his Sunday go to meeting shirt and tie!  Umm...........yes, visions  of his Uncle Christof when he was a little one!  Definitely marching to the beat of a different drum!

  Doyle and I have been married for over 35 years and every once in awhile we get asked what it takes to have a good marriage and how does a marriage work.  Well, we've answered many ways because after all, after 35 years you've gone through just about everything life has to throw at you.  But one of the BIG things to know if your marriage can survive is if you can survive a remodel, or a huge re-decorating project together.  Believe me, that is the TRUE test of a long enduring marriage.................Just so ya know! 

The living room is done, but not back together.  The sourdough starter is barely hanging in there, a little worse for wear, it probably wasn't the time to have a sourdough "baby.!"

A hint for making re-do's palatable............listen to a classic book on c.d. from the library.....its a MUST DO!

This statue was just outside the Rialto Theater in downtown Loveland.  It is so life like that when I first caught a glimpse of him from inside a store, I thought he was real. 

Spring has sprung in more ways than one.  Here's how I know it is spring....I get restless and want to have a project.  But per as usual, I have too many ideas and projects.  If I did everything I wanted to, I wouldn't have a long enough life, EVER!!!  So..... I have narrowed it down to a couple of things this week.  Paint the living room and "baby" a sourdough starter!    Doyle isn't too happy with the first project....he hates to paint!  Well, I don't mind it, but in our living room, the walls are 20 feet tall, and they are scary to patch and paint.  The patching is done, the painting will start today.  I told Erin that I know another reason people move every few years (well some people anyway!  LOL!!!), its so they don't have to move cupboards and pianos and dust behind them, and paint!    We'll not go into the dust part..............suffice to say, when you heat with a wood stove............

Ummm..........and the sourdough baby?  Well, truly the starter is a baby............you can't ignore it!  It has to be fed twice a day.  Maybe I should name her?   Heather has been making awesome sourdough bread lately, and passed a starter to Beth, and passed a starter to Bil....we'll all be pros before the month is out!

We are home again, after two and a half weeks of being gone.  Peter and Elrond and Jonathan picked us up.  Jonathan gave us BIG hugs, I think he was happy to see us.  Almost as soon as we got in the car he was asking if he could come over and spend the night.  We are putting him off until this weekend, when we will probably have Daniel and Jonathan spend the night.  We told Daniel when he was potty trained he could stay overnight at our house, and since he is potty trained, and Pete and Heather want to go on a date, we will just combine it all. 

While we were at Erin and Nathan's, Erin and I went exploring in downtown Loveland, a cute little area that is seeing some revival with antique stores and art shops.  While we were looking around we stopped in at The Coffee Tree a  coffeeshop/bookstore where Chelsea Schnellinger works and surprised her.  We hadn't seen her in over ten years.  Her parents and we were good friends when they lived in Aztec.  Chelsea is a year older than Erin and we had fun getting caught up, and then the next day she came for lunch and had a tour of Erin's studio.  Chelsea is getting her Masters in Art Education, following in the footsteps of her Dad, who taught Art in the public schools for years.  If you go to this link, you can check out the coffee shop where Chelsea works, it was a pretty neat place!  http://www.wheregoodthingsgrow.com/v3.8/about.html

This week starts spring break in our corner of the world, and true to history, we woke up to snow on the ground and a blizzard all morning.  I called Heather to remind her that it was spring break.  How do we know that?  Because last week according to Heather, the weather was gorgeous, and this week it's back to winter!  Yup!   Spring Break is here!

 After church this morning at the Wiser Lake  Chapel, Doyle, Mom and I went out to a buffet at a local restaurant and had a breakfast buffet.  Coming back home, Danielle and Donna stopped by for an hour or so for a last visit.  Donna and Danielle are basically the same age as Christopher and Peter and are the sweetest girls.  They are sisters and live in a house together and are very good friends besides being sisters.    When they left, Doyle and I took advantage of the beautiful weather between rain storms and went for a walk around town and took pictures of some of the beautiful and interesting buildings and houses.  Lynden is known for its windmill at the beginning of downtown and known also for its many churches.  I don't think any town has so many churches as Lynden!  And the old houses on Front Street are just so picturesque and gorgeous....many times I have wished I could pick one up and transport it to our place.

   I spent the day on Tuesday afternoon with Mom at the Senior Community Center where she volunteers twice a week.  It's been fun to see what she does and spend time with her. 

We had coffee at Mom's cousin's house on Wednesday, March 7.  Margaret is around 92 years old and her husband Hank Mans was Mom's first cousin. Hank passed away in October 2011.  Al and Julie joined Doyle, Mom and I and we enjoyed our visit with her.  Her home is filled with beautiful paintings her son-in-law, Randy VanBeek has painted.  You can go here to see his beautiful paintings..http://http://reflectiveartinc.com/prints/Randy-VanBeek/?sid=276dce85f978e2179e807d8929c4d6cb  Hank wrote a memoir that we hope to get ahold of as it sounds very interesting. 

Doyle's brother, Wes, who has cancer is back in the hospital because he caught a fever.  We are very glad that we were able to see him on Monday evening, as he has been in the hospital since Tuesday night.  When you are on chemo, any fever or sniffle will land you in the hospital.  We have been very careful not to have sick people around him, but it just goes to show, no matter how careful you are, you can still "catch" something.  Please keep him in your prayers.

I made a picture collage of family photos (I got copies at Rite-Aid) for Mom, when I realized she really had no photos of our family around.  Now, Uncle Al wants some pictures too, so maybe I should just send pictures to everyone!  HA!

Our nephew, Matt Meyer is the hero in the family.  He is a Junior at Lynden High School and they just won the state Basketball Tournament in Yakima, WA for 2A.  They won the Football Tournament in the fall for State also, so now the pressure is on to win Baseball.  Matt plays all three sports and colleges are already "looking" at him of course, you can go here to read all about him.  .http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/03/07/2426917/prep-boys-basketball-lcs-reimer.html  Last night he came over to Grandma's to show us all his new hairstyle.  The whole team got their hair bleached blonde and mohawks.  I remember when Peter's soccer team bleached their hair!  Matt is 6 feet, 5 inches tall and 270 pounds, definitely a BIG guy! 

We have enjoyed our time visiting family.  It's too bad we live so far away from here.  Al and Julie live in Belgium, we live in New Mexico, Don and Linda live in Seattle and the other "boys"  and their families live here, Deane and Dianna, Jim and Lisa and Wes and Janette.