March 8

March 8

Boy, we have certainly run the weather gamut this week. We started off with several inches of snow that fell last weekend, then melted on Monday when the sun came out and temperatures reached close to 70 degrees! The warm temperatures have been followed by an awful lot of rain. There was a lot of worry about flooding, but while the creeks and streams were running very high there was only a bit of localized flooding in low areas. The ground, however, is completely saturated and water is lying everywhere. We sink up to our ankles in the backyard. I am sick of cleaning up the mud we track in, wiping down wet, dirty dogs and having to wash the washing machine after washing clothes caked with mud. I sure hope this means we won't have to worry about water levels this summer. Oh, and it is snowing this afternoon following a mild morning with temperatures in the upper 40s.

We've had a fairly uneventful week spent mostly at home other than work and school. Tim has been jumping back and forth between job sites in Monongahela and Uniontown. He is going to be pulled off the one and sent to Uniontown permanently in the next week or so. He's going to be in charge of building the first phase of a manufacturing plant. It's a 45 million dollar project, the biggest he's ever done and he is very excited....a bit nervous, too. Anyway, the jumping around and bad weather had him getting home late all week. The slow week has been nice, though. The last two weekends have been go, go, go for us...first a trip to Erie and Niagara Falls with Tim's siblings and their spouses and this past weekend Matt and Ashlei were home.

Megan's been home all week because she is grounded (nothing like a grounded teenager to cheer things up around the house). One of her jobs is to get my aunt's mail everyday and simply say "hello" to her so we know she is okay. My aunt has a major fear of dying alone and no one finding her for days ever since it happened to one of her cousins. Meg knows this, but at 15 she can at times get rather wrapped up in herself and forget to do things she is supposed to do. When Tim found out she didn't see my aunt last Friday because she was too worried about going to a friend's house he grounded her for the week. Then on Thursday I called her after work and a friend of hers answered the phone and asked me if I'd mind Megan going home with her and staying through the weekend because Megan was upset about the fight we'd had the night before and all the fighting we do and she just needed to get away from home for a while. EXCUSE ME?? I didn't even know we were fighting and the one the night before? That was between her and Tim. Anyway, Megan got on and pretty much repeated the whole thing. I told her she couldn't go and then I called Tim because I was afraid she just might go anyway. He called her and they had it out pretty good from what I hear. By the time I got home she was ready to talk. It turns out the whole thing was about having her heart broken by a boy she likes that day in school and it all just got blown out of proportion and she ended up taking it out on me. Teenagers! Well, teenage girls, anyway. I have to say raising the boy was much easier.

Matt and Ashlei came to visit last weekend, but also to talk wedding plans, look for a wedding gown and register at a couple of stores. They are having a 1920s themed wedding and Matt found an awesome "zoot" suit. The pants are black, the jacket is broad-shouldered and wide-lapelled with silver pinstripes. The shirt is black with an art deco design on the cuffs and matching cufflinks. The tie is black, white, and silver striped. He even found a black fedora while he was here. With him ready to go, Ashlei was really starting to get nervous about not having found a gown. There are several bridal/prom gown shops around here so I said we'd hit as many as we could. We'd just start with the first one we came to and work our way through them. Well, would you believe the first shop was the last shop? Ashlei was looking for something very specific.....little to no beading, very simple, and 1920s styled. When we walked in the shop, the very first dress she saw was perfect. It is very elegant and could not look more 1920s if we'd had it custom made. It turned out to be a prom dress so it was much less expensive than a wedding dress, but they did have to order one for her because it was the wrong size. She was so thrilled and happy. I don't think I've ever seen her act that happy before. With that done in less than an hour we had plenty of time to get them registered at Target and Wal-Mart. We had a big family dinner with my mom, her husband and my aunt on Sunday before we took the kids back to Pittsburgh.

It really has been a slow week, but I did try out a new recipe that I found in a Gooseberry Patch cookbook. It was delicious so I'm going to pass it on. It was really simple, but sort of festive and fun and more of a summery treat so it helped beat those winter blahs.

Louisiana Shrimp Boil

2 onions, sliced

2 lemons, sliced

3-oz. pkg. crab boil seasoning

16 new redskin potatoes

4 ears corn, husked and halved

2 lbs. uncooked medium shrimp in the shell

Optional: hot sauce to taste

Fill a very large stockpot half full with water; add onions, lemons, seasoning, and hot sauce (if using). Bring water to a boil over medium-high heat; add potatoes and boil 10 minutes. Add corn; boil for 5 minutes. Add shrimp; boil until shrimp turn pink and float to the surface. Drain; serve on a large platter. Serves 4.