1	Jury of Her Peers (Short story)		The evidence against a woman is overlooked by sexism.
2	Nightingale, The	Kristin Hannah	Oh, wow.  I’ve read a lot of WWII, but this POV of French women was remarkable.  And this author is excellent.
3	What Went Wrong: The Big Picture: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class . . . and What Other Countries Got Right	George R. Tyler	It’s been 40 years since Reagan was elected, and socially and economically, we are still reeling from his charming assault.
4	Promised Land, The	Barack Obama	Ah, Barack.  A balm.
5	Beach Read	Emily Henry	The perfect start to reading my brains out spring break. Humor and wisdom and romance.
6	This is Not How it Ends	Michelle Weinstein	Kept waiting for fun characters to show. Perfectly humorless.
7	Eleventh Trade, The	Alyssa Hollingsworth	A good YA on refugees, immigrants, friendship.
8	House in the Cerulean Sea	TJ Klune	A munch mentioned YA fantasy of magical “orphans”.  Enjoyed.
9	Dangerous Gift (Wings of Fire #14)	Tui Sutherland	A solid (tween) YA series.
10	Chester and Gus	Cammie McGovern	Therapy Dog’s POV for kid on spectrum.  Sasquatch book list.
11	Guest List, The	Lucy Foley	An odd mystery–didn’t find out who was killed until just before the finding out the murderer.  No ending.  Too much profanity.
12	Homeland Elegies: A Novel	Ayad Akhtar	The most NonF novel ever written, and my knowledge of syphilss has doubled.
13	Transcendent Kingdom	Yaa Gyasi	Ghanian immigrant to Georgia, mental health, heroin, evangelism, aethism, brain PhD–this book covers it all, warmly
14	Before and After	Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate	NonF companion to Before We were Yours, about Tennessee Children’s Home adoptions.
15	Wedding Date, The	Jasmine Guillory	A much needed romance.

Oh, there’s is something special about working in the cabin garden. It’s small enough that I can manage it, and it gives a lot of enjoyment to guests and neighbors. This time, I had one big goal: to revert the dry creek bed so that it would go under the firepit (so the bark wouldn’t catch fire) and put pea gravel under the swing to protect kids from bark and large rocks.

Before:

After:

Next project, setting up a better irrigation system! [And eventually enjoy it myself.]

Wes and Catniss (a new third cat we adopted, who is on meds and can’t yet be left alone with the other cats) were my co-pilots as we began our Spring Break adventure…an hour north, just up to Burlington.

Dwayne joined us later that night, but first we had to play a bit.

Wes just bought himself dual lightsabers after watching all the Star Wars movies with Papa. It amused him to no end.

Back at camp, Dwayne and I enjoyed the gorgeous beaches and views.

Once Dwayne headed home on Sunday, the kids and I enjoyed (okay, Piper and Wes may put “enjoyed” in quotation marks when remembering the walks and bike ride) the Bow-Edison area before moving east on Highway 20. Rockport State Park was a great place to stop for lunch and smallish hike before we headed to our final destination in Marblemont.

After a few too many midnights of Catniss caterwauling and frigid sleeping temperatures (Kyla might have left a window open), we decided to come home on Wednesday. But we came back to temperatures in the 70s, so we didn’t have any loss, especially when I got to paddleboard twice before school started again. Happy Spring Break–now just making it summer!

And I planted it. I like to decorate under the mailboxes a bit. Thanks, Mom!

The day started with the Evil Easter Bunny only almost making the Kyla and Wes cry. It did take them an hour (while Dwayne and I slept) to find the 6 eggs that hid the clues they needed to find their Easter Baskets, which then took another half hour. We dressed up to do Church on the Couch, before making brunch.

Piper helped me make our traditional Bunny Bread (his lucky rabbit’s foot already eaten by Wes), and then Piper helped Dwayne make the devilled eggs. She also took all Saturday to make Bunny Cake, so she was kinda of Easter Dinner’s MVP!

Grandma wound the kids up and turned our peaceful home into chaos. That’s my telling of the story, anyway.

Happy Easter, Friends and Family!

Piper spent hours making this cake from Cake My Day!

Here’s the original intent, with the surprise carrots hidden in the middle when you cut it.

Piper’s actually came close (no “Nailed It” disasters here):

We are waiting to cut the cake until after Easter dinner tomorrow, but she already had to make due by making her own fondant carrots (which looked great!). The original recipe calls for using a fake candy called “peas and carrots” which can barely be found in the “other sellers” section of Amazon. The hours she put into this cake will make dessert eggstra special tomorrow!

Wes got into the action a bit when he played with the marshmallows as well.

I made meatloaf “cupcakes” for dinner, but Kyla wanted to make sure we celebrated a little better, so we woke up to extra friends:

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