Family Mellmann

Patrick and Katherine met with the orthodontist today to discuss teeth straightening. Patrick can start right away, but Katherine still has to wait a couple years.

The kids and I are getting ready for a road trip and there are a few things that need to be done before we go. After several days of rain, we could finally get out and take care of one of those things today...a little garden work.  Money and screen time are amazing motivators; Katherine helped me for two hours and Patrick for even more.  The garden looks great!

After a lovely morning with a warm summery breeze, the rain finally arrived.  The breeze died down and the rain fell hard, but a blue sky could still be seen, and the sun was still shining through.  Someone around here was seeing rainbows, it just wasn't us.  However, we still had a beautiful view. This is the view from my garage where I watched the rain pour down while I remained mostly dry (and swatting at the army of mosquitoes taking refuge from the rain in the same garage that I was).     And this is my happy garden all green and looking fresh from the rain.  This is the last picture I took before fleeing indoors to escape the 280% humidity and gargantuan mosquitoes who seem to know better than fly around my back yard where the Mosquito Magnet will suck them up!  

Spring is here, and the garden is looking wonderful with bright colors, growing plants, trees budding, and birds checking out our bird feeders. After so many years of no gardens (except for a few flower pots, we have had no gardens since we built the new house eight years ago), I am especially enjoying this spring season.  Highlighting the weekend is being able to cut lilacs from one of my lilac bushes.  They both need some really good pruning, but even the more desperate of the two produced enough blooms to bring cheer (and good smells) to my office.

Supposedly spring is here, so I decided to grill dinner tonight (it was overcast today, but not too cold, and no snow in the forecast). Shortly after I fired up the grill it started to snow. So, I'm...sing with me now! I'm grillin' in the snow Just grillin' in the snow What a goose-bumpin' feelin' I'm whining again I'm grumbling at flakes So cold upon my face The sun's in my heart And I'm ready for heat Let the stormy clouds chase Everyone from the place Come on with the sun I've a frown on my face I stand at the grill With snow on my toe, Just grillin', Grillin' in the snow

Patrick sang with the Junior and Senior High youth choir at church this morning. He really enjoyed being able to sing with other kids who enjoy (and have some talent) singing. And it was such a pleasure and privilege to be in the audience to hear them sing.

We Mellmanns enjoy a good adventure, a little thrill now and then, and some good ol' excitement, but life with a teenager (boy no less) is keeping this mom hopping. Last week, as we were wrapping up the last day of school before winter break (which is this week), Patrick slammed his finger in a door at school.  Over the next couple of days, he developed this nice bruise under his nail.  We started to speculate on what would happen (lose the nail or not), but figured the best course of action was going to be to let nature takes its course and let the body do the healing. We would later learn that this type of injury is what medical professionals refer to as a "crush injury", and the resulting nail color is called "subungual hematoma".  As the weekend progressed and the bruise continued to develop, so did the pressure, swelling, and pain. By Sunday words like "doctor", "drain", and "don't wait" were being used. So, first ...

Almost every year, for the first several years, that we've lived here, the snow plows would destroy our mailbox. Usually it was as simple as the weight of the snow being so great that it just "blew" the box off the post, leaving a nicely intact post. I remember one year, they snow plow took that mailbox down a half dozen times or so. When we built the new house, we joked that the mailbox is the only thing we didn't replace...until one year we did. We replaced the mailbox with an expensive, heavy duty box that seemed nearly bulletproof. And the post was well-made and sturdy. For nearly seven years it has been un-bothered by heavy snow, flying snow, or racing snow plows...until today. As I was walking back into the house, after snow plowing the driveway, I saw the snow plow come down my road. Before I could get my coat and boots off, he had come back up the road and wiped out my until-today solid mailbox. Not only did it shred the post and bend up the nearly bulle...