Wow! April is flying by --- and I haven't been blogging! Plenty has been happening around here. Spring is coming. The grass has started to turn green, daffodils are up, bushes are budding. True to Ohio form, though, a great wind blew last week and we woke up to see all of our Spring covered in a blanket of snow on Tuesday morning! :) Thankfully, it was melted by the next day and temperatures should be on the rise.

Some very fun things have been happening. Let's see . . . The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug came out on DVD last week. We had pre-ordered the disc, so it arrived on the 10th. We watched it for the first time that weekend. It was really fun to see it on our own tv. What a movie . . . it's just better every time we watch it.

We had a great Easter. There was a special Communion service at church on Thursday evening, so we went to that. Poor Elizabeth was sick on Sunday, so only three of us were able to go to church. She's gotten a pretty bad cold, too, and is still getting over it. Mom and Dad spent the afternoon visiting with the Keultjeses, but the two of us stayed home and had a fun afternoon together.

Frodo (our cat) had a busy day yesterday. He went to the vet and got shaved. Oh boy! He has never bathed in his life, and without his Mama now he has been a dirty boy! Now that he is living the carefree, mat-free life, he's a totally new kitty. He's almost like a puppy he is so friendly. :)

I've been having a blast with Prince George's Royal Tour. He's on his way home today, and I have the last couple of pages to do up for my scrapbook. The dentist office was nice enough to give me one of the magazines with George on the cover. He's on US Weekly this week, so I'm going to see if someone has that one, too. ;) Dad's printed lots of pictures for me and the scrapbook is really filling up!

I'm in the process of making a Shutterfly photo book of Samwise. This has been lots of fun --- getting to look through photos of Sammy as little one-week-old kitten and on up to the current pictures. He's so cute! Elizabeth wants to make one of these for her "boys" (Harold Swetland and his bomber crew mates), so this is good practice.

Well it is practically dinner time, so I better get going. Mom and I had to go out to run errands this afternoon, and it's been a pretty tiring last couple of days. We've got some Sea Hunt shows on DVD, and Elizabeth and I like those. We saw a new movie (to us, that is!) the other night: Manhunt starring Walter Pidgeon. It's a WWII-suspense-thriller-film noir-type of movie. Whoa! It sure kept you on the edge of your seat. More later.

Oliver is nine years old! While we don't actually know his exact birth date, we do know that he was born in the first week or two of April. And . . . being the personality that he is, we decided to make April 1st his official birthday. So, our "Bunny Brother" (he gets treated like our younger brother!) is nine years old. We've had him for eight and a half of those years.

In honor of his birthday, Oliver gave a silver charm to Mom for her bracelet. The little charm is a small cat that bears remarkable resemblance to himself. ;) We tied the charm around his neck, but he was anything but helpful. Usually, on a normal day, he's always making a bee-line for Mom, but today? No dice. He didn't care one bit that we had a red ribbon on around his neck with a little charm hanging from it. He didn't even care when Beatrice was trying to eat the ribbon. He just stood in the kitchen munching on the cat grass. Well, we finally got him to go to Mom and give his present. Silly boy!

We did manage to get a quick picture of him with the ribbon around his neck. He was playing with the laser toy, so that's why his attention is so fixed away from the camera.

All in all, he's been a very good boy. He's spent some time looking out of the open screen on the front door, but he's spent all afternoon sleeping in his special bed in the bathroom.

Well, I am off for dinner and some time with my Prince George scrapbook. After all, with that new photo released the other day, I need to get caught up. :) More later.