Who Ordered This?????

Is it not mid-April??? This is what's going on in Wisconsin and much of the upper Midwest today:



We are expected to get about 7 inches of very heavy wet snow before it all ends. Trees and shrubs are bending and breaking. We've already had a week of below freezing weather, which been hard enough on the plants. I guess this is the snow we didn't get in December.

Not a lot to show you in knitting content.

Here's the Mead Scarf stretched along the back of the porch glider. I think I'm more than half way done. It's hard to judge the amount of yarn still on the cone. Last night I saw a little error about 4 rows back in the pattern. I decided to live with it. If anyone's looking that closely, they shouldn't be.

I've been quite wiped out from our trip and vacation time with my kids and haven't done much knitting. Or much of anything else. Yesterday I napped most of the time the kids were at school. I've had mild vertigo since we got back, which happens to me sometimes in the spring. I think it's related to a seasonal allergy issue. Whatever causes it, it really slows me down.

Too Much Togetherness

We have all had too much family time. I took Owen off on a big drive and we ended up at Brigham County Park near Blue Mounds. This is a view looking north toward the Wisconsin River.

I'm eager for school to start.

How I Spent My Spring Break

On March 30, I drove with my boys to O'Hare to catch our flight to San Diego. Mr SABLE had been away in New Jersey for the whole week leading up to this, and his work was taking him on to California, so our plan was to meet up with him out there for fun in the sun.

One thing we did a lot of on our vacation was waiting in airports...

I was a little ambivalent about hauling my big camera along and decided to at the last minute. Mr. SABLE's camera is not as big, but takes perfectly fine pictures for most blogging and family needs. As it turns out, the only time I used my camera the whole time was on a couple quick shots of the boys waiting at O'Hare.

One thing we did a lot of on our trip:



The hotel pool was in a courtyard, which meant the building cast nice shadows on the pool for large parts of the day. I was able to lurk in the shade and avoid both burns and sunscreen.

On Saturday 3/31 we tried to go to the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park. We got in our rental car and drove out there. The Little Emperor was exhausted from the long day and late night the day before. We paid the $8 for parking and then realized that the poor little guy wasn't going to be walking anywhere. I reasoned that I'd rather be out the $8 than the $80 or so we'd have to pay to get us all in the gate if LE was too tired to function. All agreed. We looped around a bit and came down along the coast.

Owen finally got to see an ocean.

LE continued to sleep in the car. He woke up enough to refuse to get out of the car.

On Sunday 4/1, we went to Legoland in Carlsbad. This is a very expensive park, but I have to say, really well-run and family-friendly. We arrived shortly after opening at 10 a.m. By 2 p.m., Owen was getting a headache and the Little Emperor just wanted to go back to the hotel and swim. So we did. We only managed to go on a couple rides, but Owen and Scott did a Mindstorms exercise that lasted 45 minutes. The Little Emperor enjoyed the opportunities to build with very large bricks. Mostly, they both seemd to enjoy shopping in the gift shop. (I'm thinking we could have just gone to the Lego Store in Chicago and called it good.)







My vacation knitting was a pair of socks on two circulars I started a while back, just to give it a fair test before I rejected it. I have to say, I've given the method a very fair trial run and I'm a one-at-a-time-on-double-points sock knitter. They don't soar on two circulars; they creep. Slowly. Like snails on downers. I did a few rounds to be virtuous, but mostly I did Sudokus.

I didn't really see any of San Diego proper, but I went grocery shopping at Von's on Mira Mesa Blvd. I enjoyed loafing in the pool with my kids. And I really enjoyed getting home again.

Returned!

So, we're back from California. I'll do the long version later: How I Spent My Spring Break. But, right now I'm tired because I came back with the kids last night. The plane got into O'Hare at about 11:10 pm, we got the car out of the remote parking lot at 12:15 a.m., and arrived at our house about 2:30 a.m. Mr. SABLE arrives tonight. He flew from Madison because his work is paying for his travel costs and it didn't matter that the best fares out of Madison were already snapped up by the time we finalized our plans. After a good night's sleep, or maybe two, I'll write more.

Away from my desk.

Thanks Everyone for your compliments on Morgan. I started the pattern-writing, to be available in six sizes, in 4 inch increments from 34-54 inches, but I have a lot more careful number crunching to do before I can make it available.

The SABLE clan is hitting the road for spring break, so don't expect much news from me until toward the end of next week. Right now I'm in a frenzy of laundry and packing and errand running and so on before we take off. Mr. SABLE has been gone since Monday and I'm finding the single mom thing a little difficult at times. I can't imagine how people get through that as a permanent condition.

Catch you on the flip side!