Boy am I behind on this blog. If you've been checking and seeing the same thing for nearly a month, my humble apologies and thanks for your persistence and patience.

I've managed to get in a tizzy over being the mother of the bride, despite the fact that Ellie and Jacob are very competently handling all of the wedding planning out there in Pennsylvania. Truth to tell, I think I wanted to get in a tizzy - it's part of the fun.

Happy Birthday Alex, a couple of weeks ago. We had a fun birthday dinner at Blue Plate.









The Mapps family came down from Oregon with three foreign exchange students, and Maria arranged for all the boys to take a surfing lesson. A couple of the boys had never seen the ocean. You can imagine they were into having their pictures taken to send home. And yes - that's McKeever on the right.



We had a barbecue with Jennifer and Mark and Addy. I got to have a private consultation with Jenn about my Mother of the bride costume while the guys played poker with Addy.





And for spring break, Matthew and Blue took a road trip to Los Angeles to see the other Jenn.





Evidently there has been some kind of time warp and the Pacific Ocean Park of my childhood seems to have somehow sprung back into existence. I wonder if the Venice murals are there too.

Blue at the Legion of Honor

Photos by Tammy Trejo of Coastside Photography

Another way to celebrate St. Patrick's day

"A man dressed as a Hajfirooz, which is a traditional character to symbolize the arrival of the Iranian New Year, performs during a ceremony to mark the holiday, called Norouz, in Tehran March 17, 2008. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah"

I am 7 times 8 on Pi day!

Another Great Picture from Reuters

Caption: A crowd watches as a pig dives into a pool of water during a peformance in Sydney, Australia. 17 Apr 2003 REUTERS/David Gray

Dance lesson

Jessica said, "Eben took this picture of Alex and I during our dance lesson. The figure on the right is the teacher. Thankfully the picture is black and white so you can't tell how red my face was! I was so embarrassed when Eben set up his camera."

Philadelphia

Just got back from visiting Ellie and her intended, Jacob Fenton, in charming, snowy, Philadelphia.

They got access to the Penn printmaking studio to print their wedding invitations.









I won't put in any pictures of the final print, since that is E and J's business.

I can't tell you how great it was to have ink on my hands, though they did all of the actual type setting and printing. It brought back memories of printing our own invitations more than 30 years ago.

In less than four days we also saw the extraordinary Frida Kahlo show at the Philadelphia Art Museum. This painting just blew me (as we say in my country) away. I've always been so conscious of her imagery that I never realized what a good painter she is:



and a show of contemporary puppets and puppetry at the Institute of Contemporary Art:



I got to see our old friend Steve, who introduced me to Young way back when, in the print studio, our natural stomping grounds. And I saw the new deck Ellie and Jacob installed on their house, which was quite beautiful covered with snow.