Really Random Thursday, 4/8/21

 The weather has been warm and quite lovely here in the central valley of California. This is the time of year you will hear us saying repeatedly, "This is why we live in California..."

We bought a rototiller because we have big plans for an enlarged dahlia bed. And by "we" I mean me. It is causing us to do quite a bit of prep work to get things ready for planting. And by "us" I mean Mark. :)

Last year we planted some anonymous dahlia tubers given to us by a friend. We had no clue whether they would even bloom. Some did not bloom. But three of the plants were beautiful. So now I'm obsessed and I think our bed is large enough for about 25. I've searched so many sites to find the names of the three that bloomed last year. 

This one remains a mystery so I'm still researching. (EDIT: I think this might be Sweet Nathalie but I'm still checking.)

But I'm pretty confident that this is Foxy Lady

and this is Linda's Baby. Isn't this one GORGEOUS?! My favorite part, aside from the beautiful color, is the edges of the petals.  When we dug it out (and again by "we" I mean Mark--ha!) we got a big tuber that will need to be divided. I'm hoping to do a swap with the person I hold responsible for my obsession with dahlias--Erika (@hello.erikabea. I'm such a newbie--she has at least 150 different varieties! 

Do you have high school football in your area? Mark and Aaron have both been refereeing on Friday nights. Mark didn't have a game on Friday, so he was able to go watch Aaron.

Sunday for the first time since the shutdown, I went to church in person, not online. Our church is still not doing services indoors--just in the parking lot, and they have only had two services outdoors so far. It felt really good to see friends in person. 

Coffee was available, along with donuts on this pegboard.

There was also a place for photos, which was a really nice touch.

Levi took a picture with his friend. Can you see Gabe doing a bit of photo bombing? This picture makes me smile each time I look at it.

Our Easter dinner tradition is to have crepes and enjoy the beautiful outdoors. Most years (excluding last year when it was just the two of us), we usually have about 20 people. This year is was just the eight of us. When we have a large crowd, we use paper goods.  But this year I saw a cute picture in Better Homes & Gardens on folding napkins to look like bunny ears so I tried it out.

Of course, the kids still wanted an Easter egg hunt. We had Aaron and Christa do the hiding.

My friend, Doris (@madebyabrunnette), posted some pictures of different flavors of Peeps. Are you a Peeps fan? Mark likes the original flavor. But turns out there are so.many.more to choose from! So I had the idea of chopping them into bite-sized chunks, putting them in bowls numbered 1 through 10, passing the bowls around and having everyone guess the flavors.

These pictures are thanks to Doris, as I completely forgot to photograph all 10 flavors.

I did not find Blue Raspberry. However, we did have Root Beer Float, as well as white chocolate raspberry and chocolate caramel swirl (two of their specialty flavors).  I was sure everyone would guess root beer float by the smell alone, but nearly everyone guessed brown sugar. Aaron didn't like any of them, rating them each 1 on a scale of 1 to 10, and including a quote from Andy Bernard from The Office: "This peep flavor is bad." 

Charlotte declared herself a Peeps Guesser Extraordinaire, and then proceeded to rank all the flavors really low with the exception of the original. 

So I didn't turn anyone into a newly minted Peeps fan. And while I said that the person with the most correct answers would win all the remaining Peeps, no one was willing to claim first prize. But I think we all had a good time anyway.

Seen in the neighborhood--obviously a pink lover.

Seen on Twitter--a depiction of the mountain ranges in the US. I found this really fascinating for some reason.

 

And that's it for this week.