All I can say is WOW! We have had fantastic weather the past week. The snow is gone and the temps have been in the high 60's to low 70's. Today it was even up to 78! Sat outside in the sun watching the Twin's game. I think I absorbed my share of vitamin D! Then we went for a walk for about an hour. How great is that in March!! We have been grilling supper every night this week when we were home. Tonight we plan on grilling too. Double bonus is that we got to see Denver, Danielle and Kellen yesterday. Kellen is growing up so fast. He is crawling all over the place. Now I better go get my stuff ready to go to work tomorrow. :( Oh well! today I am grateful to live in Minnesota in the spring. It is so awesome!

Oh, this is my favorite time of day . . . . 6:15 am. I am done with my morning workout at the wellness center, showered, have a cup of coffee in my hand and checking my emails and facebook. Because the house is quiet, I have time to think and get ready for my day. Some people are not morning people, but I guess I am. I get a lot done before I go to work in the morning. When I get home from work, I need to get supper going, get dishes done and the house cleaned up. By then I am tired and love to sit in my chair where I fall asleep around 9:30. Today I am greatful to be a morning person.

It has been a week of progress - many kinds of progress. First, the federal tax forms are done and printed off. Just need to get the state forms done and they are not nearly as confusing as the federal forms. Next, I got the sewing room all cleaned up. That was huge job!!! It is now ready for photographs to be taken for Lauren's 4-H project. I got all the rest of my little house clean-up jobs done this weekend as well. The best progress has been with my car! Thursday night we got the Impala traded off and got an Acadia. It is not new, but 6 years newer than the Impala. It is really nice! So far I love it! I think I also made some emotional/mental progress. I spent yesterday watching a marathon of "Good Witch" movies on the Halmark channel as I was scuttling about the house doing my cleaning and laundry. I was greatly impacted by some things in those movies. The first thing is that no matter what happens, Cassie always see the good side of it. The "silver lining of every cloud". She never lets the bad things in her life bring her down. Her theory is - you are always right where you are ment to be and she makes the best of it. The other thing that impacted me even more was her attitude about how people treat her. She never gets mad or feels bad. She always turns these people around and makes them feel bad that they treated her the way they did. She helps them feel good about themselves. I am going to try very hard to learn a lesson from this. After the movies, I sort of took inventory on some of the things that have happened in my life and how I reacted to them and how I have reacted to some of the people in my life. It made me very sad to think that I am a Christian and have reacted to those things the way I have. I need to have a clean heart and stop holding on to some of the dark clouds that I have hung on to. I know it will not be easy, but I am going to do this! I know I will be a much happier person if I can succeed. Today I am grateful that God gave me these wonderful movies to clean my heart!

Good news, I finally got through the tax forms. Well, the federal taxes anyway. I have them figured out, but have not done the final draft that gets sent in. Holy Cow! The one little act of selling 12 feet of property added 4 additional pages to our taxes! So confusing. I am glad I am not a tax accountant. I am not in a hurry to finish them now that I know we are going to owe a little bit. I will finish them this weekend and then wait to send them in until April. I do need to get the computer room cleaned up and re-organized though. Lauren is in 4-H now and she wants me to help her do a sewing project for the fair. We are going to do a pillowcase. She has the fabric picked out and so far we have learned how to press the fabric flat so that when you cut with a rotary cutter, it doesn't get lumpy and lose the straight of grain. Next will be learning to use the rotary cutter and acrylic ruler. She is so excited. It was Denver's birthday recently so we (Leon and I and both kids and their families)all met at Brau Brothers in Marshall Saturday night. It was so fun. The food was delicious and the beer was great. Even the kids had fun! I just love it when we can all get together. I also think I found my next car. After weeks of searching I think we have it. I will know for sure on Thursday. I have to get the financing in place and the dealership is checking out the car, then it is ours. I am excited!

Well, I had a very nice 4 day weekend. I took last Friday off. I painted the dining room. It has been several years since it had been painted so I decided it was time. when I was done, the dining room looked good, but I should have done the ceiling. Now, it is going to be hard to do the ceiling. I am probably going to have to do major touch ups on the walls when I am done with the ceiling. then Monday was Presidents Day so the bank was closed. Deb and I decided to shopping. I needed some new clothes as I cleaned out my closet and gave a bunch to Goodwill. Penney's had some really good sales. We had a great time. Then it was back to reality today - work. Okay, yes, I have started on our taxes. It would be so simple if we had not sold part of our lot. We sold the neighbors 12 feet of the south part of our lot. That one act has created havoc with our taxes. It may take me several weeks to finish all the forms. Either that or I am going to have to take them to someone to be done. It gives me a headache just thinking about it. Tonight I started a "Full Body Bootcamp". It was only 30 minutes, but quite a workout! Looking forward our next one on Thursday (twice a week for 8 weeks. I am hoping I can lose a few pounds doing this Bootcamp. Last time I did this, I rationalized that because I was working out, I could eat more. Ya, that isn't a good idea. It doesn't work that way.

What a great weekend! Saturday Denver and his family came for a visit. That was so nice. I haven't seen them for a month or so. The baby is growing so fast! He will be crawling by the next time we see him. He is such a happy baby!!!! then yesterday we had some icey weather. We slipped and slid to church. Then we had our annual baked potato dinner at church. I helped with the first shift so I could sit and eat with the rest of the family! That was nice. Then I was pretty much a slug the rest of the day. It was very nice and relaxing! A good way to prepare for a busy week at work. I should have been working on tazes, but I opted not to. Tonight we are supposed to get more freezing rain. Yuck! Tonight I am grateful live in the same time that I work!

A pretty ordinary week so far. We did not find a different car last Saturday, so I am still driving the old Impala. No big deal as I usually just drive it to work (8 blocks) and back. If I were driving it a lot further every day it might be a bigger worry for me. We will keep looking. when we have free time (and that doesn't happen very often) we will drive thru some car lots and looking at their websites on the internet. It is February now, so I guess it is time to get going on the taxes. I really need to start getting organized with that. It may be a little more complicated this year as we sold a little bit of the south part of our lot to the neighbors so they could build on to their house. Because of that we have to file a "schedule D" I believe and that is not something I am familiar with. I am so glad we are just a few weeks from Spring arriving. We have had a nice winter for the most part, but I am ready for warm weather and sunshine. I am anxious to start planning the garden. This winter we have enjoyed lots of garden produce that we froze or canned last fall. We sill have a lot left so that will hopefully carry us through the summer until we harvest again in this fall. It is a lot of work to can all of the veggies, but so nice to have during the winter. Today I am grateful for all the canned produce from last fall! Well, off to work!