Good timing

I know i shouldn't be looking at my phone during church, but I did, and I happened to see that someone was purging their puzzle stash. I messaged her and she happened to be a few blocks from church so we drove over after service and I took three puzzles.

Yoga cats, on the bottom, hasn't even been opened. I also grabbed a 500-piece cat zodiac puzzle and a 1,000-piece pumpkin one which, on looking more closely, seems quite challenging.

St. Pat’s Parade

Madison Street in Forest Park was packed yesterday afternoon for the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade.

Lots of union floats and politicians, of course.

I'm always happy to see some bagpipers, Irish dancers and Shriners driving those itty bitty cars.

Grimace from McDonald's made an appearance.

We were standing behind a bunch of kids who kept taking all of the candy that was tossed out. We each were handed an energy drink and I got a little Butterfinger bar and found this little troll-like leprechaun sitting on a parking pay box so he came home with me. We watched the parade for two hours and decided to head home. It was a little chilly and windy.

Spring is near

Andy worked from home yesterday so he finished a bit early and we headed to One Lake Brewing for its happy hour (and light dinner). They had the upstairs deck open (yay!), testing to make sure everything was in working order before spring technically arrives so that was a nice surprise. It was rainy most of the day but cleared up in the late afternoon. Temps almost reached 70.

Then we drive west to the grocery store for the weeky shopping. The sunset was spectacular ...

and it got better the farther west we drove. Notice the el train in the right of this picture. Perfect timing.

Wild puzzle

Interesting puzzle, right? It's a bit too big for my puzzle board which is unfortunate because...

the cats are loving these pieces. They take them and chew them. If all the pieces end up on this one, it will be a miracle.

So I finished it in a little over a day because it needed saving from the cats. One piece is missing and since so many of the pieces are chewed up, this one is likely going in the recycling bin. Such a cool design though.

Sparse sprinkles

How sad to open my Little Debbie brownie at work yesterday to find out it was sorely lacking in the mini colored chocolate sprinkles.

Where are the magazines?

Has anyone else noticed the lack of magazines in their doctors' offices? Does everyone just scroll on their phone while they're waiting so old magazines in doctors' offices are a thing of the past? How am I suppose to catch up on celebrity if there are no People magazines?

Lenten activity

We attended a multigenerational Lenten soup dinner and activity last night at church. The theme was "making room."

The craft for the night was making stained glass windows with tissue paper. I thought for sure Andy was making a mess the way he was cutting up the pieces of tissue paper ...

but his, on the right, turned out really nice. I think I like it better than the one I made.

Hey, that's us. A picture my friend M, who organized and ran the event, took.

Annual golf trip

Andy and the boys were in Arizona (Scottsdale maybe) for their annual golf trip. They're in a seven-bedroom rental so everyone got their own room. This master bedroom was Andy's, I suppose because he makes all of the travel plans.

A few of the guys playing foosball. They left Thursday morning and got back late Sunday, after taking in a Cubs spring training game. They played four rounds of golf.

Saturday's round. Andy made a fashion statement in his new, salmon-colored shorts.

Pretty course.

Andy and I had thrifted some golf-related "awards" and silly certificates. He said the guys got a kick out of them.

Spring training game. I didn't realize they had lawn seats.

Scrappy Saturday

I did the grocery shopping early Saturday morning. Laundry is done. Dishwasher is loaded. With Andy gone, it was either vacuum the living room or get back to working on the Disney 2025 trip scrapbook. Since I found my pens, I guess the logical answer is to scrapbook.

I did finish the album and I didn't even have to add more pages. Maybe I didn't have as many pictures as I thought I did. Anyway, I had to pull out the album from our first trip in March 2008 to compare, The kids are all grown up. Who would of thought L would one day be working there? Certainly not her 5-year-old self.

So close

I realized more than half-way through my workday yesterday that I was wearing two different earrings. Guess I have to put on my glasses to get dressed. At least they were very, very similar. It's not the first time I've gone to work mismatched. When I was pregnant with L I wore one black loafer and one brown loafer and didn't notice it until I was walking to lunch with coworkers. At least I was able to remove the earrings and set them in my purse. I wasn't able to do that with my shoes.