In Like a Lamb, Out Like a Lion

I slacked off a little. Actually, I've been slacking off a lot. I'm working again, but only part time, and I'm struggling with my ability to manage my time effectively between work, school, the dog, house-work, and spending time with Alex. So far school work and blogging seem to be at the very bottom of the list.

Winter has managed to keep its icy fingers dug deeply into the Kansas sod this year. The temperatures are finally starting to creep into the 60's and 70's. Yesterday was beautiful 72˚ and all the natives were out in their shorts and Birkenstock's. The mad race for "Best-looking Yard" began about 2 weeks ago. Half the neighborhood men were out in hardly 50˚ weather mowing, fertilizing, and watering their barely-dormant-barely-dead grass which caused a panicked frenzy in the other half of the males to rush over to Lowe's and Home Depot to see how they could out-do the others. Alex is of no exception after consulting no less than 5 yard-patriarchs as to what he should about his "dead grass".

Davey celebrated his first birthday on March 13th. I was sad for a moment that my puppy was now a dog but that only lasted a few minutes. I did find some of his first puppy treats in the doggy-bag we used when he was just a wee pup. As you can see his appetite has grown just a bit.

And, of course, in the doggy-bag I found his old collars. The one on the top left is his first collar, the one on the right is the one he's wearing now.

For his birthday I bought him a rubbery Frisbee. He LOVES it! He's not much of a fetch kind of dog. You can throw it and he'll go get it but he brings it back to you so you can play tug-o-war. He loves things that crunch and squish and make a plastic squeaky noise.

He doesn't lay on the carpet very often. He must have been eating a doggy treat when I took this picture.

The other part of his birthday present was that he got to sleep in our bed with us that night. Which meant that I slept curled up in a ball at the tippy-top of the bed with Alex on the left side of me, a night stand on the right side of me, and a warm dog-mass on my feet. It took him less than 3 minutes to fall into a deep sleep once we let him on the bed. I thought that he'd wake up around 4 AM to go to the bathroom and then I'd get the rest of the bed to myself. Nope! The bugger slept all the way until nearly 6 AM and hardly moved a muscle.

We went up to Chicago for a few days over Spring Break. While we were there we met up with Mike & Amy and Joe & Sara. The last time all 6 of us were together was at our wedding so it was great to hang out for a night. Here's a picture of Joe, Mike, and Alex at Anyway's Bar & Grill.

Here we are all together again.

(Amy Larson, Joe LePore, Sara LePore, Mike Larson, Amanda Pavlovich, Alex Pavlovich)

Amy planned this great surprise 40th birthday party for Mike. Tons of people showed up including his mom and dad from Pahrump, Nevada. Joe, Sara, Alex, and I stood in the back of the room waiting for Mike to make his way to the back of the group. When he finally saw us standing there staring at him- well, you could have knocked him over with a feather! It was a great surprise. We stayed at the party until almost midnight and then headed back to the massive hotel suite that Amy got for us all to stay in. The party finally came to an end around 4:30 AM when we found Mike passed out face down on his bed. In the morning we had breakfast together and then went our separate ways once again.

On our way back from Chicago, we stopped by to see my brother-in-law, Zoran, in Nebraska. He's attending Crieghton University. We treated him to dinner at PF Chang's, got to see his dorm room, and hear all about his exciting college life before jumping back on the road, but not before I was able to get a picture of Alex with his "little" brother.

That about sums up March 2010. It came in like a Lamb and went out like a Lion.