Happy Birthday, Joie! & April flowers, etc...

My sister No. 2, JoAnne, had her 50th birthday the other day. Janet had us all over for cake & ice cream, and to give Joie some of the necessities of a 50-something, like hemorrhoid ointment, laxative, Geritol, etc. She said she was going to include Depends, but those things are expensive! We had a fun evening. Here's Aunt Joie with Joycie & Sammy.


And we celebrated Janet's birthday, too. This isn't the best shot of my sis, since she's looking down, but do note the perfect fingernails.


I kept taking photos of my Joycie, just coz she's so darn adorable... and once she showed her annoyance, to continue to annoy her. This is her fakey-smile-enough-already-mother facial expression. Ah well... she's so easily annoyed lately, that she's taking all the fun out of it...


Janet has an interesting cat... one of those cats that if you initiate the contact, forget it... she will decide when to jump up on your lap so you can pet her. But don't make any unexpected movements or she's gone in a flash. Her name is Cali, and she's very inquisitive, also. I held my camera low to the floor, something she wasn't expecting, so she came over to investigate.


And to finish up the flood of family birthdays, my 46th is tomorrow. My best friend, Sandy, sent me some beautiful flowers.


Kev is working midnight-12's this weekend, so he's sleeping now. Sammy went over to a friend's yesterday & won't be home until later today. And Joycie is over at CMU taking her ACT today. The house is so very quiet. The sun is shining and the sky is blue. It's a beautiful, peaceful day.

Two of Joycie's friends also had been assigned CMU for the ACT, so the 2 of them came here at about 7am, and the 3 of them drove over together. Joycie drove, and she was confident of the location because she and I went over there yesterday and figured out where the building was and where she could park. The girls were more than half-way there when 1 of them realized she had left her admittance ticket in her backpack in her car at our house. You can't take the test without it, so I had to dash into the pickup (since Kev took my car to work & wasn't home yet) and speed over. I didn't make it by 8am, the start time, so I hope she was able to take the exam anyway. This girl is super smart, and forgetting her ticket is a highly unusual thing for her... she just doesn't do that kind of thing. I'm anxious for Joyce to get home to hear how it went for her. She struggles so much with math, but she gets straight A's in every other subject... so of course, we're both worried about the math part. She's had a couple of bad experiences with math classes (in my opinion, poorly skilled math teachers), and so now "math" is a "thing" with her. I wish I could find the key she needs to get over that mental blockade, because she is smart enough to handle math... she just isn't convinced of that.

On the way back home, upon spying a bright, flourescent pink sign proclaiming BOOK SALE, I made a hasty decision and a quick right turn. It was at a church, and had been running since Thursday. Today was the final day, and so all books were fill-a-sack-for-two-bucks. I filled, really filled, 7 sacks. All fiction paperbacks and hardcovers. Can't wait to show them all to Joycie. Love those church book sales.