Monday Update, Exam Week edition

some people's azaleas bloom all at once.  Ours take turns.
Saved the best for last.

1.  The CR-V is finally showing her age:  yesterday afternoon, all of a sudden, the clutch just wouldn't work properly.  I guess I can probably drive the thing to the shop, but it'll be rough going.  Makes me very sad...I know clutch repair isn't cheap.

2.  I bought The Runner a new camera for Mother's Day.  She'd been talking about how much she likes the one Honey uses, so now she has one of her own.  The Runner is a difficult person to buy for, so I was happy to see that she was genuinely happy to get it.

3.  Speaking of The Runner, she ran the Iris 5K in Dresden on Saturday, and came in first in the women's 30-39 division--while pushing the younger two in the stroller.  And she was all smiles while doing it. 

4.  We have become a house where strep infections are de rigueur . . . and thus, both The Kindergartner and Little Red are getting their tonsils taken out in late June.  I used to think that tonsillectomies were just a childhood rite of passage (especially thanks to Richard Scarry), but still, we're not saying anything about it to either of them for now.

5.  Now that classes are over, Piers is becoming ever more hermit-like.  Though I will say that the group in my upper level class, the group I just said goodbye to, was a fun bunch.  They had some interesting teacher horror stories to share . . . and some fellow-student horror stories, from classes I was actually teaching.  Apparently, I blocked out some of the details.

6.  Apropos of the photo above, it's always a shock in the spring when all the plants get going and the grass gets growing and we have to catch up from months of neglect of the yard (pretty much from right after the Pig Pickin' every year).   The insane amounts of rain haven't helped either.  But this year we have two adults at full capacity, so it should continue to run more smoothly.