"If you chance to meet a frown...



Do not let it stay.
Quickly turn it upside down...



and smile that frown away!"

Happy Mother's Day!! See my pretty flowers (from church) and our delicious latke dinner?

The weather this past week was kind of dreary, but today was gorgeous! The week before was pretty nice, too. It put us in a gardening mood. Lil'Nathan planted a whole bunch of flower seeds outside and we've got plans for lettuce and spinach. The kids each planted some sunflowers, which we are starting indoors, to give them a fighting chance with the squirrel that stole lil'Nathan's avocado pit. (Yes, it really did. Who knew squirrels like avocados?)

Mary likes her hair better. We went to the library on Tuesday and the assistant librarian, also named Mary, told her she looked beautiful and wanted to know where she got it cut. When Mary said her mom did it, the librarian said, "Oh, it's so pretty that I thought you went to a beauty shop!" She's liked it ever since.

The day after we left Chicago (where the day before we'd walked right past the American Girl Doll store, complete with a doll hospital)... Mary let out a heartbroken wail from the backseat of the van. She'd just pulled Molly's leg off. Molly was her birthday gift, a doll with long hair and bangs that she could take care of. (We got her on eBay, back in November.) Well, we couldn't do anything about it in the car, and the doll hospital is kind of expensive anyway. So, before we moved to MA, Nathan did a little surgery.

So, here was the problem: A doll with a missing leg. Just the problem for a prosthetist. (Okay, so he's almost an orthotist, not a prosthetist, but they're related.)

He began by removing her head and all her stuffing. (Let's hope for different technique when working with real live patients.)

Once inside, it became obvious that the elastic connecting the other leg was about to break as well. So, he took that one off, too.

We found the strongest elastic in my sewing box and he tied and knotted and melted. Of course, he didn't work alone. Joseph is helping here, but he seemed to feel that his chief job was to run Molly's head (held by the braids) into the other room to show Mary and yell, "Look MaeMae, no head!"

After all the work was done, Molly was re-stuffed and her head was reattached. The patient made a complete recovery (as did her very worried "mother") and bears no scars from her surgery. Excellent surgical skills, if you ask me.