Today’s news cycle was totally dominated by Zoe’s official announcement of her committment to the University of Maine at Orono.

It was kind of old news around here, but we had to wait until our load of UMO merchendise came in the mail before we could make the big FB announcement.  Everyone got something, even Daisy.

Lost in all the excitement was the completion of another work table puzzle by Jen and the hardiness of our lettuce seedlings, which survived a torrid snow squall early this morning.

We’re still finding things to bring brightness to our day.  Some involve Daisy the dog.

Mostly they involve sugar.  Take, for example, Lanie’s homemade hot fudge.  It went on Salted Caramel Swirl ice cream tonight.

Also a game of Dutch Blitz  kept some of us occupied.  

Even after two consecutive Easter Egg Hunt Sundays, even after five weeks of Sequestration, Mondays are still more bleh than other days.

Some things to perk us up:

School lunch! (No chicken salsd this time)

Nightly dose of “Brooklyn 99”

What a wonderful, bright day for the second Easter in a week.  After some negotiations, we settled on a backyard egg hunt to honor Orthodox Easter and Grammy packed up much of the food she made for take-away lunches.

We took our lunches to the lake, where it was breezy and colder, but not so much that girls didn’t swim.

Some of the spoils of shopping. NB: I did most of the shopping alone; Zoe came with me to BJ’s. We both wore masks.

Today was an epic day of maketing: BJ’s first thing in the morning, co-op pickup after that; then a trip to the supermarket for anything that we couldn’t find in the first two places.

It was an extensive shopping list, but we were up for the challenge.  The only thing that eluded us was active dry yeast, which is disappointing because we now have plenty of all-purpose flour.

We should have enough yeast to make bread one day next week and pizza dough another  Otherwise, we may not need to hit the market for two or three weeks. Who knows what state the world will be in by then?

Other things that went on here today:

Nadia made a chocolate cherry cake.

Several rooms were cleaned out and many books were piled up.

Emergency vehicles put on a parade through our neighborhood.

Wednesday’s school parade went so well — but at the same time was also so flawed — that we had to conduct our own class parade this evening.  Everyone in the class got a visit from a caravan of five teachers.  This list included one family that was inexplicably left off the route earlier in the week, and one family that was 45 seconds late getting to the end of their long driveway to see the whole school parade.

The girls made me a poster to put in my window.  It had a picture of me and it proclaimed: “Mr. Pavlik says, “Hello,  kindergarteners.”

Also on the agenda for the evening were coctails that may or may not have been made from semi-frozen school-lunch fruit punches.

Fruit punches aside, it was a good lunch haul: deconstructed tacos.

The big geranium got a big trim, and Zoe’s small vase was just the right size for the flowers we liberated.  The combination makes for a beautiful scene on a perfectly clear countertop.  That’s really all we need out of a Thursday.  That and takeout from Hop ‘n Grind.

So one may infer that the school-lunch-themed cookies from my co-workers — delivered as if they were a school lunch even though this was a homework delivery day — were well beyond what was necessary to make this one worth getting out of bed for.

The big highlight today was the elementary school staff parade some of us took part in.  There were enough cars (and enough streets to cover) that we were able to break into three separate caravans for the parade.  We were among about 10 cars in Caravan 3.  Jen drove so I could wave to the populace and take a few pictures.

Here’s some friends.

More friends (Jen seems to be swatting them with her enormous hand, but she’s really just waving.)

More here.

A lot of people who aren’t in elementary school anymore wanted to see this parade.

Even the teens these days are nuts about a parade.

“Seed 1” of the Kindergarten Seed Game project has sprouted!  I can’t tell you what it is because the kids are supposed to guess, but I have shared that this is something we plan to eat when it grows bigger.

Speaking of growing bigger, the 20+-year-old tree we bought at the church yard sale four years ago has found its way into a new vessel.  It will probably increase in size because of the move.  Then again, it could die rapidly.  I’m not great with houseplants.

Zoe and Lanie are performing a duet at Lanie’s (online) group violin lesson next week.  Today they previewed their version of the Game of Thrones Theme during Lanie’s (online) private lesson.  Ms. Louise claims to not be familiar with the song, though she’s clearly from North of the Wall.  Anyway, she says she liked their performance.

One of Zoe’s Easter gifts arrived only two days late.  It’s a game about growing bamboo for Pandas.  Long-time readers of this blog might remember that Jen and Zoe actually visited an actual Panda Preserve with actual pandas in honest-to-goodness China about a year ago to this very day.  Lanie and I have no chance of ever winning this game.

It’s actually three loaves baked into one.

Check out this big loaf of bread I made.  That’s what happens when you can find flour.  Tomorrow we’ll have sandwiches with leftover Easter ham.  Today, we had it with lentil soup.  Hats off to Catherine Newman, who gave us both the bread and the soup recipes via her blog (it’s also great for board game recommendations).

Speaking of games, today there was another round of Patchwork that Daisy had to try not to upset with her pouncing feet.