Valerie Bertinelli is in my house (& some other fun stuff this Easter Sunday)

 

It's Easter morning--the sun is shining, the sky is bright blue & there's even a couple birds on my patio chirping happily away.

It figures!

I'm not complaining; just that my sister Shawn is working today, so she was nice enough to invite several of us down yesterday for a ‘Saturday Easter’ dinner.  (Let's just say the weather was slightly different.)  

But it was great to spend some time with everybody--Shawn's husband Jim & their daughter Sophie (the Easter ham pictured above) and my sister Donda was there with her husband Bobby & my older niece Drew. 

 

This is what greeted me yesterday morning when I woke up;  I wound up having to leave Shawn's early when a blizzard hit there too!

And here is my nice Sophia, three years old & going on thirty

 

 

It's been a long time since I've seen everybody, particularly my little niece here who gave me a warm hug the minute I walked thru the door. 

But hopefully with winter finally on it's way out the door, I can spend some more time with these characters.  (Including Donda, who lives in West Virginia--I've never felt comfortable going there on my own, but now that I've finally got her mapped on my GPS...here I come!)

 

 

"Uncle Doug, I find the orange eggs especially tasty..."

By the way, I recently made a little video of the kid here (an assortment of photos showing how much she's grown since being born) which I put on YouTube; if you'd like to check it out for yourself, click right here.

 

Oh yeah, about Valerie...

When I got home from Shawn's, there was a package waiting for me from the Easter Bunny; okay, Amazon.com.  Woo-hoo!  Stephen King's new novel,  and...Valerie Bertinelli's autobiography??  Yep.

I honestly didn't intend to buy this.  I toyed with the idea, put it in my online cart at some point (but I swear I thought I'd removed it).  

Nothing against Valerie, but when I was a kid I never liked 'One Day at a Time' (I just remember a lot of yelling--"JULIE!!"  "BARBARA!!") and as an adult, I've pretty much detested anything on the Lifetime Channel (where she reigns as the Lifetime Movie Queen).   I was never a fan of Van Halen either--and her other show, 'Touched by An Angel'?   Omigod, no.

So why did I buy this book about a person in their mid-40s who dropped 30-40 lbs & felt so renewed that it inspired them to write about it?   Heh heh!  (I guess I'm looking for a little 'diet wisdom'; and if Valerie wants to throw in a scandal about her marriage too, well...) 

Last but not least, a little blast from Easter Past...

 

Easter 1977; Steve, Shawn & Donda (in the kitchen of the farmhouse) 

Mom was terrific when it came to holidays, and Easter was no exception.  However, we had this interesting custom every year, where Easter baskets, chocolate rabbits, those giant fruit n' nut eggs and other gifts were laid out on Dad's piano (in the music/plant room) or on the kitchen table; why not the living room?  A few years back when I asked Mom this, she said "Because honey, that was reserved for Christmas!"

 

Hope everyone had a nice Easter.  (And for the record, I don't even count this as a real holiday, y'know...you don't get a paid day off from work!)