spring.

I love spring. We're still about a week away from the official start, but we enjoyed high 60s/low 70s here in Nashville this weekend and I've decided that spring is my favorite season.

As soon as I got home from work on Friday, I put on my old jeans, a pair of rubber boots, one of Nate's baseball hats, and some work gloves and I went outside. (Nate was working fervently on a sermon for his preaching class Saturday morning.)

Our bushes and hedge and lawn (mostly weeds) was a little out of control. Not enough to need mowed, but I used the weed whacker to trim up along the sidewalks, and on Saturday I used loppers and hedge trimmers to shorten up the bushes. I only did half of them because it was a lot of work picking up the trimmings. I'll finish next weekend. Sunday afternoon I went after the backyard and felt like I barely made a dent. I gave up on that for now. Metro brush pickup doesn't come until the end of May and I can only throw so many branches behind the shed.

Next weekend I want to finish up trimming in the front yard and add some plants under the kitchen window where my azaleas and mums and basically everything else there have died. It used to be mulched but the grass (read weeds) has grown in and I suppose the mulch has blown away. It's kind of a mess; I just cut it real short with the weed whacker. I need to buy a garden hose and spray for weeds. We have purple deadnettle and/or henbit everywhere. Maybe this fall we will overseed. Probably need to kill everything and reseed, but that seems like a lot of work …

Anyway, we're a bit cooler today but looking at 70s again this weekend. Nate has ITG this weekend and lots of work for his classes. He says if he can survive March he'll be good for the rest of the semester. Nate's birthday is coming up next week and some of his fam is coming, so we are excited for that.

Oh, also this week I bought an ice cream maker! I used some birthday money for it and it is awesome! The first recipe I made was mint chocolate chip. It was better than store-bought! (It is dangerous how easy/quick it is to make. I have already eaten too much!) My only real problem was that it leaves a waxy residue on my spoon and I guess kind of in my mouth but I googled it and I guess if you let it churn too long, some of the heavy cream starts to turn into butter. So I'll try to adjust my timing for the next batch. Nate has requested cookies 'n' cream.

Our friend Sam of the duo Samne was back in Nashville for work last week. It was fun to meet up with him and let him stay on our couch. We wish Anne could have visited too! They are fellow Kansans who lived in Nash for a year, and we miss them. We went with Sam to Sweet Cece's in Hillsboro Village and Nate and I were driving separately since I met up with them after work. Well we didn't see the signs about getting a parking receipt from the booth for free parking and both of our cars got tickets. For a total of $52. It's debatable whether private lots can really enforce tickets. (They do have the right to tow you.) But I emailed the lot owner and nicely asked if he would consider forgiving our violations. And he did. Boom.

Also our AT&T U-Verse bill was too high ($51/mo) so I called them and agreed to a 12-month contract, and they lowered our bill to $36/mo and gave us a $25 instant credit for being loyal customers. (I played "happy customer" who didn't want to switch providers but it was just too expensive, rather than unhappy customer. I think agreeable people have more weight when it comes to bargaining.) So that saved us over $200 for the year. And that's why Nate calls me his money savin' maven.

I know I've been terrible about blogging this year. Once a month, eh? I want to write more often. I'm reading a book about being a church planter's wife so maybe I will share some thoughts here about that. It's very good and convicting.

That's all for now. If it's still cold where you are, my advice is move south! haha, I love this weather.