And just like that – we’re looking at April!! Phew – it’s been quite the March around here! Here’s a quick summary of some of the beautiful madness that colored our March!

It started with a drive to Ohio.


Thankfully, we were fully stocked with coffee and mini-donuts, our favorite morning road food!

Since it’s a solid two-day drive, we’re always delighted when we can stop and see good friends just outside of Nashville.

It’s always great to spend time with John and Rosie – and by taking this route, we get to see them twice! Sweet!

The primary purpose of this trip was to watch two of our grands performing in a show choir competition. What’s Show Choir, you say? It’s a group of 30-40 incredibly talented high schoolers performing themed Broadway-quality musical numbers. We’d watched a couple of performance videos and were excited to see them in person! Since it was a competition, is was a long day, but incredibly fun to watch each school perform. Of course, the most fun was watching OUR kiddos!
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Our Maddie is a senior, so this was one of her last performances – so glad we were there!

Here’s a link to the performance. The whole video is over 4 hours, so I’ve set it to start at hour 3, which is when their group performs. The other groups were also fabulous, but I’m happy to report that our team won the grand championship! Yay!!

Since that Saturday was jam-packed, our other two days together were more low-key! It was so special to see almost ALL of the Ohio clan (Hayley was in Cincinnati and couldn’t make the trip) right smack dab in the middle of winter!

Not the whole M-ville clan in our group selfie- it’s really hard to keep everyone home!
But we did snag a quick shot of the Gahanna gang before we set off for home.

Four Days of driving.
Three days with family.
Totally worth it!!
We had only been back in Texas for a day when we got a call that Lara (back in Ohio) had taken a bad fall and torn up her knee. She’s a single mom, works full-time, and does a great job managing her busy life. But this brought just about everything to a screeching halt. And so I took a good look at my schedule and started looking for flights to Columbus. Yep, one week after I returned from our Ohio Road Trip, I turned around and flew back!! By the time I arrived, she was doing much better, and a doctor visit while I was there confirmed the good news that surgery wasn’t needed. Phew. She can work from home, is managing quite well, and can even handle driving as long as it isn’t a great distance. I was able to help with a couple of house projects she was working on, tried to stay on top of the kitchen stuff, and managed to keep the laundry under control. Definitely support staff! We all got to spend an afternoon with the M-ville crew, and even got a good visit in with Hayley (the one who couldn’t make it the weekend before!) But the best part was being able to spend some good quiet time with Lara. It was a week well spent! (And I may have to work that into an annual trip to see all the Columbus Conrads (all 11 of them!). But let’s skip the messed-up knee next time, OK?)

I arrived back in Texas just in time to celebrate Josiah’s birthday this past Sunday. They came from Waco for the day, and we fed them waffles, experienced the Caldwell Zoo in Tyler,


and then enjoyed burgers on the deck, along with a couple of good games with the kids. Oh, and the boys loved exploring the neighborhood in the golf cart!  What a special day! (But sadly, not very many pictures! I’m really slipping these days!)

Our March Madness was all Very Good Madness, indeed! Any month that I can hug ALL of my children, their loved ones, and all twelve of the grands – well, that’s the kind of madness I’m really good with!

And so we turn the calendar page over. April will bring its own brand of busyness as we prepare to head north at the end of the month for the summer!  The plan is starting to take shape – and I’ll share more of that in the days to come!

Thanks for stopping by  – hoping your March was filled with as much joy as ours was!