Category: Uncategorized

Easter Happenings – As has been the case for the last several years, we hosted Easter dinner at Ward Manor. The grandniece and her mom showed up and we participated in the normal easter egg hunt. Which were these pre-filled eggs with little squishy toys. The grandniece was very pleased with this.

For the actual dinner, we kinda took the traditional Easter menu and tossed it out the window. The main courses were a beef stew that The Wife wanted to try and I smoked up some ribs we found in the back of the freezer. Green bean casserole and some very cheesy mac and cheese were the sides. Part of the dessert were some no-bake oatmeal cookies, but The Wife substituted out peanut butter for Biscoff (see below for partial reason). These were good, but you could definitely tell the difference. The rest of the dessert were oreo-stuffed cinnamon rolls from SIL.

We had a lot of fun with everyone, ate too much, had too much leftovers, and was exhausted by the end of it. In other words, a successful holiday.

Biscoff Happenings – The Ward household over the last year has switched from peanut butter to Biscoff cookie butter for a lot of things. My lunch is usually a street taco sized tortilla with Biscoff on it. Why? Hell, the cookie butter has less calories than the standard peanut butter. The downside is Biscoff is at least twice the cost on a per-unit basis and availability can be iffy. On a lark, I checked to see if Amazon had it. Um, yeah. So, now we have this tub coming on subscribe and save.

Yes, that’s 100 ounces of Biscoff. Liquid Death 6-pack for size comparison.

Quilt Happenings – Due to shoulder issues, it’s not unusual for me to sleep for some/most of the night in a recliner we have in our bedroom. I kept an inexpensive blanket on the recliner for when I was sleeping there, but unfortunately we have asshole cats. One in particular has decided to mark my recliner multiple times in the past couple of months. Washing the blanket was no longer effective. Fortunately, The Wife’s BFF decided to gift me a new quilt for helping her with setting up her new laptop a few months back. It was definitely aimed at my interests.

It’s weird thinking that we’ve been in Ward Manor for five years. It’s not that I have that dichotomy of feeling like we just moved in and feeling like we’ve lived here for twenty at the same time. It’s more of “it’s only been five years?”

Part of that is because the area around Ward Manor has been sprouting up like unattended weeds. When we moved in, there were just a few places to eat out within a reasonable distance. Now there’s a bunch. All sorts of commerce that we used to need to go into Bradenton for is now within a “close” car ride. I use the quotes because with all of the aforementioned growth, the infrastructure hasn’t kept up. Some of that is just normal growing pains. Some of that is county mismanagement.

I’m not going to talk about all the changes within Ward Manor, as most of them have been chronicled in previous posts. I find it somewhat interesting that the only two major appliances that we’ve had the entire time are the fridge and the outside freezer. Heck, even the cars have changed. The Wife and I are looking at some additional upgrades over the next few years, but we’ll see how all of that shakes out.

What amuses me the most is that for us, this is our “new” house that we bought after we got married. For the grandniece, this is the “old” house that Derek and The Wife have always lived in.