Many people do fertilize twice in the spring, but I think it is a waste of money and your time. If you fertilize early, it might boost the already fast spring growth rate so much that you have to mow every three days (wasting your time). Whereas if you wait until that initial flush of growth subsides, then you can fertilize and not worry about amazing growth rates. I usually suggest Memorial Day is a good time. Someone pointed out recently that in the south it might be too hot already for Memorial Day. Well, pick a date! For you in MA, I would go with Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. Easy to remember and correlates with gucc2 in MA.

thanks so much for the quick response and for helping my solve my home mystery! Also thanks for the tip about the lace bug infestation. There are a few trees/shrubs that are not looking so great... I'll definitely do some research to see if I can save some of these plants

The sportscasters are lovin' that game, Bigack. They can't show enough of all those TD's. Wish I'd seen it.

Lyban, the kids I work with vary a lot in how much frustration tolerance they have and how much complexity they enjoy. Simple games like Candyland and Hi Ho Cherry-O are often popular, but because I cannot control how long they take to end, I don't often use them. My younger clients often enjoy matching/memory games like this one, which I use daily. For kids with short attention spans or low frustration tolerance, I use only half the pairs, to make it easier for them to succeed the first few times we play: I also use Jenga a lot with kids of all ages, if the child can tolerate the crashing sound when the tower falls; some kids cannot and that's what we work on but as a grandparent you're better off just playing for fun! "Spot It" is another of my most popular games, and they have a Junior version for younger kids: The regular game is a big hit with my clients all the way up to college age. Actually, that's true for almost all my games-- even surly teenagers love "little kid games". Hope this helps and sorry for the hijack and also that I don't know how to make smaller photos when I steal them from Amazon.