Peanut's Second Birthday

I've been working on this all week and today it WILL be up for all to see. Last Sunday on our way home from vacation we stopped at my daughter and sil's for Lil Peanut's Second Birthday. She is such a loving and caring child as you will see.

She learned real quick that if it's clothing you hold it up to yourself. Nevermind that it's upside down... see it fits lol


She is one of millions of children that watch "BOLT" over and over again... I think I've seen it about 10 times. When she opened this she was in heaven. Her heart just opened up and she didn't want to set it down. Her Mom got it away from her once so she could open other gifts and she panicked when she couldn't find him.


Hence, she's holding Bolt while admiring her new tumblers and pitcher set.


We somehow got her to step outside and see her new sand and water play station. She really enjoyed this too.


Her Daddy plays a lot of instruments so you know she loved her own guitar.


MM got this little video clip of Muffin and her Daddy (our Son). She loves to stand up. Is she not precious?


Peanut had a lot of fun with this little baking set too. It comes with a baking mitt and a cookie sheet that has velcro to hold the cookies to the tray. She was delivering cookies to everyone. Ever the hostess.


I was really glad that we got to go to this party because last year we had to miss her Birthday. I just love being with my little girls - it just warm my heart to watch them learn and grow. They are precious. Happy Second Birthday Peanut!!

An Award!

I haven't won an award in a while. Thank you Harmony



The rules are easy.

Rules:
1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and her blog link.
2) Pass the award to ten other blogs that you’ve discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Now for the powerful selection of ten (ouch TEN!). I'll try

Tammy
Michelle
Jaden
Vixen
Molly

Maybe I'll have time to do more later, but I wanted to get this much done .. later.

My Sister's Keeper

My Sister’s Keeper (2004), by Jodi Picoult, is a novel about a young girl who sues her parents for the right to make her own decisions about how her body is used when a kidney transplant is planned in order to save her older sister's life. The main themes surrounding this novel are family and bioethics.

Anna came into the world via in vitro fertilization, so that she would be a genetic match for her older sister Kate, who was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia when she was 2 years old. When Anna was born, her cord blood was donated to Kate, but when the leukemia returned, Anna then had to donate blood and bone marrow. When Kate's kidneys fail, Anna is expected to donate one of her own, but she hires a lawyer to be medically emancipated from her parents and gain the right to make the decision herself. Her lawyer, Campbell Alexander, works for her pro bono.

I really liked this book - it had me spell bound. Being a mother and a daughter I can really appreciate all the drama that would ensue when health issues arise in a family. Not necessarily a happy summer read, it is definitely worth reading and discussing in a book review format.

Fertilize Friday

Another week and I'm glad I have a 'water boy' lol. My MM is getting a little tired of dragging the hose, but I'm the one that's gone all day. Hope they do okay next week when there is no one to water. We'll see. For now most everything is the same as last week but flourishing. So enjoy my flowers then head on over to Tootsie Time to check out the other participating gardeners.

First off is a petunia at my Mom's. Little Peanut is just loves taking time to smell the flowers.


The hanging basket is doing real well. It's getting wider and wider. The colors are fabulous.


The trumpet vine is really trumpeting and attracting lots of hummingbirds. Should have gotten a close up.


This is a view I love when I come up the driveway. It looks so full and colorful. The welcome I need after a long day at the office.


Hosta's all around the property are blooming. This batch is out back next to the lean to.


The cone flowers are all blooming nicely now. I love the colors, but have a question about their care. Should they be staked or otherwise propped up? The ones in the back stand up okay and one of the ones in front is pretty upright, but the other one is pretty much laying down. Should it be caged or something?


The Bee Balm has got a few blooms but my picture is real blurry, the coreopsis is still blooming beautifully and the blue hills salvia is a beautiful striking blue. I won't be able to participate next week (won't be home to take any pictures), but hopefully the week after that I'll still have a few live plants to report on lol. Have a GREAT week.

Weekend With My Girls!

I had another great weekend with my girls. They are growing up so much!! On Friday night we went to my son and dil to watch little Muffin while they went out. She is such a good baby. At 3 1/2 months old she's very focused on objects around her and loves when you hold her standing. Can you say "Big Blue Eyes?" lol



She liked sitting in her little play chair too.



I'm not sure what they're going to do when Muffin needs her highchair lol. Actually, this is Oliver and he pretty much goes with the flow and I'm sure he'll just move over lol.


When the kids got home we stayed and visited for a while then had a nice drive home on a beautiful summer night. We laugh because now that we're older we don't usually get to enjoy late nights lol If you're over 40 you understand what I'm saying... Wow, 11:00 and we're still up!

Saturday we drove around so MM could drool over Corvettes. Found a couple of interesting ones, but not the one he's looking for whew!! Another bullet dodged. In the evening my daughter and sil came over for a bbq and campfire. Little Peanut loves running around the backyard. She's always in motion lol



She didn't have much of an appetite, but when it came to the s'more she had no problem. She sat and ate that thing til it was gone! Little marshmallow in her hair and lots of goo on her face. She enjoyed that baby!


Sunday we rested up and watered the gardens. Started reading another book too. It was a great weekend all in all. You just can't beat spending time with the grandbabies.

Plum Spooky

Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter extraordinaire, is on the trail of Martin Munch, boy genius who received his doctorate degree in quantum physics at the age of 22. Munch is on Stephanie’s radar because he has failed to appear in court for stealing a magnetometer, after busting his boss’s nose with a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup. To complicate matters Stephanie wakes up one morning to find Carl the monkey tied to her apartment door. There’s a note tied to the monkey asking Stephanie to look after Carl until his owner gets back into town.

As the investigation continues Stephanie learns that Martin has teamed up with Wulf Grimoire, an opportunist who can kill without remorse, disappear like smoke, and wants world domination. Helping Stephanie is Wulf's cousin named Diesel. Diesel is also a bounty hunter but he has special skills when it comes to tracking men. While on the hunt, Diesel and Stephanie end up in the Pine Barrens, where they run into strange characters like the retired Easter Bunny and a man who really looks like a Sasquatch.

All in a day's work for Stephanie Plum as things blow up and get very messy, pretty much an ordinary day on the job. If you've read any of Janets books you know Stephanie always gets her man.

This was another good quick read. I personally didn't think it was up to par for Janet Evanovich, brought smiles to my face, but no laughing out loud.

It's a Good Idea!

I got this from Harmony, what a good idea.

Blogging is really fun, but it's even more fun having people browsing your post. I want to share some simple strategy to generate traffic.

Bloggers in some ways do direct audience to their site by joining forums, commenting on others' posts, leaving comments in chat widgets, join traffic exchange programs, and even others pay for traffic. Spending so much time blog hopping is exhaustive so people find ways to lessen the load.

Why not try this sort of chain links. If followed seriously it exponentially increases the number of back links to your site. Here's how:


Try to make a post just like this one (can you say 'exactly like') and mention this process.

From the list of blog sites below remove the number 1 and move the rest in the list 1 step higher (i. e number 2 becomes number 1, and so on). Add your blog name in the 5th position. Don't forget to copy the links. (Here's my list-my site added in the end)


Christmas Ring
EV Tourism Portal
Home of good ideas
Harmony In Motion
Where The Road Takes Us


List at most five of your friends blogsite here with link and inform them of this post and ask them to do the same. Here's my friends:

Crazy Mom
Wendy
Michelle
Vixen
Bumbles

Good luck guys!

Watching My Garden Grow

With the 4th of July celebrations last week I missed my Fertilize Friday. Not this week. I've been watering and fertilizing and trimming and things are looking quite healthy.

The Tiger Lilies bloomed for the better part of two weeks. Next year I plan on grouping them all together for a stronger presentation.


Not sure what this plant is.... any ideas? I love the cluster orange flowers.


Looking up the driveway from the backyard it looks like we have a full garden lol. Lots of room for more, but MM doesn't agree :)


The Coneflowers are blooming a lot more this week.


The Coreopsis are so light and airy. When I went to fertilize them this week a neighbor's cat ran out from under it. Guess he thought is was light and airy too.


When I bought these the containers said they were both Shasta Daisy - Snow Lady. The one on the left is what I think is a Snow Lady, I don't know what the specific name of the one on the right is. It is definitely a Daisy, but is taller and a soft yellow.











The Salvia Blue Hills is still blooming brightly. I'm thinking there must be a way to train or shape the growth on this, and I'm going to learn that from all you girls with the beautiful green thumbs.


That's it for me this week. Can't wait to see how all Tootsie's Girls are doing.

A RELIABLE WIFE

Set in a small Wisconsin farming and manufacturing town still crumbling a decade after the depression of the 1890s, A Reliable Wife tells the story of Ralph Truitt, a wealthy businessman who advertises for “a reliable wife” in newspapers across America. The woman he chooses, Catherine Land, describes herself as “a simple, honest woman,” but in truth she is both complex and devious— not the missionary’s daughter she claims to be in her letter to Truitt but a courtesan of great beauty, kept by men and haunted by a terrible past. Catherine’s plan in accepting the marriage offer is simple: she will win this man’s devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on, though, is the passion she finds in this seemingly solid, forthright man—a man who also harbours secrets and whose own past is far from pure.

Filled with remarkable characters and drenched with colour and atmosphere, A Reliable Wife is a story of love and madness, longing and murder, played out in a world that seems to have gone temporarily off its axis.

I personally found this book spellbounding. In the beginning I was a little put off with all the description, but I got used to it right away and caught up in the plot. A good read with a lot of deep considerations.

Leap of Faith by Danielle Steel

As a child Marie-Ange Hawkins has the rich kid's childhood that other kids dream about. She has freedom, love, security in a beautiful old French chateau running freely eating her fill of peaches from the orchards. But when Marie-Ange is only 11, a tragic accident marks the end of her idyllic life. Orphaned now, and alone, she is sent to America, to live with her great-aunt on a farm in Iowa. Her aunt really resents her deeply, and cuts her off from all she has ever loved.

In Marie-Ange's lonely existence with her great aunt, only the friendship of a local boy, Billy Parker, offers comfort and hope to her. But her only wish is to gain comfort and escape. Then just after her twenty-first birthday, an unexpected visitor brings startling news and an extraordinary gift; the freedom to return to France, to Chateau de Marmouton.

When she arrives in France, Marie-Ange learns that the chateau she grew up in has a new owner, Comte Bernard de Beauchamp, a dashing widower who invites her into his home, then into his heart. Their life together, soon includes marriage, children, and lavish homes. It takes an ominous turn though when she receives a call to tell Marie-Ange a very strange, shocking story. One so chilling, she doesn't want to believe it.

Although her friend of many years can sense a problem he is thousands of miles away and cannot offer any help. So Marie-Ange somehow has to find courage and faith to survive.

This was a good quick read. My love of children made my heart ache for this orphaned lonely child. You'll enjoy this one if you like Danielle Steel.