Life is Good

This was the view from our table on the deck. 

Last weekend we took the kids to lunch at Famous Dave's, then to see the latest "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," movie, and then to their other parents for the weekend.

We visited Chuck's dad and stepmom on Friday night, who just moved to the area, and then we went out to eat at Olive Garden. Our waitress had just taken our order and brought us our glasses of wine and our salad when the power went out.
We waited a while, and our waitress came back to give us the bad news. Those entrees we ordered weren't coming. Our dinner was salad, a breadstick, glass of wine, and a dessert to share. Good news was that little bit of food was free.

Saturday was really warm, so I suggested we eat at a restaurant with outdoor seating. I was thinking it would make up for the lack of dinner the night before, and I love eating outside when it's warm.

There is a restaurant in Port Orchard called The Lighthouse. They have outdoor seating, and it's right on the water.
We got there pretty late because we were running around, preparing for some concrete to be poured here in a couple of areas on the property. The sun had almost set completely by the time we were seated, but the view was incredible. I forgot my camera, so I got this shot with my phone. We literally could have jumped off the deck into the water. Our dinner was delicious. I had the lobster bisque and tortellini and Chuck had a steak.
We are so lucky to live here.
I have a beautiful home, wonderful kids, a great man, wonderful family, and so many other things that I am so thankful for each day. Being surrounded by beauty is one.

Bugs, a favorite around here

Summer is fading fast, and it seems like we haven't really done much. A study of the calendar revealed that I am going to be knee-deep in my regular volunteer activities within a week or so, and that means we have to pack in as much summer fun as we can-- pronto.
I needed to run a couple of errands the other day, but I also wanted to make sure we had fun on that outing. Sean has loved bugs and anything else that moves since he was old enough to realize they were around.  So off we went to the Bug Museum in Bremerton. It's a nice place with a lot of things to see, and it's FREE!
The museum is not very large, but there are a lot of things to see inside. Lots of bugs pinned to boards and labeled, some live insects and such, and even a few reptiles in the back.
Lilly was still with her mom, so it was just me and Sean this time around. We saw lots of great stuff, including a tiny praying mantis. Most of the living things were things we've seen before at the Bug Zoo in Monroe, Wash., but it was still fun. Now that we know it is so close we will probably visit more often.

We loved the larger-than-life insects around
the museum. Most of them were outside, but
this caterpillar was a great place to rest
for a minute. 

Sean liked this big spider named Boris.

For the love of color

I started using some foliage from unlikely plants
this year. 

I've been playing around with bouquets of flowers that grow around the house, and last week I decided to think outside the box. I gathered a lot of different greens from the plants we have growing around the property. I don't know their names, I just like the varying hues of green they produce, and the textures.

These are a few of the bouquets I liked best.

We grow a variety of  strawberries that produce really large leaves, and large berries. I used the strawberry leaves to add a little surprise to the arrangement. Oh, and BTW, those leaves last forever in a vase. I also used some Heuchera leaves in a couple of the bouquets and found that they also stick around for a while before they begin to wilt. I like the variety of color in the leaves.

The dahlias and zinnias are in bloom now.  I love this little vase. It's handmade pottery, and I got
it at our community fair for $5. 

I clipped this hydrangea a little early. It was white when I cut it, but after it was in the vase
for a few days the inside where the petals meet began to turn a beautiful blue. 

Wine Among the Vines

It was an evening of good wine, beautiful weather, lovely plants and flowers, art, a silent auction and some great finger foods. We also listened to live violinists. We had a great time at  Sunnycrest Nursery last week during the Wine Among the Vines fundraiser for Mary Bridge Children's Hospital.

Our table.

A great escape

I am moody. Sometimes I'm in the mood to read books, and sometimes in the mood to not read and just be entertained by television or something other than books. I love reading, and I read something every day, but sometimes books are just too demanding. I have time to read a newspaper, but when my life is so busy, to commit to a book takes some doing. I always have a pile of books by the bed, though, and there have been times when I've had three books going. I love escaping into a book for a while. It feels like I've traveled to some distant land, or even back in time. Books are a great escape for me.

Right now I'm in a reading mood, which means I'll probably blaze through a bunch of books within a few months.

I just updated my list on this blog because I finished "State of Wonder" quite some time ago. It was a great book, BTW. It had me thinking for at least a week after I finished it, and that is the sign of a good book for me. In fact, I thought of it yesterday.

In the book there is a group of women in the Amazon who continue to have children into later years, and a scientist is there studying this, and some other things. I thought of it out of the blue yesterday because I realized how difficult it would be for us to have children into our 60s and 70s and beyond. Our bones can become brittle. Carrying a baby would be such a strain on our bodies, not to mention a delivery. (It was a great book.)

Before I had even finished that book I was aware that I would want to be reading another one right away. I love the library, but I am terrible at getting books read before they are due. Plus I just always forget when they're due and I'm not good at keeping that little slip of paper that tells me when they're due. I've never in all these years come up with a good system for keeping track of library books.

So instead I went to the thrift store. I knew those books would be older ones, but like I said, I get in moods and out of moods. There are a million books out there that were popular within the past few years that I never got to read because I didn't have time, number one, and secondly, I wasn't in the mood.

I got a bag full of books for about $6. Yes. $6. Amazing. I'm reading a little paperback book right now called "To the Wedding," by John Berger. The writing style is totally different from any other books I've read. I usually read it late at night, and maybe that is why it has been a little confusing to me. It feels like it jumps from one voice to another and I have to take a moment to figure out who is speaking.

I've read so many good books. There are a few that I want to re-read they were so good.
Some of my favorites that come to mind, and these are just a few:

The Dao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
The Devil in the White City--soooo good. by Erik Larson
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series by Stieg Larsson
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
On Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler Ross
There are so many more. What are your favorite books? Do you have a reading list this summer?

Dinner and a Movie

A crab spider waits for a tasty treat on a hydrangea plant.

July was full of activity. We had so many things going on with the business, and we spent a couple of weekends getting ready for the upcoming family reunion.
It's so rare that Chuck and I ever get to have a little bit of alone time to just engage in a relaxing conversation.
Some days I handle it OK, and other days I just don't have any patience with interruptions when I'm trying to talk to him. Phone calls, kids, other people; it just gets frustrating when we're in the middle of a conversation.
On Saturday we had an opportunity to spend some time together. Both kids were with their other parents, and Chuck was off. He suggested a community social event and I declined.
We've spent lots of time at social, community functions. I like them, but I need time with him that is focused on us. When we attend events we end up talking to everyone else but each other. So we're together, but not really. We're just at the same event.
When that happens I feel so cheated. Sometimes there are a lot of things we need to talk about, and we end up with no time. Then when we do have a little bit of time after work,  I feel rushed to try to get as much conversation in as possible before we have to do the bedtime routine.
He was so understanding when I explained that I would rather not spend our time with a bunch of other people. We originally intended to attend the event for a short put-in-an-appearance time and he suggested we leave there and go out to dinner and a movie. Time got away from us and we skipped the social event altogether.
I wore a dress, and he work slacks and a nice button down, just like we were on an actual date, and we went for Maxwell's Speakeasy and Lounge dinner-and-a-movie deal in Tacoma.
Maxwell's Speakeasy and Lounge partners with The Grand and has a special dinner menu for two, with two movie ticket vouchers for $60. We had wine and grown up conversation, a really good meal,  and then we went to see "Your Sister's Sister" at The Grand.
It was a good movie about relationships. When I asked Chuck what he thought of it, he said the message he got from it was to enjoy life. He asked me what I thought and I said I agreed with him, and I it also seemed to be about forgiveness. We had a pretty good conversation about it on the way home.
It was a lovely evening.

Delicious dishes with berries

A few months ago we commissioned a local potter, Gary Andersen of Lakebay Pottery, to make us a set of dishes. The plates have our huckleberry design and are partly dipped in blue and green. The coordinating bowls are done in a design he calls Fusion. I chose the small mixing bowls as our cereal bowls because they seemed unique. I love them.
We ordered dinner plates, then added a couple of serving bowls and a platter, and I just recently picked up a set of little sauce/salsa bowls from him that I ordered. I took him an example of the size and shape and he made them. We love all of it. The dishes are all so pretty.

Raspberries are ripe and abundant. Sean likes them
on his Cheerios.