new beginnings....

Well... here is just another example of my bad habit - not completing or following through on something I start... unless it's food.
It's been a while... Spring has sprung and appropriately I've attached a picture of the beautiful bouquet of flowers I picked from a traffic island in the middle of the road last week. I drive by them each morning I drop Marshall at school and think to myself 'gee they would make a lovely bouquet.. free too..'.... so, last week as I was leaving after I had surprised Marshall during his lunch break with balloons & a bag of goodies - for our "UN-anniversary"... it was about 1pm & there very few cars around. I pulled over and ran across into the middle of the island and bent down to pick the flowers trying very hard to look like I was just.. well, smelling the flowers. I'm pretty sure it was illegal... maybe.. I don't know.. I'm a foreigner and there was no sign. hehe.... I am amazed at the many different kinds of flowers all growing amongst each other. I tried to get some of every kind, but there were just too many! All different kinds and brilliantly coloured. So here they are...

I attended my first book club last night and thoroughly enjoyed it, now I wish I had joined in earlier! Last night was held at Stephanie's home and there were 5 of us. It was a lovely time. She served some delicious treats, lemon madelines, blood orange soda and a platter of strawberries & grapes. Yum! I think I counted I ate about.. 7 madelines - I had been craving sugar it seems. 

We each shared words and thoughts about our chosen books - this month we had the option to read a biography of our choice. I kind of decided to join at the last minute so  I wasn't very prepared but had read the book 'How to be like Women of Influence' last year and it was fantastic. It is full of 20 short biographies of some of the most amazing women ever. It is educational, engaging, uplifting and inspiring! I can't wait to read it again as I think I had only read about half way through when I had to return it to it's owner. So now I have a renewed interest in reading.. I like to read and when I do I can't put a book down til I've finished it. I normally finish a book in about 2 to 3 days. I just don't read as often as I'd like because I'm indecisive as to what to read and there are SO MANY good books I become overwhelmed and don't know where to start, so I don't. I think being apart of this book club will give me a little bit of encouragement and really the motivation and will to read. I'm excited! I just recently finished 'The Lovely Bones' and then watched the film. As always, the book was better. It is pretty sad & depressing though so I don't know that I would really recommend it. But it's different, it's original and overall I did like it. It had me on the edge of my seat at times and almost in tears at other times. It was a quick read and now I'm on to 'Trail of Crumbs' by Kim Sunee. I'll start it tonight. I stayed quite late at Stephanie's and little did I know my husband was anxiously waiting for me to hurry home. I arrived home close to 10pm to find him eager to greet me and I was very pleasantly surprised, actually extremely grateful to him as he had spent the time cleaning the house. The dinner was put away, lunch was packed, kitchen perfectly clean, clothes put away AND he had walked to walmart to get us a dvd & pulled out our heavy mattress into the lounge-room to watch it :) not to mention the 2 brownies waiting on a plate for me... after all those madelines I don't know how I fit them in, but I did :)


Now today hasn't been especially productive for me as I'm really struggling to work from home. I am finding it extremely difficult to do and very little gets done. I hate Wednesday's because Marshall has a night class he attends after work and I don't have the car and don't get to see him til about 9:30pm. It is a looooong day. I have been investigating various courses of study I'd like to take though and I think that has been productive. I definitely know better now than I did 5yrs ago about what I wanted to pursue. I've almost narrowed it down. 
Well, it's 4.30pm.. time to get out of my p.j's I think, drink up this blueberry smoothie I just made and take a walk outside before it gets too dark. YAY for free HUGE bags of frozen blueberries free from Relief Society...free. from a sister's brother's blueberry farm... FREE! :)