Happy Mother's Day

I hope everyone had a nice Mother's Day. Or, at least a nice weekend. I had both. Sam has been so busy over the last nine months or so building his house that he hasn't had much chance to get away. He's finally nearing the end though, so he and his girlfriend Kyla were able to take off a weekend to come up for a visit. I'd like to say it was because it was for Mother's Day but I'm sure it was mostly to have a chance for Uncle Sam to get a chance to see his niece. He hasn't seen Joli since she was under a month old. They got along like ol' friends from the moment he arrived on Friday.


On Saturday Kyla, Lisa, Joli, William and I went on an all day Ghost Tour in Virginia City. I'd bought the tickets as a fundraiser for a local group. We had a lot of fun, a lot of sun, and a lot of walking. I'll post photos of that later. The rest of the time, we all just hung out and enjoyed each other's company.

Mostly we just relaxed.


Some of us practiced our sitting up.


Some of us wore goofy hats. If you keep in mind that William is 6'3" tall, you can tell how tall Sam's truck is in the background. Sam let William drive it. William has had less then an hour and a half of driving experience on his permit so far. That's brotherly love!


The boys played football in the street and then played in the tree swing.


Later I asked the guys to try to move the woodstove out to sit by the woodpile there in the background. This is where I'll have my yard sale later this summer. I want to keep the stove wrapped up in a tarp until then and then just uncover it for the sale. Alas, even with three strong men, they only managed to accomplished moving it down off the tile about two feet from it's original position. They broke our furniture dolly. And now the stove is sitting in the middle of the archway between the living room and dining room. Our neighbor showed up in the middle of things and said he'd be happy to take the woodstove off our hands. The only thing, how to get the stove across the street to his house. We can't even figure out how to get it six feet away to the front door! I gave my husband and the neighbor until Tuesday (their next mutual day off) to get it out of the middle of where we have to walk to get anywhere in the house. After that I'm calling the local woodstove company and paying $100 to have them haul it away just so I can move on with things.

Fortunately, some of us were feeling much, much better. I'm recovering from my spring cold. And look at Rosie's ears. All perky and pointed up. Yah! Rosie's back to her bouncy self.


There was some bubble blowing and Starbucks drinking.


I got lots of nice gifts from everyone for Mother's Day. Kyla brought me this pretty butterfly for my garden.

Sam brought me over a propane barbeque. He'd bought a new one and offered me his old one. All we had was an old fashioned barbeque that used charcoal briquets which meant that it was a lot of work to use, so I'm really excited to have a propane one. I'll be able to do a lot of grilling this summer! My favorite is vegetable kabobs. Yum! Although he'd offered it to me before this weekend, since it arrived just in time for Mother's Day, I'm counting it as a gift, along with the fact that he barbequed for us all on Saturday night. Lisa cleaned up the kitchen afterwards, so the meal was completely work free for me. Now that's a Mother's Day gift!

On Sunday I got phone calls from my mom (I called her first - whew!), and my daughter and son who weren't able to visit. I even got a cute e-card from a friend and a free coffee coupon from my local Starbucks. Jeff and William gave me cards, flowers, a balloon, and coffee in bed. We all went out for lunch later, although I treated the kids instead of vice versa. Lisa also made me a really cute homemade book. I'll try to remember to take a photo of it and show it off on my studio blog.

But the best gift of all, of course, was just the chance to be together.