Mouse in the House?

Louie just loves this big stuffed bone that I bought him, he will throw it around in the air and then lay down like this with it and almost go to sleep. So silly. Not much happening around here, Gary had to work yesterday, yuck, I don't like when he has to work on a Sunday. I basically just did housework, and took Louie for a walk. The sun was out all day and shining brightly, but brr, it was still chilly enough that I wore my winter coat for the walk. Supposedly tomorrow it is going to be pretty warm but I won't believe it until I feel it. In other news, I think we have had a little stowaway living in the basement all winter. We did have a mouse down there at the end of the summer, and it had come up under the kitchen sink, and into some of the cabinets and there was mouse poop everywhere, all over the cellar. I bought a have-a-heart trap and caught the little bugger and let him loose in the field over by the school. ( Picture above is of the actual Mr. Mouse) I have seen no sign since then of another mouse. not one. Then last week Gary picked up something in the cellar, it was a roll of plastic wrap with a hollow cylinder in the middle, and all this bird seed fell out. We just figured it was from the little mouse that went to live over by the school. Then yesterday Gary went back down and went to use the plastic wrap again, and it was full of bird seed. again. Oh-oh. If there is one down there, it has not attempted to come upstairs, and I have not seen one mouse poop down there. Very strange. But I am a softy, even though it creeps me out to think of a mouse down there, I think I am going to let it continue its cozy living arrangement until all the snow melts. Then I will bait up my have-a-heart trap with peanut butter on a saltine and re-locate him.

Full Moon

I took this picture last Friday night of the full moon rising over the lake. This picture was the best one, but it still does not capture how beautiful it really looked. Gary had yesterday off so we went to Concord to run some errands. Finally got the inspection sticker changed on my car, they had put the wrong month on when I bought it. I was fully prepared to act outraged about it if I got pulled over by the police. "what???? they put the wrong month on????? :) We went to lunch at the Sandwich Depot. I had a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. I know, you can make one of those easily at home right? wrong. Mine always come out soggy and not crisp like they make it. After that we stopped at Bed Bath & Beyond, I am looking for a new silverware set for the camper. But, I am not willing to pay $100 for it, I mean, we are camping! On the way home we stopped at Home Goods and I got some new pots and pans for the camper. Since Gary heard that teflon is bad for you to cook on, he has wholeheartedly agreed that we need a new set at the camp. I believe the ones I have been using, we bought with our first pop-up camper! I watched the Biggest Loser last night, kind of sad to see Dan go home, he was a good contestant and I would not be surprised if he won the $100,000 prize for biggest loser from home. After that it was American Idol. No surprise there to see Chikezie sent home. He was a great guy, good singer, but a little boring. I was surprised to see Jason in the bottom three, he needs to do something drastic next week, maybe he should sing the song Christy Lee Cook sang, it helped her! Of course I knew David Cook was not going to be in the bottom three last night, he absolutely rocked Billie Jean the other night.

Captive of My Desires

This was a typical romance novel. Girl meets boy, girl hates boy, girl falls in love with boy, boy does not want to fall in love or get married, boy can't help himself and falls in love anyway, they live happily ever after. As far as these types of books go, I do like Johanna Lindsey the best. This particular one is a Malory Novel and I don't believe I have read any of the other ones, so even though it was easy to read and catch up on what was happening, there were other things mentioned that must have happened in a previous book.

Congratulations Eric and Nicole!

Louie with his Easter basket

Gary

Beautiful Brooke

Mom and Chip

Chip and Tammy

Me, Tammy and Shell

Nicole and Eric are engaged!! He proposed to her Saturday night and gave her a beautiful ring. They have not set a date yet.

In other news Easter was a long family-filled day! At 1 we went to Mulligan's restaurant with the entire Henry clan. We filled the whole back room, I think there were 21 of us. I had baked stuffed shrimp, and was a little disappointed. The shrimp were very small, only about 3" long, I don't often order that for a meal, but I seem to remember the shrimp being much bigger in that dish. But it was fun to get together. Then we had time to go home and re-group and head to my parent's at 5. Nicole and Eric surprised everyone with their good news, and we had a delicious dinner. I of course made a strange concoction that did not go over well. I don't know what it is about me and cooking. EVERY.SINGLE.TIME. there is a chance for me to make something yummy for a family gathering, I pick the strangest recipes. I have thousands of good recipes to pick from, and I pick a really odd one. And every time I say to myself, cripes, next time just make something normal that everyone will like. but the next time rolls around, and there is my strange food offering dujour. This time it was apple cherry salad. It is a cherry jello salad with cherry pie filling and chopped apples. Doesn't sound too bizarre does it? Well it was. On a better note, I did redeem myself by also making a chocolate peanut butter cake that looked and tasted normal. I hope my extended family doesn't think that they are the only ones I do this to, because Gary and Brooke can attest to the fact that I torture them with some pretty strange meals now and again at home too.

Happy 46th Birthday Gary

Today is Gary's birthday. And the first day of Spring. We had snow most of the day yesterday which only accumulated to about 2 inches, but we just barely melted away 2 inches. Now it's back. I'm no sure but I think I hate snow.
Nicole and Eric came over last night, I cooked a corned beef dinner. It came out very good this year, last year we could have worn the slices of corned beef for shoes. I got Gary a digital frame to put on his desk at work. Brooke and I loaded it with pictures the other night so it was all ready for him to bring to work this morning. He really liked it. Nicole and Eric bought him a bunch of scratch tickets, he won $56 the lucky bum. Brooke got him a Dunkin Donuts gift card.
Too bad I forgot to take pictures, what a dope.

Here Comes the Bride...soon anyway

My nephew Ross (the groom to be)

The Bride-to-be Kaylyn and Ross' cousin Tina

My sister Shelley (on the right) and her daughter-in-law
Tiffany

(Left to Right): my Aunt Joan, my mother Joyce
and my cousin Melissa

(Left to Right): Me, my mother and my sister


So obviously we went to a bridal shower yesterday for my nephew's wife-to-be. There were quite a few people there, and it was fun to watch her open the presents, the first three anyway, then it gets boring. :) I covetously eyed the cake through the whole party, I love cake. And they finally cut it and it was....CARROT CAKE! yuck. The absolute ONLY cake I don't like. Not only does it have nuts in it (nuts in cake is just wrong) but it has raisins. Big, fat, slimy raisins, shudder. So, no cake for me, and I didn't eat any of the finger foods either. So when we got home I was starving and we went to Chili's for dinner. Nothing like a plate of greasy nacho chips to end the day.

The Homing

John Saul certainly is not on a level with Stephen King or Dean Koontz, but I have read some of his books through the years. Stephen Kings writes out-there story lines that somehow are believable when you read them. This story line in The Homing was really out-there, and not very believable. And it was about insects, boring! But I did finish the book because I am basically a nosy person and I had to see what would happen in the end. And I can tell you, the end was not happily ever after at all.

Happy Birthday Karen Wallace

Last night we had a small birthday party for Gary's mother at his brother Charlie's house. We brought pizza, Shelly made salad and we had cake and ice cream for dessert. We had a good time as we always do when we get together with his brother's and wives. Gary was in rare form last night and had everyone laughing for most of the night. My poor new car got a workout on their roads, although I still think our roads are worse. Gary's mother is 66 this year, we gave her a gift card to Wal-mart and a new book. Someone else gave her another book, some spring bulbs and a hummingbird feeder. Shelly and Charlie's youngest, Owen, is infatuated with Brooke and spent the whole night trying to impress her, oh to have that energy again. :)

Bittersweet

I read this book so fast, and I usually only read at night before bed. Saturday night I was awake until 2:30 reading this book, and I made myself shut it and go to sleep. I picked it up yesterday morning and finished it. I forget sometimes how good Danielle Steel is at pulling you into a story. This one is about a woman, India, who has been married for 17 years, has 4 kids, gave up her photography career to stay home and raise the kids. She longs to go back to it, but her husband forbids it, her "job" is to stay home and take care of the kids and him. He basically tells her that he doesn't really love her, they are too old for the romance stuff, and she feels like he just has her around to be a maid. She ends up going against his wishes and taking a photography job for a week in London, and there marriage goes downhill after that. She does find love again, but you will have to read the book to find out who it is!

Seven Up

This is book 7 in the Stephanie Plum series. I never would have started reading these based on the covers, I don't like the covers, but they are wildly funny books and have a good mystery to them. This one in particular made me laugh out loud quite a few times. Stephanie Plum works for her cousin's bounty hunting agency in New Jersey. She has an on again off again cop boyfriend Joe Morelli, and another bounty hunter with a mysterious presence, Ranger, who she lusts after. Then there is her Grandma Mazur who is a complete character, and her long suffering mother and father who wish she would get married, have children and get away from the bounty hunting business. In this book she has to bring in an old guy, Eddie DeChooch, and somehow he keeps getting away from her.

Back From Florida

So we picked Brooke and Rachel up at the airport Tuesday afternoon, they were all tan and happy to be home in the snow. Ha! They had a good time even with a couple of cool days, it warmed up nicely by the last few days of their vacation. So yesterday morning they had a 2 hour delay for school, it was sleeting and freezing rain all night. We drove her to school, I didn't know what the roads were going to be like, it had been pelting freezing rain minutes before it was time to leave. The roads were not too bad, I wish the towns had scraped the slush up a little better, I did see some people sliding in it. Gary and I went to breakfast at the diner. I swear, the omelets there can feed 3 people easily. Needless to say I did not eat lunch! We went to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple of things, and there were buckets all over the floors catching dripping water from the ceiling. Gary finally noticed them and said, lets get out of here I don't like the looks of that. We heard on the radio that they closed the store shortly after because of roof concerns. :0

Today is mammogram day. I would rather clean 20 poopy toilets than go do this.

New Car Day

Yesterday was new car day. We drove to the dealership with my car and Gary's truck. Did all the paperwork, then drove home with another F-150 and my new Edge! I love that car, it drives awesome, very comfortable. We ate a quick lunch then drove back to the dealership with Brooke's Civic. Did the paperwork for her new Focus and drove that home. I was quite impressed with how that drove too. It is a surprise, she doesn't know she is getting it so when she comes back from Florida on Tuesday, she won't be too sad to be home. :) Then we took my new car and went back to Concord again, I had some things to get at Sam's Club, then we had to go to Best Buy and buy four 40" plasma TV's for a promotion thing at the dealership. While we were buying TV's we bought a 26" flat-screen for our new camper with the DVD player built in. After that we went to Olive Garden for dinner, I had eggplant parm. and Gary had spaghetti and meatballs. I only ate half of mine, and saved the rest for lunch today because we wanted to split a dessert. :) They have a yummy warm chocolate cake with vanilla cream sauce on the plate and fresh strawberries. Very good!

So, yea. New car, and I can't even drive it anywhere today. We got ANOTHER snow storm last night and today. It is 2 in the afternoon and it looks like it is finally stopping. I don't even know how much we got this time, 5 or 6 inches it looks like. So, shoveling is on the agenda again for this afternoon. I really really hate shoveling now, I don't care how good an exercise it is. The picture on the top is my light post, the granite post itself it 5 feet high, and the snow is almost to the top!

My Lobotomy

I don't often read biography's or personal memoir's but I had heard this was a good book. It is about a 12-year old boy, Howard Dully who in 1960 was given an "ice pick lobotomy". His stepmother arranged it, his father agreed to it. Howard never understood why, he wasn't violent, depressed or suicidal. It was just a case of a cruel stepmother and a doctor who was over-eager to perform the surgery on a young patient. It is really a pretty good book, I still am not a fan of this type of book to read but I gave it three stars.