Not a Good Weekend, At All!

We went to California recently to visit with our daughter and attend a celebratory dinner for her marriage. She's a widow as you can read about here and recently remarried. She had a small dinner party of about 40 people at a restaurant near her. It was a pleasant evening of eating and chatting with her co-workers, friends and the new side of the family. The story will continue down the blog with photos of what happened.

But first, here's the most recent photo of Miss Caroline in her daycare class, a totally new adventure for her. She's been in daycare before for one week because she cried all the time and was unhappy so her mummy and daddy made other arrangements for her. But it's been a year now, so they bit the bullet and put her in. She seems to be enjoying it now and we believe she has a new little boyfriend sitting to her right. Can any eye candy be more darling than your great grandchild eating spaghetti? I think not. ;-)

Ooops, looks like I almost lost a string of spaghetti there. Fingers are required eating utensils for 2 year olds.

And this is a photo of our new great grandchild, Miss Caroline's sibling. I think it looks like a girl, don't you? It would serve her daddy right to have a house full of girls! LOL

This is our clematis finally taking off. If you've not been reading me long then you'll be interested to know we've tried planting 9 clematis' and only one has survived. I'm not planting any more, thinking I won't push my luck any further. But it is magnificent this year.

Pale lavender.

I love trying my photography skills out for th' blog with you bloggers as my audience/critics.

Our peony bush is just taking off this year also. We've had it for about 5 years and this is the first year we've had so many blooms on it. They bloomed while we were in California but I was able to get in a few good photos before they succumbed to their life cycle.

They are gorgeous.

Same blossom just a tad closer. Practicing my macros. ;-)

Another bloom.

Yet another bloom with one just starting to open up.

Love their color.

A close-up of a bud. I think this close-up turned out pretty well considering I'm a very inexperienced amateur photographer.

Full shot of the clematis up against the south side of the house.

Okay, now for the story. My daughter's house is two stories with a step-down to the main area of the first floor. You enter in a large entry and then step down from a hallway to the back family room, breakfast area and kitchen. Then to the right of the entry is a step-down to the living room, dining room and other entry into the kitchen. I fell twice while over there. The first time was in the back hallway. I was walking barefoot, a throw rug went flying out from under me on the slick wood floor, I went sliding towards the step-down head first into the family/breakfast room, sent the table toddling and landed on my knees. I immediately yelled, "I'm fine!" But it hurt. I was so embarrassed. The photo below has nothing to do with that fall.

The next day as we were preparing to go to the restaurant for the dinner, I realized I needed something from our bedroom upstairs. (All the bedrooms are on the second floor.) I slipped off my shoes and in my nylon stocking feet ran up, got what I wanted and as I was coming down the stairs, I slipped on the landing midway up and went sailing towards the half wall. This is the result. I yelled again, "I'm fine." But I really wasn't. I hurt for a long time. But we were heading out the door and I didn't want to make a big deal out of it. My son is a nurse, my grandson is a medical technician for a doctor so I felt like I could handle it. Everyone was standing in the entry watching this so hubs told me he thought I was going to go over the half wall. I landed on my knees and they bruised but nothing like my left arm. Both arms are sore, along with my neck. I drew lots of attention at the restaurant but I tried not to let anyone see the bruises. I was so embarrassed again. You'd think I could walk around a wood floor without flying through the air! Actually, my daughter's stairs have a double landing midway down and since we'd never been to the new house I wasn't familiar with it enough to know how to step. Sigh. What a mess it was. I had to sit in the back seat of our car coming back home because the back of my leg was hurting so bad. I hate flying so we drive to California, which is about an eleven hour drive.

But also in the Sierras, just after the California food inspection station we got caught in construction. We went 20 miles in two and a half hours! I think most of the people in that line probably wet their pants. They wouldn't let us stop at all and we couldn't get off because most of the places had no facilities. We got past the plethora of road workers and saw a porta-potti on the left and no construction workers were around so we quickly pulled over to the left lane, hubs went in and relieved himself. He was in there for about 4 minutes just getting rid of water! But we didn't get caught or impede the long line of traffic. Then we got back in the long, slow line and continued on. I waited until we got a few miles down the road and found a bathroom at Burger King. I'm not fond of porta-pottis. It was the worst trip we've ever had.

This is actually two days after the fall.

Gads, I didn't realize I had so many age spots! I'm brave showing you all this. That bruise is my upper arm. My arm is so swollen you can barely tell it's the inside of my elbow here.

This is a macro photo shot I took from our rose garden very early this morning. I'll show you more of these later, but this one is exquisite, even if I do say so myself. ;-)

~*~