Been Busy... ~ Stacey

So, I missed last month because it was smack dab in the middle of our girls 'weekend'. This month, I'm so busy with preparing for the release of my new book, RUN TO ROME, that I decided I'd share a few pictures that I took on my 2011 Italy trip that I think are just cool pictures and don't really have anything to do with the book.

For pictures that do have to do with the book, visit my blog this week to 'see' the journey my characters took.

For pictures just for fun, scroll on down!

Old tree in the woods--ignore the date,
I forgot to reset after changing my battery

Old stables in the Castello di Torrechiara. Bet they
weren't so clean in the olden days!

A cool stone house along the side of the road.

European version of the General Lee :)

Devil's Bridge: Ponte della Maddalena (Ponte del Diavolo)
across the Serchio, Borgo a Mozzano, Lucca, Italy

View from atop one of the walled city of Lucca's towers.

Inside one of the churches of Lucca.

Me, sitting on a wall. (So exciting, I know.)

Cool archway and pillars inside the walled city of Lucca.

Stone archway in the abandoned gardens of Villa Bottini.

Violinist who provided my lunch music.

Gardens of the Palazzo Pfanner. My mom and sister
stood on the wall in the background just a few weeks ago!

Old fortress wall up in the mountains.

This one's for Mary Jo...is this enough vino for you? *grin*
And yes, we ate that fish. He was yummy!

Clear table where I enjoyed my tea each morning in the quiet
villa while my brother and his co-workers were at work.

So ugly he's cute!

I had to get a picture next to one of these small trucks to show the kids.

Well, that's enough fun for now. Hope you enjoyed the pictures, and if you want to see more, scroll back to the top and check out my blog all this week.

If you want the romantic suspense, action adventure, grab a copy of LOST IN ITALY while it's on sale for $0.99 July 20-23rd, and RUN TO ROME at the new release price of $2.99. Both will return to regular price of $5.99 before you know it! (click book covers for links)

  

Thanks for stopping by today!

~Stacey

Where has Summer Gone? (Jamie)

I can't believe it is July already. What happened to spring? To June? My summer To Do List still has way too many things left on it and not nearly enough time left to complete them all this year. The weather hasn't been helping. If it isn't raining, it has been so hot and humid. I do not do heat very well, which is why I live in Wisconsin, we don't usually get a whole lot of heat during the year.

Anyway, one of the disadvantages to having a creative mind is that you are constantly adding to that To Do List that hovers in the back of your mind. Our current project is tearing out the jungle that our yard has become and simplifying it back into just lawn and a few hostas again. There are fairy gardens waiting to be arranged and strategically placed. There is some major simplification being done in the boys' rooms - one is nearly done, one just started. We still need to finish shopping and packing for our engineer to head off to college - only a month from now!

It isn't all work, exactly. Next week I'm heading off to Atlanta for the Romance Writers of America National Conference. Since I am really on a roll with my writing at the moment and am loving the story that I'm working on, I'm very excited to attend this event because writing conferences always do amazing things for my writing motivation. I'm hoping to do a little bit of sight seeing while I'm in such an city full of so many things to see. I'm looking forward to it. I just hope my family doesn't get into too much trouble while I'm gone.

Well, I certainly have enough to keep my busy for the rest of the summer as it rushes on by. How about you? Any exciting happenings in your summer?

All the babies home - Delia

For the first time in almost a year, all my kids are under the same roof...mine.  It seems like only yesterday that the whole family gathered around the supper table was an every day occurrence, but now it takes great feats of skill and engineering to accomplish this seemingly simple goal, and it's only going to get worse.

Currently, I've got a son in the Marines, a daughter living in Texas and two kids at home, but kid #3 is going to be a senior this year and is planning on following in his big brother's footsteps when he graduates, so he'll be off before you know it as well.  I shouldn't be surprised, my family does a lot of globe trotting.  At one point, about a year and a half ago, my husband was in Hawaii, a daughter was in Uruguay and my son in Afghanistan, there were only 3 of us on the same continent!  This whole thing in even more remarkable when you consider that I'm a major hermit - my kids' traveling ways obviously come from their father.

So, for a couple days anyway, I've got all my kids home.  I don't know when this is going to happen again since my oldest is heading out for deployment again next month, but I'm going to enjoy it while I can.  And, to commemorate the occasion, tonight we're going to have the first professional family portrait taken of us in about 10 years, I think we're due.

Garden Looks Good This Year...Everything Came Up. ~ Donna

That happens to be a line from my soon-to-be-re-released novel There's Only Been You. Like many authors, I've put a bit of myself in my characters, particularly my heroine Sara, who is the only female in a house bursting at the seams with testosterone.  But more on that in a couple weeks. ;-)

I've been gardening for years, so naturally I've come to understand that some years are simply better than others. I'm also a home canner, a job I've come to have a love/hate relationship with. LOL But no matter how tired I get of watering, cultivating, picking, cutting, snapping, canning, weeding, etc. etc., few things make me happier than when my garden is full, lush, and thriving.

 



Which thankfully is the case this year. The green beans are so beautiful in their neat little rows, my cabbage plants are thriving and will be shredded and crocked for saurkraut this fall. My green peppers, which I started from seed (as I try to do every year, along with tomatoes...I've always been fascinated by how something so small can become something so huge and bountiful), are twice as big as they were last year. I have a row full of both pickles & cucumbers, another row of zucchini (I'll share a few zucchini recipes in next month's post!), and even some sunflowers. The dill is coming up, as is the cilantro, a favorite in my household. I even found a few basil sprouts fighting their way through the throng of weeds.

Holy cats, the weeds!



See how bad they are? We were blessed with plenty of rain the last couple weeks, so while my gardens are thriving, so are the weeds. I spent several hours 'cleaning' my big garden yesterday (top picture). I could barely walk afterward, and I managed to slice my finger on a buried shard of glass, but the work was worth it. Now I just need to buy some ant poison as they seem to be out in full force this year, the little buggers.

Tonight (or maybe tomorrow as the hours grows late) my daughter and I are going to tackle the strip garden where my zucchini and sunflowers have been managing to hold their own. Then I just need to save my tomatoes...Wait, the bunnies! I have to tell you about those fluffy little evil bastards...LOL



I spent several weeks growing my beautiful tomato plants from seed. I watered them, cared for them, babied them. And they were so happy when I finally moved them outside to the garden. My husband had torn down the old fence, and since I'd read bunnies don't eat tomatoes, I decided to wait until next year to replace it. Well, these little rat devils obviously didn't get the memo, because they scarfed all but 5 of my little lovelies within three nights. Chomped 'em right down to the ground. *sigh* So I had to bribe the old man into putting up a new fence pronto, and replace the tomatoes with store-bought plants. Not that there's anything wrong with store-bought plants, it's just that I had been so anxious to try the new varieties I'd personally researched and grown with such loving care. *major lippy-faced pout*

Anyway, thanks for reading my garden ramblings. And don't forget to stop by next month for several yummy recipes, including one of my favorites, Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread!

~ Donna

Simply Irresistible (Jamie)

I have a confession to make, I am an office supply addict. I could spend hours wandering the aisles of our local Office Max, gleefully filling my cart with notebooks and pens, folders and binders, index cards and Post-It notes. Sigh...  

Now trust me - I could probably go for the rest of my life without buying one more of any of those items and still manage to get through life just fine. I can also tell you, that isn't going to happen. There is  something completely irresistible to me about a fresh pad of paper and a fully-inked ballpoint. It gives me shivers just thinking about it. I relish dreaming of what I can potentially create with my treasures, until I finally come up with the perfect project for each one. (I always buy them with a plan of some sort...)

When Back-to-School displays and sales begin, I shouldn't even be allowed to leave my house. I'm fairly certain I end up with more supplies in the bag for myself than I do for my boys who actually do need the things they buy for school. I'm getting kind of tingly realizing the bins of filler paper and glue will soon make their appearance. Squee! 

I'm believe this condition is at least partially hereditary since my mother has never met a pen she could live without, and it seems that my oldest son has developed a fondness for a nicely bound journal and is very particular about his own writing instrument purchases. As much as we all love our technology, my laptop and my iPod will never replace old school writing tools for me.

What do you find irresistible? How do manage to control your urges to keep adding to an over abundant stash? I'd love to hear about it.

End of the school year wrap-up by Delia

Oh, the chaos that ensues at the end of the school year!  I work with the food program at our local school so I'm trying to get all those end of the year government reports filed while I still can.  It's kind of like filing lunch lady taxes, only instead of money, I'm counting chicken nuggets and tater tots.  It's exhausting, people.

Both of my still-at-home kids are in track, though one in high school the other at middle school, so I've been averaging 3 track meets per week for the last month and a half.  Usually I don't mind being a track mom, but the weather this spring has certainly dampened my enthusiasm for the 400 meter relay and the shot put.  But now that that's all over, my evenings are starting to be mine at last.  At least they will after this week, when I'm done with 8th grade graduation, spring sports award ceremony and a retirement party for the outgoing elementary school principal and our wonderful superintendent.  Though I do have my evenings, I still don't have a vehicle since my son keeps using it to go to one of the gazillion graduation parties he's been invited to.  Next year he graduates and the spring craziness will ramp up a few levels.

Now that the spring stuff is almost over, we move on to the nutziness of summer.  I've got kids spending the week at friend's cabins, one is doing FFA camp, the Midwestern Rodeo is a must-do event on my family's agenda, though in my opinion, if you've seen one guy get thrown from a horse, you've seen them all.  Unfortunately, my husband and kids don't feel the same way.  But, in an  upside to that, my two out-of-state kids are both going to be home for the rodeo and I'll have all four of my babies under my roof at the same time in about a year and who knows when it'll happen again.  In honor of that, I've scheduled photo time with a real live photographer so we'll get those family pictures taken that I've been threatening to get taken for years now.

I like to think things will settle down eventually, and I'm sure it'll happen, just not in the near future.  Next year I'll have two kids in high school, which is not conducive to calm and quiet.  But, before I know it, all my babies will be out the door and it'll just be hubs and me.  Things will be quiet, probably too quiet, and I'll look back on these crazy days and smile.

Daddy's Stealing My Childhood... ~ Donna

These are the words my older daughter flung at me Sunday while her father was busy cutting down her swingset. Here, let me start from the beginning...

Last fall, a stray cat wandered onto our property (I'm sure you know where this story is headed). We fed the emaciated thing, then I made a bed for it on our back porch with an old sleeping bag. I explained that eventually the furball would move on, so every morning, the girls would race to the back door to check and see if it was still there--and yep, of course it was. My daughter checked and told me it was girl, and such a pretty little thing she was. This cat wasn't your average stray, by the way. Solid gray, super fluffy (hard to tell in this picture, I know), big green eyes...this friendly feline was quite the looker.



After a week, my older daughter asked if we could keep it. I said no, but she begged, and begged, and BEGGED. What can I say? She's just like her mother. LOL And just like my mother had done many, many times, I caved. So we took her to the vet to get checked out and...ooh, funny aside. They asked the sex of the cat, I told them it was a girl, and the nurse lifted her tail. Her brow creased, and she said, "Um, she has testicles." LOL Anyway, I knew that if we were going to keep him, we needed to have him neutered, declawed, and vaccinated. Plus, the poor thing had a bad sinus infection, which took several trips back to the vet, and numerous prescriptions to shake.

Unfortunately, the stray, now known as Moonshine, hated our other cat, a female named Sunshine. He viciously attacked her, hurting her pretty badly, so I told my daughter she would have to keep him downstairs in her room for the time being. We figured the cats would eventually learn to co-exist, we just needed to be patient. Only it didn't seem to be happening. Everytime we brought him upstairs, he raced straight for Sunshine, and it became clear that he had no intention of sharing space with another cat. Oddly enough, he seemed to get along just fine with our 90 lb. mutt.

Last Monday was the final straw. He got loose upstairs and attacked Sunshine again. Only this time, when my husband tried to break them up, Moonshine bit him up pretty badly. His whole arm went numb; he said it felt as if his arm was broken (admittedly, he's a bit of a baby, but it really did look painful). That was it, we both decided. As much as we hated to do it, Moonshine had to go. All I could think about was what if it had been one of my girls he'd attacked, or one of their friends, or anyone, for that matter. I gently explained to my daughter that we simply couldn't take a chance that he'd hurt someone else. And though heartbroken, she understood.

So Friday morning, after the girls had left for school, daddy drove Moonshine to the Humane Society. As if he knew his fate, he walked right into the carrier and lied down. My husband said they oohed and aahed over him (the little stinker could be a real charmer when he wanted to be), and swore they'd find him a good home, no worries. My daughter cried her heart out that night, and suddenly I understood exactly how my own mother had felt...many, many times over the course of my childhood.

So then Sunday, my husband decided it was time to cut down the swingset and trampoline. We gotten the swingset when my older daughter was four, and the trampoline when she was three, so on top of losing her cat, this seemed to push her over the edge. While he was outside sawzalling like a madman, my daughter storms in, grabs her iPod and says, "Daddy's stealing my childhood...and I'm getting it on tape!" She's a true redhead with the temper to match. LOL Thankfully, the job was a lot harder than he'd anticipated, and by the time he was done, he couldn't lift his arms. So the trampoline stays. For now.



If you've made it to the end of my rambling, thanks for reading & see you next month! :-)

~ Donna