New Table!

In recent news, we have an actual table now! A friend gave us a used wooden table and three matching chairs. This is the first real table we've owned since getting married and I love it! I can set my computer up on it and easily type. We can eat at it instead of a wobbly card table or on the bed. The baby can play on it and it helps with feeding her solids - her latest adventure! {Post on that coming soon.} The legs are a little wobbly and one of the chairs needs some glue at the top, but it works wonderfully. It's a real blessing. :)

Star Trek Enterprise

So my husband and I have recently discovered a fun "new" show that we've been enjoying lately. It's Star Trek Enterprise. Taking place a hundred years before the original Star Trek with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, but having aired in 2001-2005, this show is a lovely combo of prequel story lines and new technology. The main story of the series is that Captain Jonathan Archer is the captain of the first Warp 5 starship and, with his crew, is on a mission to explore new worlds and meet new species. Of course, they have plenty of adventures along the way.

Each of the characters is unique and different. They interact with each other in humorous ways and provide a lively mix of alternating stories and focal points. The main characters are Captain Archer, Subcommander/Science Officer {and First Officer/Vulcan representative} T'Pol, alien Doctor Phlox, Communications Officer Hoshi, Tactical Officer Malcolm Reed, Helmsman Travis Mayweather, and Chief Engineer Charles "Trip" Tucker.



The best character, in my husband's and my opinion, is Commander Charles Tucker the 3rd, or Trip as he's better known as. He's very gifted with mechanics and can coax the engine into going pretty fast, considering their limited technology at this stage in the series. He makes mistakes as he goes along on his various adventures, but he learns from them and doesn't lose his personality as he grows. At first, he and Malcolm had tension and friction in their friendship, but that got ironed out when they were stranded together and learned they have more in common than previously thought. Trip also falls for T'Pol and balances her Vulcan characteristics pretty well with his down-to-earth personality. We get a wonderful glimpse into his character when his and T'Pol's DNA is stolen to produce a hybrid clone that later dies form complications.

T'Pol herself is an interesting character. She's a promising Vulcan with a position on the Science Directorate and she provides the necessary logic to balance certain situations. She was originally placed on Enterprise at the insistence of the High Command, much to Archer's annoyance; but she proved herself helpful and became loyal to the captain - eventually leaving the High Command and joining Star Fleet. She views life aboard the Enterprise through an outsider's eyes and being Vulcan has saved them on more than one occasion.

Captain Archer's father invented the warp engine that now powers his ship, giving Archer a personal reason for being captain and seeing the mission through to the end. At first, he begins by being something of a pacifist and only wants peaceful interactions. But his opinions and mindset change when they are repeatedly attacked by unfriendly species and the weapons on-board come more and more into play in their "peaceful" negotiations. He makes a good commander; kind and sympathetic to those under his authority, but strict and stern when he needs to be. One of the softer sides of his character is that he has his dog on the ship with him and cares a great deal about him - as is proved when the dog gets sick in one episode and needs medical attention.

Malcolm Reed is very British; he says little, keeps to himself and occasionally has a dry sense of humor. When his birthday rolls around, no one - not even his own sister - can name his favorite food, which is pineapple. His roll as the tactical officer comes more and more into play as he upgrades weapons and improves the response time of the crew when under attack. He becomes good friends with Trip and Travis, the helmsman. Travis is unique to the group because he was born in space on a freighter and knows a lot about the "local" area of space, though this knowledge comes less into play the further from Earth they go. He is still an excellent pilot. And Hoshi manages to interact with everyone on board in one way or another. She is a highly talented communications expert and was personally persuaded by Archer to join their crew. Her fears and anxieties almost cripple her several times, but she soon learns to control them and gets more confident and comfortable with her duties on board the starship.

And the last of the interesting main characters is Doctor Phlox. He is obviously an alien - the only one on board aside from T'Pol - and his sense of humor paired with his medical skills adds a lovely touch to the show. He is very curious and genuine; his interest in the humans as their doctor and an alien race to study is often amusing. He finds himself in a pickle occasionally but bounces back quickly from whatever obstacles are in his way. Hoshi is a particular friend of his and often stops by to help him feed his many pets.

With such a fun colorful cast of characters and some really good writing, this show is a fun form of entertainment and also gives a good glimpse into how the more familiar Star Trek universe came into being. The allies and enemies they make now comes into play in the future, and they even incorporate time travel into this series which is quite nice. So if you're looking for a good summer show to watch, try finding this one at your local library. Enjoy!

A Tale of a Yellow Blankie

When I was pregnant, my mom got us several baby items, including a very soft fuzzy yellow blanket. After our daughter was born, we started to use that fuzzy yellow blanket a lot.

One evening we used it to turn her into this super bundle of joy.

She had a lot of fun with that and squealed with delight.

She quickly discovered that her blanket tastes good and spent a lot of time trying to get it in her mouth.

She slept with it a lot.

And the color went with just about everything she wore.

It was a wonderful extra layer on lazy days off when neither of us wanted to get dressed.

And then one day, we lost her little yellow blanket.

We looked all over for it and were beginning to wonder if we'd left it somewhere - church, grandma's house, the store, etc.

Then one day I spotted a clean blanket in our laundry and told my husband to pull it out. He did and found, wrapped up in the big blanket, our baby's missing little yellow blanket. 

Happily reunited, baby and blanket can go on to have more great adventures together.

Flowery Walks

So, you know when you have a camera. you just can't stop taking pictures of all the neat things you see. My husband and I are especially bad at this, but we're amateur photographers and love practicing as much as possible.

Clouds fascinate us, with the many shapes they can take.

This is our front yard; from a distance the lawn looks so lush, doesn't it?

These are wee baby chives.

This spring, the mysterious {to us} bushes hedging the yard blossomed into gorgeous lilacs.

And the bulbs that were planted by previous renters came up, revealing themselves to be rather bad smelling but interesting looking flowers.

This was the only white one among lots of purple ones.

The lilacs were a lovely shade of very light purple and smelled so good.

I would take our baby outside and let her smell them. She seemed to enjoy them.

She definitely liked staring at them.

My husband and I enjoy taking walks together and exploring. We take the baby with us in either a carrier or stroller and hope she falls asleep.

On one of our walks we found this neat looking tree.

It guards the doorway into a potential; mysterious realm of imagination.

We found a graveled maintenance near our house and from it we have a breathtaking view. 

We can even see an odd little lake thing across the freeway.

I bet there's a really cool story about this tree lurking about in a creative mind.

The railroad tracks are right by our house, so my husband decided to test his new camera and take some really cool shots.

There are lots of areas where the weather has worn the earth into interesting mounds.

And this is an irrigation trench that we love walking along.

The water cools the air and makes a pleasant accompaniment to our conversations. 

It also distracts and intrigues the baby.

Summer Plans

It sure feels like spring just came and went, doesn't it? And summer is right around the corner. Already, fun summer events are in the works and people are making plans for vacation time and whatnot. Yesterday, my summer got mapped out pretty quickly and in a delicious way.

First off, I plan to spend July doing Camp NaNoWriMo and using it's wonderfully flexible word count goal to help me finish my revision of The Lost Rubies. I've been, in theory, working on that for a couple years now and am determined to have it finished by the end of this year. That should give me plenty of time, right? My secret hope is that I'll have it finished by the end of the summer and can move onto self-publishing it and editing the sequel in the autumn. Not much of the sequel will hopefully have to be re-written so that should make it easier. A lotta stuff has to get re-written in the first one. The third will be a snap since it's already half done. And then I can move onto discovering the new continuing adventures of my characters! Yay! There is a lot more work going into this series than I'd originally anticipated: I've made a family tree, intend on making a giant timeline, am mapping out scenes and chapters, and I invented two new aunts and changed people's relations around a bit. I'm excited about it.

When I'm not doing work on Rubies, I intend to do my library's annual Summer Reading Program. The theme this year is paws - mostly puppies and kittens, but bears, chipmunks, squirrels and foxes all have paws too ya know. *winks* This year they're allowing DVDs and audio books/CDs so my husband {for the first time!} is doing it with me. He figures it'll be a snap since we watch so many movies. You have to read, watch or listen to twenty-five items between June second and August second. For every five items completed, you get a raffle ticket to win the basket. With both of us teaming up, we have a pretty good shot at winning it this year. That'll be so fun!

And I stumbled across this summer cool Fairy Tale Collections contest where five winners will have their creative retellings of Beauty and The Beast published in a gorgeous book, with space for advertising about their other works. Beauty and The Beast is my favorite fairy tale - for that reason {and it sounds like soooo much fun!}, I'm gonna enter and hope I win. I have a very original {in my opinion} retelling but I haven't decided yet if it's too original - plus I have plans to use it as a full novel later on. So the actual story I submit might take a little thinking, but the deadline is December sixteenth so I have plenty of time. This is gonna be so much fun! And to top it off, one of my best friends is doing it too! *huge grin*

Oh and we'll also be going to the pool more often this summer for our little baby's benefit. Quite a summer planned, huh? It'll be supplemented by my husband working, the baby demanding my attention and getting mobile, and playing Frisbee in the yard {which I'm not very good at}. What are you all up to this summer?

Glimpses of Nature

Whenever we can, we take pictures of everything.

So it should come as no surprise that when we were visiting my family one rainy autumn/winter day in 2013, we would take pictures of a hummingbird outside the door.

Or attempt to, at any rate. The cell phone makes a poor camera sometimes.

While digging around in the garden, we found a cicada.

With sights like this common, my husband was tickled to be able to watch the big hatch out for the first time.

In a span of about fifteen to twenty minutes, the cicada's shell split open, it crawled out and then let the sun dry its wings before it took its first flight.

Ah me, what I wouldn't have given for a camera at that time.

We found a fluffy caterpillar one day. I used to see these everywhere as a kid.

And a black cicada looked cool against this begonia.

This lizard that is hard to spot in the picture was doing push-ups in the sun to warm up.

So was this one. It was quite an amusing sight.

I'm sure what kind of flower this is, but it was huge!

And this caterpillar looked like something out of a science fiction movie.

But it was harmless.

One summer afternoon, my husband came running in to tell me there was a snake in the garden. Curious and, {out of instinct} hoping it wasn't a rattlesnake, I went out to investigate. I ended up catching the harmless gopher-snake. Trying to explain that it was harmless to my husband wasn't as successful as I thought it would be but that's okay. And, even though it's harmless, I'd heard about how my Dad {when younger} had caught a snake and it bit him.

This cleverly hidden alligator lizard gave us a scare till we saw it had legs and wasn't a snake.

When out for a walk on the dirt road, we found this random really dig hole.

More flowers! I love flowers.

This giant beetle was in our store's bathroom when we arrived one morning to open. It was a rather scary sight and it took awhile and some rearranging to catch the darn thing.

Left alone for a few minutes, the beetle crawled out and vanished.

This is a potato bug. My husband had never seen one before, but I grew up seeing them all the time.

Usually in our kitchen, which was odd come to think of it.

And Brutus, my sister's cutter-than-he-looks dog, has a fondness for thrashing stuffed animals.