Thursday, July 26, 2012

Books and Cookies and Drinks...Oh My!

It has been a fun time around the Yellow House these past few days...fun because I've had a couple of packages delivered to my door. The first one came a few days ago and it held my reading material for my new school year that begins at the end of September. I have about thirty books to read along with any other textbooks that may arrive. It's a lot of reading, but I love reading and I'm up for the challenge!

As you might be able to see from the pic, there are some children's books included in the pile. That's because one of my courses is a course called Children's Literature. The subject can sound a bit deceiving and maybe conjure up thoughts of this being an easy course...but no way! I've heard that this course is just as challenging as any literature course and I think it takes a lot of skill to write for children and teens. So I'm really looking forward to this course. I've read some of the books years and years ago, but it will be interesting to read them from my adult perspective now. And some of the books are new to me, so it promises to be intriguing! I'll share my thoughts on the various books as the year progresses. Also, incorporated into the pile are my other books for my other course. It's a wide-ranging reading list and I'm trying to get a bit of a headstart on the reading so that when they come up during the year, I won't be so rushed. One more note, I know this box looks big even for this amount of books, but there was another bigger item in the box that took up lots of space. So no waste there :-)

My other package arrived today and I don't have a photo because I forgot. Lol. Anyway, it was a standard puffy envelope chocked full of home goodies from my niece. This was my favorite package of the two because it's a bit of home. My niece lives in California and even though she's my niece, she has always felt like more of a cousin. We are not that far removed in age and we have a lot of shared memories. Whenever I remember something from pop culture from back in the day, I just send her a quick message and we'll laugh because she knows 95% of mostly everything I remember. It's nice to hold memories with someone else that knew you when you were so young. She is a good friend :-) She sent me some cookies and drink mixes and I'm so grateful. She could have sent a pouch full of California dirt and I would still be happy...in the end it's the connection that matters!

So it's been a package-filled time around the Yellow House and the weather has greatly improved over the last few days. Instead of continuous rain for weeks on end, we finally have some sun! I can't believe that the opening ceremony of the Olympics is tomorrow. Time is going so fast! I'm gonna have to start thinking about what to pack for our trip to London next week. I'm getting really excited to take it all in and as I've mentioned before, I'll be sharing some photos.

Thanks for stopping by to visit me!

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Hedgehog and Birds

Recently we've had a rush of nature in our backyard. A couple of weeks ago, we saw a hedgehog scurrying around on two different occasions. It was cool because I'd never seen a hedgehog in real life before. Here's a picture of a hedgehog that I found. I didn't take a picture because it happened so fast and I was so enthralled. He was very cute!
Photo courtesy of doeni.gov.uk

Our next visitor, well visitors were a family of birds that made their home in one of our trees. Over the past few weeks we'd noticed a bird building a nest in the tree. Then a while after the nest was finished, we noticed the mother flying back and forth continuously to feed her babies. The nest was perfectly positioned at a spot in the tree where it didn't move very much at all, even on windy days. Luckily for us, there was a small opening in the foliage, so we could see the nest from our window. Here's a picture of the view outside our window. I didn't want to get too close and scare away the mother, so I took this from inside. In the opening, you can just about see the nest.


So, we watched the mother go back and forth for several days and then one day the babies flew away. We didn't get to see them all leave though...we only saw one, but we were glad to see anything happen :-) We saw the very last one leave the nest and he/she made quite an impression. We were watching television when we all of a sudden we heard a tap on the window. We looked just in time to see the little bird smack into the window and fall to the ground. Don't worry...he was fine! He got back up and flew to another tree in the yard and then flew around a bit more. We lost sight of him for a while and then we noticed that he had perched on the tree across from nest where he was born. Here's a grainy photo of him having a rest.


He ended up sitting there into the night and he snuggled down into his feathers and went to sleep soon after I took this photo. By the next morning he had flown away and started his life! It was really cool to see him take his "first steps" out into the world!

Now the nest sits empty in our tree. Other birds have dropped by for a look as if they're sizing up an abandoned house. It's fun to watch. Things have quieted down lately, but hey, maybe the hedgehog will visit us again. I'll keep my eyes open...

Monday, July 02, 2012

Olympics Excitement

Hello! It's a rainy Monday morning, but I'm feeling pretty good! Just to follow up on the latest news around here...we finally got our washing machine fixed last week. Yay!! And so far it is working okay...fingers crossed.

As I'm sitting here writing this, I'm watching Serena Williams playing against Yaroslava Shvedova at Wimbledon. I'm not actually there, but I'm planted here in my comfy chair in Wiltshire as I glance at the television periodically. Thankfully it's not raining there :-)

This sporty talk goes along with another thing that I'm thinking about...and that is the Olympics! :-) I can't believe how close the Olympics are now. I'm so excited! Over the weekend, Brit Boy and I had a bit of a messy situation with our accommodations for our time in London though. We had a call from the people that we were supposed to be renting from during our Olympic trip and basically they had pushed us out of the way in favor of some bigger spenders...typical! They offered us some other place to stay, but we had a look at it online and it was a mess. We paid good money to these people five months ago and they have had the audacity to push us out after they were all too glad to take our money back then. I would say that we were surprised, but we're not sadly. I will spare you the long story and their response to us wanting what we paid for. Lousy, lousy, lousy customer service!!! I'll just say that we asked for a full refund/compensation and will not be using their pathetic service ever again! We found somewhere else to stay, and it wasn't easy because it's so close to time now, but I'm glad we have somewhere to stay again. I get so tired of people thinking that they can take your money and not provide the service that they are supposed to be offering. I know that this happens way too much these days, but I'm done with just accepting it! End of vent.... ;-)

On to more positive news, as I said at the beginning, I'm feeling pretty good, despite our accommodation speed bump. Brit Boy and I won't let all of that craziness get us down. We haven't been away for this many days for a long time, so we're really looking forward to the chance to have some fun! I was reading online this morning about the US Olympic Trials and I read what my friends were saying on Facebook yesterday. It looks like there is going to be a really good group representing the USA. I'm happy for all of the athletes from everywhere getting their chance to compete in the Olympics and it will be great to see everyone participate. However, I'm going to be cheering on the USA team since I'm a USA girl and I hope that they can do us proud! Brit Boy will of course be cheering on Team GB (Great Britain). We respect both teams in the Yellow House, as I mentioned in this post four years ago :-)  And in the event that "our own team" isn't playing, we gladly cheer on the other one and it works. It's always fun ;-) And if neither of our teams are playing, then we're just gonna cheer on everyone because we're happy to be there! What a blessing...

So we're counting down the days until our Olympic trip and I'll definitely be sharing some photos here...

See ya next time...