Book Recommendation: I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys

I’ve not done many book reviews on here, however recently I’ve been recommended some great books and felt the need to share. This book I read in 3 days and was truly impressed. However, let me take a step back and share how and why this was recommended to me.

The Girl (my daughter – read the About Me section for more information) recently married a really great guy from a wonderful family. He is the youngest of 9 kids. His parents came over to America in the 80s – his dad from Hungary and his mom from Romania. This was when both countries still had communist governments. From the little I’ve gathered thus far, his mom even spent some time in jail because she was trying to get out of Romania.

Painting Imperfectly

When I first started this blog back in February 2018 my goal was to work on my tendencies of perfection. A way to learn to accept my imperfections and realize not only are they not a “problem”, they are actually part of what makes me ME! I also started this because writing has always been a way for me to de-stress. It is a balm for my soul.

I have now found something else that soothes my soul and helps me to de-stress – Dot painting. It started out with me seeing some pictures online that I thought were beautiful, then I joined a couple Facebook groups and started stalking the posts. They were groups for beginners where those more experienced gave advice and pointers to those just starting. Then I finally jumped in and tried it myself.

Now this was a big step because my need to be perfect has often kept me from doing things. If I can’t do it perfect, why bother. However, these groups were amazing. Many people would share their first attempts and would post multiple pictures to show their progress over time. Everyone was so encouraging and gave such great advice. It was inspiring to see. I finally convinced myself that I could do it and bought some paint and a small kit of tools. It was a very small investment, although many start using items around the house for dotting.

Guest Post from my Son

Today is a Guest Post. My son wrote this for a school assignment in April 2021 about his great grandfather (my husband’s grandfather). Grandpa passed last year, and Austin asked if he could share this on my blog.

My Grandfather

by Austin Smith

Every other week my Dad and I drive 5 hours to Oregon to stay with my Great Grandfather for the weekend. He has lived alone since my Great Grandmother died when I was in 5th grade. At the time I wasn’t really sure what was happening other than my Great Grandma, who played a huge part in my siblings and my life, had got cancer. I remember thinking that I was gonna “give cancer to the person that gave her cancer” , only to find out that’s not exactly how cancer works. I didn’t get to see her before she passed because she was in ICU which was an area children were not allowed in. When she passed away our family was devastated. Of course my Great Grandpa was affected the most by this. 

Writing Prompt – Late Night Therapy

(Writing prompt from Nov 2017)

Warning to my readers: This is a short story writing prompt from back in 2017. This is one of those stories that I for some reason love to write which leaves you hanging at the end. I may or may not pick this back up someday. If you don’t like to be left hanging, you may want to avoid this one. You know who you are! 🙂

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The night was dark. Clouds covered the moon as I drove down the curving back road. After a long week of conference meetings all I was focused on was getting home, pouring a warm bath and a glass of wine. As I imagined the warm feel of the water lapping around my body, a smile crept across my face. Maybe a good book to read as well. Loose myself in another world, other people’s lives.

Suddenly something darts out in front of my car. I slam my foot on the brake and narrowly miss what appeared to be a jack rabbit. He turns on the side of the road to give me a dirty look before hopping off into the darkness. I sit in the middle of the road in my car, willing my heart to slow down. As I do, my daydream of the evening relaxation dissolves as a face appears in my mind. The face of the person who caused me so much grief this week – Janice!

Farewell to Cookie

The weekend before Thanksgiving Cookie journeyed over the rainbow bridge. She had been with our family for 11 years, ever since we picked her up from a local rescue. In honor of her memory, I am resharing (with a few edits) a story I originally posted in June 2018. Cookie will be dearly missed.

The Smith Saga – Winter in TN

Been awhile since I’ve given an update – mostly because there was not much to update on. Our moving date has been pushed to June as our youngest has asked to not be moved in the middle of the school year. Also, our eldest (our daughter) got married this summer and her husband deployed the beginning of November. She has decided to take her Spring semester classes online from our place rather than being up in North Dakota by herself. One of her classes requires her to get some hours coaching under a “real” coach so she will be assisting her old high school coach this spring for Track & Field. Our youngest naively thinks she will go easy on him, but I’m afraid he is in for a rude awakening.

In the meantime, Shaun and I made a trip up to WA to see my grandmother and our middle child who is now up in Seattle starting his career. We then took a detour to TN before heading back to Northern California. We were hoping to see some pretty fall colors on the property. Unfortunately, fall came faster in TN this year than in CA. However, we were able to determine how much our house will be visible from the road during the winter. It helped us decide where we may want to plant some evergreens. We have a few on the property but not as many as we would like.

The Smith Saga – Amish & Quilts

I have been remiss about writing lately. I have not even touched on my last week in Tennessee yet and here we are almost a month later! I can’t believe I’ve been back in this dry and dusty heat for that long. We are having a record heat wave (although to be honest every summer here keeps me inside!) Yesterday it was 105 at only 11AM. But I digress.

I want to finish up my posts about the trip to Tennessee and start to focus on what we are doing to get things ready for our final trip out there! So today I am going to share about the Amish and about quilts! Or quilt squares to be more exact.

The Smith Saga – Brushy Mountain State Pen

We had been talking about driving out to Gatlinburg on Sunday and driving through the Smokey Mountains. However, Saturday night we decided we wanted to stick a little closer to the campsite and property. Jack Daniels had been a 3 hours drive and we were racing against a thunderstorm on the way home. We wanted less driving. So Gatlinburg and the beautiful Smokey Mountains will have to wait until my next trip.

In lieu, we decided to go check out the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, TN. I love history tours and old buildings and I’ve done the Alcatraz tour twice and enjoyed it. So I figured this one would be interesting as well. Plus they have a distillery on the property so Shaun was in!

This is another place I will be more than willing to go visit again and take some friends to go see. We did the normal self-guided tour although they do have a guided tours in the mornings on certain days and they have a paranormal night time tour. I’m not sure I would totally be up for that one, but I’m sure it is fascinating.

The Smith Saga – Jack Daniels!

I am actually back in California now as I write this. I have definitely left my heart back in Tennessee. I’m glad to be home to see my kids and to have a real bed and shower, but I am homesick!

However, I still have a whole week of TN items to share with all of you. So let’s get going!

On Saturday we started the day by having our last breakfast at the Grey Gables B&B with my parents. (If you ever visit – make sure to try the Almond Tea!) As usual, Linda had cooked up an amazing meal and we had some very fun and interesting people to visit with. We had a couple at our table who were a retired correctional officer and retired school teacher. Come to find out, their brother-in-law (who of course Linda knew!) is a Senator for our district. Very nice and friendly couple.

After breakfast we headed out for Lynchburg, TN to do a tour of the Jack Daniels Distillery. My parents followed us as they were going to head back home to Arkansas once we finished the tour. The drive was very beautiful as is all of TN in my opinion. As I shared already in a post, we were on Highway 127 for a short period of time and saw the tents for the 127 Yard Sale. We will definitely have to check that out next year!

The Smith Saga – What are those webs?

The next couple days of our trip (Thursday and Friday) were very pleasant but nothing too exciting. We got up in the morning and visited the B&B for a delicious breakfast made by Linda and good conversations with her other guests. I would then come back to the campground to work while Shaun ran some errands or sometimes just took a nap. One day he did run out with my parents to visit the little Amish store that is just down from our property. In the evenings we would head back to the B&B for more good food and conversation and to play cards with my parents.

As I mentioned in my last post, the B&B was pretty full. Apparently every year there is a yard sale that runs Thursday – Friday on Highway 127. This yard sale runs from Alabama to Michigan! It is 690 miles long and boasts being the World’s Longest Yard sale. I even found a website for it here – 127 Yard Sale. Almost all of the other guests we met while my parents stayed at Grey Gables were there for the yard sale. And it was not their first time. Some of them have been doing this for close to 20 years and have been coming to Grey Gables during their shopping trip.