Momma's Day, Micro Bursts & Mirth of Birth

{Le Chicken Palace a la Hawk's Nest Farm}
5.8.11
Mother's Day was spent painting our chicken coop, inside and out, with my fun-loving fruit-loop of a family! It was a lot of fun working together on painting the chicken coop beige and the inside a cheery bright yellow, minus the stinky exterior paint fumes that we had to inhale of course. I don't know why exactly, but the exterior paint smells a thousand times worse than the interior paint does!

{Tons of mud and rain water left over in our yard from the storm}

{What was once our Greenhouse. It held all of our small new-growth plants and baby trees.}
{Grandpa cleaning up an overturned refrigerator that housed his things outdoors by our shed}
5.10.11
Storms started hitting our area in the late p.m. hours, and the winds were wildly howling, it was quite frightening actually.  Our power was out for three days due to the horrible storms. We had quite a few downed trees, our greenhouse was flattened to a heap of jumbled twisted junk and there was a downed power line on the road...hence, no electricity...no electricity, no blogging. 


{The tree that had fallen in Mrs. Anne's yard}

{My 22nd Birthday Cake}

5.11.11
...was my 22nd {most unforgettable} birthday! We had no power or water whatsoever. Yeah, it was an interesting birthday to say the least, memorable if anything. Most of my birthday was spent cleaning up from the storm's wreckage outside, and then later on that afternoon I had to go into work (without having taken a proper shower [took a bottle of water and a rag shower before heading out, yeah] before going to work!) My family and I, including my grandparents, pulled together and cleaned up the debris as a finely tuned team, and then we headed down the road to check on our elderly neighbor, Mrs. Anne, to see if she was okay. Mrs. Anne had a HUGE downed tree laying across her driveway that she didn't even know about, due to her acute loss of hearing...so momma, daddy and grandpa got out the chainsaws and our Massey Ferguson Tractor and we went to work to help our dear sweet neighbor clean up her yard. 

Now, most people would probably say "Poor, you!" because of all of the mess that happened on my birthday, and yeah, I mean I didn't expect to spend my birthday cleaning up nature's wreckage and being power and waterless for 3 DAYS{!!}, but I have to say that it wasn't a bad birthday after all. I learned that life is a very precious things through the storms...and days spent roughing it out with my family. Birthday cake and party balloons and extravagant gifts do not compare to the gifts of life, love, family, friendship, hard work and faith filled perseverance. Now, I am not saying that I hope my 23rd birthday will end up going the same way in theme or anything next year, but I am very thankful and glad that my birthday was as it was this year.





Breath of Angel {a book review}


I recently finished reading Karyn Henley's "The Angeleon Circle Book One: Breath of Angel" and I must admit that after having read only the first few chapters I wasn't so sure that I should have kept on reading (at first), however perseverance and an open mind can pay off if you give things a good chance, especially when it comes to this book.

"Breath of Angel" is the story of a young priestess named Melaia who seeks, and needs, to find her destiny in the midst of angels and others. Melaia's story first begins though when an angel is murdered...a hawk man flies into the skies...blood covered feathers...and from there the story continues to deepen and twist and turn over time. I have a feeling that you will be as drawn into the story as I was, if you give it a chance and continue to read on.

The first few chapters seemed to move a bit too quickly for me, and it seemed rather vague on details at times, but after a while I found myself more interested and invested into Melaia and the other characters. I mean I wasn't expecting detailed character origins anything like what Tolkien wrote many many years ago or anything, however, I wish that I had been a little more thoroughly introduced to the characters in the story within the first chapter instead of being thrust into the midst of a courtyard murder and no name faces to contend with.

Although, I do admit that after I had read past chapter 7 I knew that I needed to persevere on and give this book a chance and continue to read this book through...and I was right! This book was really good in the end. It had a great rise and fall to the story.

The story concepts and characters were really well laid out (after a while into the novel after I gave it a chance) and carried throughout the story quite well. I absolutely loved the idea of a story of an ongoing war between angels and malevolents, a blood feud between two brothers and about the stairway to heaven that was destroyed and is destined to be restored that I found within this book. This story was exciting and mysterious...and just how I like my Fantasy novels! I must warn you that you can't help but want to search out every scripture on angels after having read this book, seriously!

Honestly, I am ready to read Book 2 in The Angeleon Circle already, while eating apricots of course!


{{I received this book for FREE from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.}}