Friday Favorites and Happenings
What's Up Wednesday
I almost forgot about this month's What's Up Wednesday. Being a short week with Memorial Day on Monday made me one day behind. I even was late to linking up my Monday's post as I forgot it was a Monday and had to do it on Tuesday.
Anyways, onto this month's What's Up Wednesday...
WHAT WE ARE EATING THIS WEEK...
Sunday: We went out to dinner for date night.
Monday: We went out to dinner with my parents! Two dinners out in a row is something we haven't done since Febraury.
Tuesday: Tri Tip with a Roasted Butternut Squash and Pomegranate Salad
Wednesday: Coconut Lime Shrimp with Brown Rice
Thursday: Leftover Tri Tip Sandwiches
Friday: BBQ dinner
Saturday: Not sure. We are having dinner with family.
WHAT I'M REMINISCING ABOUT... Being able to go out more again. Being able to go to the beach. Having things go back to a more normal.
WHAT I'M DREADING... That we won't get to go on our vacations all summer nor will we be able to go to the beach again. I want to go camping. I want to go to the beach. Both of those things are outside and not near people really. You can spread out and keep to yourself.
WHAT I'M WORKING ON... I started revitalizing our old wood chairs that sit in our backyard. I have been sanding them down and I bought all the stuff to re-stain and seal them. These chairs are old. I had to tighten up all the bolts and screws to make sure they were stable. The sanding has been a process, but it is awesome to see it come along.
WHAT I'M EXCITED ABOUT... Upcoming vacations as long as things open back up!
WHAT I'M WATCHING/READING... Monday I posted 5 new books that I read in the last month. Check it out here.
I am started Schitt's Creek recently and I am loving it. We are already 4 season in. Ha. We have also been watching Top Chef, The Baker and the Beauty, Dead to Me, Working Moms and then some movies on Netflix. What are you watching? We need some more suggestions.
WHAT I'M LISTENING TO... a public meeting on the state of gaming in Nevada.
WHAT I'M WEARING... I have been living in shorts, sandals, dresses lately. I have worn my leggings and a sweatshirt here and there (on a cold front day), but mostly lots of shorts. Here are some of my favorites lately.
WHAT I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO NEXT MONTH... June brings our annual Graeagle trip and we are waiting to get word if we get to go this year. We stay in a cabin and only have limited interaction at the lodge, but we are not sure if we will get to go or not. I am also looking forward to more things opening like parks and hopefully the beach!
WHAT ELSE IS NEW...Not much
Show Me Your Books
Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.
She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them.
Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.
Finn and Layla are young, in love, and on vacation. They’re driving along the highway when Finn decides to stop at a service station to use the restroom. He hops out of the car, locks the doors behind him, and goes inside. When he returns Layla is gone—never to be seen again. That is the story Finn told to the police. But it is not the whole story.
Ten years later Finn is engaged to Layla’s sister, Ellen. Their shared grief over what happened to Layla drew them close and now they intend to remain together. Still, there’s something about Ellen that Finn has never fully understood. His heart wants to believe that she is the one for him...even though a sixth sense tells him not to trust her.
Then, not long before he and Ellen are to be married, Finn gets a phone call. Someone from his past has seen Layla—hiding in plain sight. There are other odd occurrences: Long-lost items from Layla’s past that keep turning up around Finn and Ellen’s house. Emails from strangers who seem to know too much. Secret messages, clues, warnings. If Layla is alive—and on Finn’s trail—what does she want? And how much does she know?
When she was sixteen years old, Angela Wong―one of the most popular girls in school―disappeared without a trace. Nobody ever suspected that her best friend, Georgina Shaw, now an executive and rising star at her Seattle pharmaceutical company, was involved in any way. Certainly not Kaiser Brody, who was close with both girls back in high school.
But fourteen years later, Angela Wong's remains are discovered in the woods near Geo's childhood home. And Kaiser―now a detective with Seattle PD―finally learns the truth: Angela was a victim of Calvin James. The same Calvin James who murdered at least three other women.
To the authorities, Calvin is a serial killer. But to Geo, he's something else entirely. Back in high school, Calvin was Geo's first love. Turbulent and often volatile, their relationship bordered on obsession from the moment they met right up until the night Angela was killed.
For fourteen years, Geo knew what happened to Angela and told no one. For fourteen years, she carried the secret of Angela's death until Geo was arrested and sent to prison.
While everyone thinks they finally know the truth, there are dark secrets buried deep. And what happened that fateful night is more complex and more chilling than anyone really knows. Now the obsessive past catches up with the deadly present when new bodies begin to turn up, killed in the exact same manner as Angela Wong.
How far will someone go to bury her secrets and hide her grief? How long can you get away with a lie? How long can you live with it? Find out in Jennifer Hillier's Jar of Hearts.
That was five years ago.
Now, Diana is dead, a suicide note found near her body claiming that she longer wanted to live because of the cancer wreaking havoc inside her body.
But the autopsy finds no cancer.
It does find traces of poison, and evidence of suffocation.
Who could possibly want Diana dead? Why was her will changed at the eleventh hour to disinherit both of her children, and their spouses? And what does it mean that Lucy isn’t exactly sad she’s gone?
As the headmaster credited with turning around the local school, Tom Fitzwilliam is beloved by one and all—including Joey Mullen, his new neighbor, who quickly develops an intense infatuation with this thoroughly charming yet unavailable man. Joey thinks her crush is a secret, but Tom’s teenaged son Freddie—a prodigy with aspirations of becoming a spy for MI5—excels in observing people and has witnessed Joey behaving strangely around his father.
One of Tom’s students, Jenna Tripp, also lives on the same street, and she’s not convinced her teacher is as squeaky clean as he seems. For one thing, he has taken a particular liking to her best friend and fellow classmate, and Jenna’s mother—whose mental health has admittedly been deteriorating in recent years—is convinced that Mr. Fitzwilliam is stalking her.
Meanwhile, twenty years earlier, a schoolgirl writes in her diary, charting her doomed obsession with a handsome young English teacher named Mr. Fitzwilliam…