Thanks for all the hints on the mystery flowers! I Googled Surprise Lily and they fit my flowers perfectly. They have many other alias names and one of them is Bare Naked Ladies! We have some day lilies in our yard - the flower is similar but they have leaves. These flowers have nothing but stem and bloom! They grow 4-6 inches a day until they are 20-24 inches tall, then burst into bloom. They last a few days and then die. There is no sign of them until next July. I also learned that some bulbs bloom every other year. I can't remember how many we transplanted but I know there were more than the three that came up this year.
LuLu has won over the dogs. They want to play with her, but she is too small. We only let them be in the same room under close supervision. Seven has not accepted her yet. There is less hissing and more watching (stalking) but again we are not leaving them alone together yet. Here she is showing her hunting skills as she "finds Nemo"!!
I had some requests to show our beach paintings. I haven't found frames for most of them yet. First the boy's work-
And a couple of mine....
Finally to Nevis- it takes us 4 hours and 10 minutes to get to the beach. This is with DH driving and does not include our one stop on the other side of Montgomery at Priester's Pecans. This is a required stop because -1. They have clean bathrooms 2. They give free samples of candy 3. The other food is good 4. You can watch them make candy 5. The gift shop is cute, they often have pug merchandise! I know the exact time so well because we have a family travel tradition. Each person gets a surprise bag if we travel for 1 hour without any fussing. It has been worth every penny to do this for road trips over the years. I make 4 bags for each person (including DH) for a beach trip! I put silly stuff in the bags -gum, socks, puzzles, card games. I collect things whenever I see cheap stuff during the year from thrift stores, yard sales, Dollar Stores so when ever we go more than 2 hours I make up bags!
We had a wonderful vacation at Orange Beach, AL. We've been coming here since youngest son was 1. He took his first steps here. We had all of the kids the first year. As they have grown up, our group of 7 has gone down to 3! The weather was beautiful, even the afternoon thunderstorms are pretty at the beach! We love the balcony views!
We spent our days swimming, biking, running, reading, painting, walking, sewing, shopping and eating! We did spend part of each day at the beach, but the jellyfish were bad most days, so we spent more time at the pool.
Each morning I got up at 6:30 for a beach walk. I spent about an hour looking for shells and taking pictures. Two mornings a heron posed for me. He didn't mind how close I got. Then I would come back, fix breakfast and paint out on the balcony until the boys woke up. It was so relaxing! I painted 5 beach paintings and son painted one. I also had a yo-yo quilt to work on in the peaceful morning.
We ate great seafood and got to take Son #2's Girlfriend out to dinner one night. She is doing an internship at The Wharf. One of the best dinners we had was a picnic at sunset on the beach. We will do that again! We did the "beachy" things at night: putt-putt, crab hunting, night swim, souvenir shopping, arcade, and ice cream.
And a trip to the beach would not be complete for me without a shopping day or two! DH calls Old Time Pottery -"The Mother Ship" because it calls to me! I love a bargain! This year it was Fiesta dinnerware -so cheap, so many bright and cheerful colors, so much temptation....and I gave in!
Orange and blue for Auburn football weekends. And look at that cute quilted table runner and matching napkins!
Red and green for Christmas! They had so much and as always- I wish I bought more! We also got some great deals on teracotta pots, a market umbrella and a cast iron stand. I didn't buy them at first because I was afraid they would break coming home. DH went back with me to look at them and HE (who does not like to go in that store!) ended up with 3 buggies full of bargains! We didn't realize how cheap the pots were until we looked back over the receipt in the car. If we had realized that the pots (we had priced at $13 each here in town) were only $1.79 - then there would have been 5 buggies full!
