Early to Bed . . . .

I think I'll go to bed early tonight and read. I have a good book, The Water and the Blood.

This is by the same author who wrote These is my Words, Nancy E. Turner. This story, though, is set around the time of WWII and most of it takes place in East Texas. I highly recommend the book so far, and I'm a little past half way through it; if you think you might be interested, click on the link to find professional and readers' reviews over at Amazon and check them out. As I do with many of my books, I picked this one up through Amazon's listings of used books.

The last couple days have been a bit unsettling. At work we've learned that two of our former coworkers have lost their husbands this past week; one to Lou Gehrig's disease and the other to a different, fairly rare disease. Both men were in their 40s. As I didn't know either man, I'm not personally grieving their loss, but I feel saddened for the wives and families they leave behind, and it sure makes me think about how fragile life is.

And speaking of life, my birthday month is here! It's also my brother-in-law's birthday month. I hate to share, but since he lives in another town, I'll begrudgingly allow him a couple days. My niece--his daughter--also has a birthday this month; in fact, our family will be celebrating quite a few birthdays in July, so I guess I can't be too selfish and keep the whole month for myself! Still, I decided it might be best if I take a couple days off work to celebrate, so I have a little vacation time to look forward to near the end of the month.

I heard from my brother-in-law today, by the way. I had been looking for a photo of him and my husband wrestling when they were kids--I wanted to use it for the paperweight I made--but I couldn't find our copy, so I used the other photo of the two of them. I had emailed my fav bro-in-law but he and his lovely wife were vacationing in Las Vegas. Anyway, he finally got my email and sent the photo, so I thought I'd share:

Aren't they cute? For now, they're the same age. I've heard that circumstance--two children born within one year--referred to as Irish Twins, but apparently it's considered a derogatory term. Why? These two little cuties ARE Irish! And Catholic! My poor mother-in-law had six kids. So, what's my point? If you're heading to bed early too, take a good book with you. Or some good birth control! I'm just sayin . . . .

Addendum: Michelle, who always asks me questions in her comments but is "no-reply," asked what I was going to caption the photo above. I'm not really sure, but I DO know that I was going to put a crown on Hubby's head since this was probably one of the only times he was able to pin his "big brother" to the ground!