Every Day is Mother's Day..

But when Mrs. Hallmark makes it a national holiday then it is even more fun...

My offspring ,minus son Tod and his Wendy with whom I had done an early Mother's Day in Palm Springs, gathered at my son Lee's for a party hosted by him, his wife, Valerie, and their daughter Madison.

It was non-stop thin sliced and BBQed to the perfecto degree tri-tips, veggies, fruits and then a load of yummy pastries from daughter Karen......... we all ate, read tabloids, sat in the sun and then in the shade, played with the dog, watched the grand kids swim.

When was the last time you saw my daughters?  Well, for those of you who go to their blog at visualchronicles. com , that would be this morning if you are a daily reader but for those friends of mine who aren't addicted to Linda's words and photographs.. here is an up to the minute photograph of them, taken by me and I don't claim to be even half the photographer they are with their fancy smancy 35mm digital big cameras with all the lens.  These were taken with my camera, a Cannon that is so small it is hard to hold.

This is Karen who was celebrating Mother's Day and her wedding anniversary ,too. She said she had on two different kinds of makeup -- one on each side of her face and asked us which looked the best.  I  couldn't see any difference and thought the overall look was just beautiful.  Click on the photo for an enlarged view and maybe you can see the difference between the liquid and powder makeups.

And here, smiling her dynamite smile is my Linda.  She is always smiling, always looks good...  And if you want to see some of her really neat photos with wonderful comments go to flickr.com and then type Lindawoods in to search and up comes Linda's photos. She updates it almost daily, so a fun site to visit.

I got so busy eating and watching the little kids swim  -- good gawd but hearing " Marco" and " Polo" over and over could give a person a migraine!...  I neglected to take more photos.. but I know Linda and Karen took a lot of them so will keep checking flickr.com for both Lindawoods and KarenDinino for updates of our fun day together.

I also got lovely gifts from everyone, felt very special  --- was really a wonderful day.  Took a fast fade about 4:30 but managed to hang in there until 6:00 when everyone was heading home, too. One of the joys of living in Ventura is I am only 35 minutes from Lee's house, if there is no traffic on the 101.  Yesterday there wasn't any traffic when I headed home, so I was home and in my jams by7:00 and in bed at 7:30 and not ashamed to say it was lights out and me asleep before 8:00.

And, me, who used to be the night owl and never went to bed until the "Tonight Show" was over.  Will I ever come out of this rotten fatigue from chemo and radiation?  It's been a year since I finished my last radiation, feel stronger, but still, get that drop in energy that only going to bed can cure.  If that is the worst thing wrong with me, I'll take it!

My grand daughter Maddie asked me to be her email pen pal and send her a letter every day, so I best be a good grandma and log off here now and send her some words.

Oh  - -meant to tell you,  my son Tod at Todgoldberg.com has some pictures from the Salton Sea up on his blog and so does Linda - if you're from the desert or ever wondered about that remote and stinking place, go take a look.

~Jan