Thank you very much for your wonderful comments! I am glad my pictures entertained you a little. With two kids, a California mortgage and economy in recession most of my traveling is done on the couch these days, and photographs are a big part of it:-). After 7 years in the Bay Area I still view myself as a foreigner, and Californian climate and natural beauty never cease to delight me. I am always amazed at how many plants are in bloom at any time of the year, and what a riot of color it is. I still miss the lush softer-colored gardens of my childhood but I am beginning to take a closer look at drought tolerant plants. Desert landscaping is a complete mystery to me but I am getting tired of being a semi-permanent summer landscaping feature ("A Lady with a Watering Hose") and then gasping at the water bill... Carmel Mission gardens were a surprise to me in that water wise landscaping can be lush and beautiful too. I am learning:-). Aimeekitty, the tag reads "Echium Pride of Madeira". You can see a close-up of a spike in the fourth picture. Hoovb, I would love to go Filoli again, but they don't like children there. My kids do know how to behave around plants, but there they are asked to not even step on the lawn. It is hard on the boys to spend two hours never straying off paths... Roselee, my camera is Nikon D3000. It is the cheapest entry-level DSLR I could find. It is not professional quality and not the best for macro, but it is a good all-around camera for me. My oldest boy is a gymnast so I also take pictures of fast moving kids, not just close-ups of roses. It has multiple focus points which is great - you can see in the close-up of the Echium how it focuses vertically all along the spike, or in the picture with a little field of pelargoniums, how it focuses horizontally all along the blooms. In case of these particular pictures, it helped enormously that the day was cloudy - you get a nice even tone. The pictures of private gardens were taken later when the sun came out and they are not as good as the ones of the mission. For me, taking pictures in bright sun is very difficult. Masha

Oh!!!! I understand. Thanks Hazelnut! These swaps are fun huh? *****Laurie's List****** I LOVE fairies...my garden theme is fairies. Oh heck...I have them everywhere...I admit it. Unicorns Windchimes Scented candles or fragrance oils I love all plants but I like growing bulbs. And plants with "Fairy" in the name. :o) I collect sharpies and pens I have 2 dogs and 2 cats I like heart stickers scrapbook stuff My favorite color is "Autumn" I like fruity bath stuff, body sprays, lip gloss, fingernail polish, fingernail stickers, etc. I also like garden stakes It's hard picking my brain at the spur of the moment. :oP Rosie, I will send you my address soon. Thanks! This is a neat idea!!! Laurie

raek, I understand you sooooooooo much and I really,really know where you are coming from. You say : "I said something like...Thanks for giving us that time together, it really meant alot to me." I don't really want to spend to much time on this point because it has happened in the past,....but ......i still think (please don't take it personnaly) that it was a little bit mean to do that. I mean who cares if she allowed your father or not to go and visit you. That was between them. If anything, it should have been your father who thanked her for letting him do something alone not you. Disengage, disengage, disengage. It's not with her you want to make a new start. It's with your dad. You don't need to be disrespectful towards your father's wife however. Did you notice how I am using less and less the words "" your SM'' or ""my oldest SD'' ( i did in an early post this morning, but I'm doing it less and less. Even when i talk about her to whoever. I know say : my DH's oldest daughter. Perhaps you could always refer now to your SM as your dad's wife, spouse, partner, lover, whatever but not ''My SM''. It's a little way of disengaging that I read about on this Web site. It helps. I agree with you also on another point you made. Why would someone travel somewhere when the people they will see aren't his or her friends. DH's oldest daughter just moved back in our city but for a few years she lived five hours from us with her DH and two young kids. You would not believe the number of times DH has asked me to go with him and visit them, the number of times his oldest daughter has begged me to go and visit her, the number of times her then husband asked me to go and see their place!!! Every single time I said NO, i found an excuse...anything, i couldn't leave the dog alone for so many days, I didn't want to put him in a kennel cuz it was too expensive and I didn't want to have to put him through a five hour car drive, etc.etc. I swear to god this went on for about three years and all the time I kept telling Dear hubby why do you keep on insisting on this issue. I will not go visit your daughter. One day he did it again. I said ok you want to push it well here is my answer why I won't even bother a single minute to put myself throught such a trip. I said '' Remember the day your daughter got married. He said yes. I said do you remember how she celebrated everybody she loved and wanted near her on that day by offering them a beautiful corsage to wear. He said yes i remember that. Well, I said, was I amongnst these people. Did your daughter offer me a corsage considering I had been in her life for 14 years at that point? DH said no. So, i said. why in the world would I want to go in your daughter's house when on the most important day of her life she ignored me like you ignore a dog and she has never, never to this day thanked me for the money we (DH and I) gave them as a wedding day!!!!!!! Since then DH has never bothered me or asked me again to go to her house and i don't intend to ever go to the new place she will eventually have once she leaves her mom's place. Finally, raek you say : "I start to remember that he didn't really reach out to me a whole lot even when she wasn't in the picture, but my dislike for her and her's for me has driven an even bigger wedge between the 2 of us." It is so true. I too for a long time really disliked DH's oldest daughter. I blamed everything on her but now i know that DH is just as guilty. He always put her needs first to the detriment of our relationship but things are starting to change. When i see he acts likes this, i don't take it all out on his daughter anymore. I tell DH how i feel about his behaviour towards me and how it affects me or us as a couple. Example : he got a 500 dollar bonus from work. He gave it all to his daughter so she could buy a second hand car. I didn't mind that he gave her money but I didn't want him to give it all to her considering we had bills to play. But oh non. DH had to look good so he gave it all to her. Of course, she never thought i might have some right on that money or that I might deserved to be also told thank you considering her father and I have been together for 18 years and share everything. So you know what I did. For the first time in 18 years, i got a big cheque and I put every single penny of it in my banking account. In the past, when I got some extra money, i was the first one to pay our bills or whatever bill there was around, i would buy him clothes, pay fines, whatever. First thing i knew, i had no money left! DH is not really happy with what I did with this last cheque but ask me if i care!!!! So far out of that whole cheque I spent a big 35 $ on him for a pair of jeans!!!! Enough is enough. I spent over 600 $ on an operation for puppy, i spent a bit on me and i will use the rest to buy some patio furniture! So whenever he complains about this cheque, i remind him I didn't spend it all on me. He will enjoy the furniture and the dog is as much mine as his. So there you go! Next time he has extra money, perhaps he will think a little bit before giving it away and disregarding our/my needs.!!! I keep telling my friends or anybody I know who meets a man who has children and it doesn't matter how old the children are, to run away as fast as they can from that relationship or at least not to get emotionnaly involved with the kids and to keep a distance from the children for a long, long time before they all become buddy-buddy. Knowing what you know today, you must thank the Lord that you are not in that relationship with that man you met who had a child. My alcoholic father left my mother alone with four children. She raised us alone and we lived on welfare all our lives. At one point, my mom met a very nice man. In fact they went out together for 14 years. I really, really loved him. He didn't treat me like he was my father. He was always our friend. Everybody kept asking my mom she wasn't living with this man. She also said. these are my children and i will raised them on my own. I will not force them upon another person. I think my mom was very avant-gardist just like when she decided to register all her kids in an English school when we were living a totally french environment, didn't have english speaking friends, didn't have a cousin or uncle who spoke english, (not even my mom spoke English. She always said she did that so her children could have another culture, be independent and be able to travel. I love her! Sorry for such the long post. I don't know whats happening to me this morning but it sure feels good to be able to vent all my feelings like this. Thanks for reading me. Keep posting.

That's how I kind of feel .... at 9 years of age, should they still be doing this? And no, I am not included in the list of family members. Every once in a blue moon (if I happen to be over his house), he will ask me to join in if the mom can't do it for some reason and if either of his parents can't do it for some reason. I am never included when the mom is on the phone or when either grandparent (my FI's parents) are doing it. Yes, I do have a few other issues that I'm internally dealing with, but like a few other posters have said, by me bringing them up, they sound so insignificant compared to what others are going through here on the boards. The child is a very sweet boy. The BM is a pain in my rear end, but she's not overly horrible directly to me. We have very little interaction. And my FI is a great dad, but I really don't like that he lets the BM call all the shots when it comes to drop off times, schedule, etc. Thanks again for all the advice. Both FI and the child are headed out of town for just over a week and while I will miss them, I'm so glad I don't have to hear their nightly phone call for a week! Not that it matters, but FI and I do not live together, but we are together just about every day.