Lucky Seven

Yesterday, the 7th of February, was a very special and blissful day for me. For starters it was my darling boy Merlin's birthday. He's my youngest Russian Blue and I thought he would be the last addition to our family for many years to come. But I had not reckoned with the fact that I would get a Small Present and a Surprise as well.
And here's a pic of the birthday boy, 5 years old today. Merlin, wake up!
Ah, that's better!
Happy birthday darling boy!
And here he is in the kitchen headrubbing and headbutting away with Willow. This is something that they do every morning and it is such an adorable sight to see, although very difficult to take a pic of.

After kissing and hugging and petting Merlin and telling him he's the bestest Russian Blue kittycat ever, I had to go to the dentist. Just a check up and it went well, no problems with my teeth. Phew, what a relief.

Shortly after I had arrived home again the doorbell rang. It was a delivery man with a parcel for me. I thought it was from Amazon as I had recently ordered some books from them. But no, it was something completely different.
It was a present from Angela of Cottage Magpie, who has a lovely blog, if you haven't discovered it yet, go have a look. I had helped her out with something and in return Angela send me this. Curious to see what's in it? Well, so was Kadootje, and me too of course.
This is what it contained, a lovely gift basket. I'll unwrap it further.

Uhm, Surprise, I said that I will unwrap it, thankyouverymuch! And here it is!

Kadootje, leave that chocolate alone!

Angela has sent me a lovely basket containing some very nice stuff for the bath, yummy choccies, a few candles, pina colada body butter and shimmer body splash in my favourite scent; sweet pea. Isn't it just absolutely lovely? And so very kind! Thank you very, very much, Angela, for such a wonderful present! I appreciate it, Kadootje does too. ;-)
Kadootje, that's my chocolate! Give it back!
Right, that's it!!! As you can see I was forced to eat that choccie straight away! The things my cats put me through! :-)

As I was happily munching away on my delicious choccie, the doorbell rang again. Guess what?
My parcel from Amazon had arrived. Yippeeee!
I had ordered a few garden books; The Jewel Garden; A Story of Despair and Redemption by Monty and Sarah Don (intriguing title, don't you think?), My Roots and Around the World in 80 Gardens both by Monty Don. For those of you who don't know Montagu Don, he is the current presentor of Gardener's World on the BBC. Right now he's doing a tv series called Around the World in 80 Gardens and this is the accompanying book I bought. It's really worth watching, so if you can receive BBC 2, the programme is on every Sunday night. If you can't, well then you'll just have to wait until the DVD is out. Sorry!

I'd been waiting about a week for those books, so when they arrived I wanted to read them straight away. And I did, well, at least one of them and not quite straight away. It was a truly lovely day yesterday and when in the afternoon the sun came out, I was able to work in the garden while soaking up the sunshine.
There was a lot of weeding to be done and a general tidying upof the garden as well.
Discovering some more snowdrops when I tidied this bed.

After all that hard work came my reward: reading one of my new books outside in the sunshine with a nice cuppa tea in the very enjoyable company of Surprise. Mmmmmmmm, utter Bliss!
Being able to sit outside, soaking up the much needed sunshine, is a rare treat in February so I enjoyed it to the max, and so did Surprise.

But this day had more in store for me than "just" a birthday boy, good news from my dentist, a lovely present from Angela, the arrival of my garden books and working and sitting in the sun. A couple of months ago I had bought tickets for a concert of my favourite Dutch band Within Temptation. I've been to their concerts (their live performance is great!) before and they were absolutely wonderful but this time it would be something very, very special. This time they performed together with the Dutch Metropole Orchestra and a whole classical choir too in Rotterdam, the place where I grew up. I was not the only one at the concert as you can see. Some impressions:
It was a truly spectacular show, Sharon, the singer of the band, has a fantastic voice, the choir and band were wonderful and the Orchestra was nothing to be sneezed at either; in short a very unique and thoroughly enjoyable experience. I'm so happy I was there to see and hear it all as this was a one off. Woohoo, or something! ;-)
Have a Blissful weekend!

copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen