Not Much, and yet....Everything

Not much new around here. We spent the whole weekend doing nothing but recovering from the week. It seemed to bring some stressful stuff that made us all very tired. Very, very tired.

But tomorrow is Monday, I am going running first thing. I would have been more motivated this AM but the temp was 16 with the wind chill (it was really really windy) and I did not want to face it.

Then I am going to finish my paper for class this week-very early actually. I finished the first one Saturday-WooHoo. I attend classes through Walden University, online based in Mnpls. Sometimes I think it would be easier to do discussions through conversation. Actually I know it would be easier but I work full time-no time for conventional classes. I sure am getting good experience with APA. The people who thought that stuff up obviously had too much time on their hands.

But anyway, I did manage to finish my Wallaby.

Wow, that is a really bad picture.....Oh well, you get the idea. I think I should have cropped my face out.

I am on the foot of the RSC sock #1 and just rec'd kit #2. I better get busy.

I did one of two blocks for BOTM-Embroidery.
I am 16 rows from being done with GAAA#5.

Oh, and guess who came home, again?

Yup, Blane and Good Kitten have moved back for a week or so.

Actually, Kitten came first, but she wouldn't come out until Blane came. She loves her Blane.

I guess that sounds quite busy. Tomorrow is sit and sew in the afternoon, after that AM run and paper finishing. More about that later.

Oh I almost forgot-we watched a bunch of basketball because it is March Madness and Dave had money on the brackets. We had it all on Pitt and they lost in the last second-seriously, I am not even sure Villanova had a second, but they won. We are now out of the money. Dave is now backing Michigan because of his love of the Big 10. Whatever happened to the Pac 10? Oh well.

Then we watched Tiger Woods win it all on the last putt on the last hole in the Arnold Palmer Invitational -

Golf just hasn't been the same without him.

It's raining babies.....

We had another baby shower. Here are the highlights-

Here is one half of the guests of honor. Chase Harvey, much grown and kind of sleepy.

Our girl Cora R. showed up with Angie-looking wonderful as ever.

The interpreters came along with Wanda, our supervisor. (That's Patty in the background, organizing the party. We are trying to hire her out and make a couple of bucks for ourselves. She can plan a party like no other)

and Ali McNally-pants (aka Ali), the other half of the guests of honor. She came away with lots of good stuff.

Little Laura tried awfully hard not to, but she had some serious baby-hogging going on.

That's ok for we love our Laura, best clerical gal on the face of the planet-that is no lie nor exaggeration. You should see her go.

She did sit down for a while with the baby. She has to rest sometime.....

After the baby shower.......
We had more spring and these guys thought it was ok-even the dog with only one eye.

It was very sunny, but still brown around the place. Hopefully we'll see some green soon.

Spring is Here

Spring arrived yesterday, but I didn't get to welcome it until today.

(I was busy writing papers and Dave was busy proofing them and then I was busy getting mad at him for the corrections and he was busy reminding me it was nothing personal-we were busy)

But today I went running. It is at least in the 50's-I wore shorts with a long sleeved tee. I even put on my 50 spf suntan lotion. Just because.

The birds have been coming in droves and the cat is dreaming of the thick garden she can hide in and maybe catch one or two. (Don't worry, it's only a dream-her outside is the deck not the garden-but she still dreams)


Oh, by the way, this is a couple of weeks ago-there is no snow now, just dirt and flowers waiting to sprout.

The Birthday in Pictures

It has been a while.
I had to rest up after the big birthday bash of '09.

Here's what happened:

I decided to take 5 days off for my birthday. I planned to get all sorts of things done, get ahead on homework, go here and there. But the best laid plans....

Thursday AM of the birthday day the doorbell rang-and was I surprised.

Look who showed up-all the way from Tucson and Seattle-

Well, not a great picture but you get the idea.
So, plans were put aside and we went here for a visit and here for lunch. Here's Martha and me enjoying delicious lunch with flourless chocolate cake for dessert.

After that we stopped at Kristens Knits in Rochester and got some cool yarn. Debbie got some chunky and funky yarn and made the cutest scarf and headband, of which I don't have a picture-why is that?
After that long afternoon we had to open up one of these-(remember them?)

Well, one turned into two, and two turned into three and pretty soon it was looking like this


Well, it didn't look like this right away-we had dinner and cake.



But after all was said and done it pretty much looked like this

I thought I had survived but in actuality the next day dawned and I felt like this

I think what tipped the balance was the wine of my birthyear- Or not. Oh, and did I mention that Martha and I ate 3/4 of the cake to soak up that wine we were consuming? Debbie claims it was us but what do we know-we had 3 1/2 bottles of wine...

Anwway, after I got the icepack off my head we went to lunch with some coworkers and their zillion babies.

We also did some fun things like got my oil changed and walked around the mall, but ultimately came home, took a nap, had some pizza, and ended up the day watching TV and knitting.

I didn't mention that I got some great presents-I got a camera, and the coolest accessory bag for quilting from Debbie and this swift from Martha

We left for the cities on Saturday and stopped by Carlton College to see my nephew, Martha's son Alex. Man, his freshman dorm room is deee-luxe

We went to the cities to see this play. It was OK. I suppose you need to be a wee bit more Minnesotan to really dig it. We drove around in the afternoon and looked for yarn stores. We found one internet store (oops) and one retail, but it was closed. So we had dinner and the play.
The next day Dave and I left to go home and the other girls goofed around the MOA until flight time. Here we are before leaving-

We drove home into this-

After we were home for a while we decided to mosey down to the Good Sport in town and have a couple of toddies. The bartender was very shy-

After that, it was Monday. Luckily I had the day off to rest but was tired all week long. And I was extremely behind on my work.
But that is one birthday I will never forget.

Done and Not Done

I finished Block #4 of the GAAran Afghan


Here's a detail. This one was pretty easy.

Now, I thought I had finished the mystery quilt and I took some pictures and uploaded them and was in the process of posting when I realized I had a HUGE mistake in it




Can ya see it? Holy Crap, I about freaked the frak out when I saw that the top border is on UPSIDE DOWN. How does that sh** escape me? Dave was mopping the floor (oh don't be so impressed, I vacuumed the whole thing and used a toothbrush to clean the stairs) and I came running over there like my hair was on fire to look at the thing-believing that the picture must have some sort of computer code glitch that has caused it to appear as if the border is on upside down. (No such luck) When I told him, Dave said oh, he thought it was something really important. I thought I might have him rip out the border and then match up all those seams just so he could understand why I was curled up in the fetal position slapping the floor, but thought the better of it.

I am now off to rip and repair. More pictures again later. I hope.