Sarah and I had lunch yesterday with Julie and her mom Tami. It was a goodbye type lunch as Julie was leaving for home in the evening. It was fun, Nate showed up in time to finish the dessert we had no more room for. An hour had not passed and I was sending email to Sarah saying how much I missed Julie already and she hadn't left yet! Well, on the upside she will be back at the end of May. I am having lunch with Janet today then going home and getting ready for our National Scrapbook weekend crop. Doing that means I will be cleaning off my dining room table, which I am sure Steve would really appreciate. They say it is going to rain today and then the rest of the week will be nice. Seeing is believing...
The last two weekends Steve, or in the case of this weekend we have both been feeling ill. He was so sick last weekend that he was off work two days. Yesterday he had a headache so bad he was nauseous. I had the chills for what seemed like most of the day. Funny we didn't start out that way and even went to the fund raising breakfast at Pratum School in the morning with Lisa and Buck. We saw a lot of faces we didn't know and many that we did. It was nice to catch up with the families we see so infrequently. Today we both seem to be feeling better as both of us were able to get a lot of sleep. Norma came by and we had a nice visit. I am so fortunate because she is the sweetest lady and I am lucky to have her for a mother-in-law. I will be saying goodbye for now to dear Julie tomorrow. She is returning to California, her new home. The picture is of Julie and Sarah on a trip to our favorite scrapbook store.
Sarah is right in that when you do posts to your blog you should have pictures. The blog is less likely to look "boring" when you have pictures. So I decided to add one that Nate took of Sarah and Lisa when we were at the coast. It is one of a series of pictures he shot while holding down the shutter button. I cropped Steve out of the picture because it was just the back of his head. I do love posed pictures but the candid shots are lots of fun too. I have been busy spending time with friends this week. Sarah, Lisa and I met at the Noodle on Tuesday and had lunch with Julie and her Mom Tami. Then on Wednesday I spent the day scrapping with Camille at Shelly's which ended with Julie, Tami and Sarah meeting me there and then going over and having our nails done. I hadn't had a manicure in years and it was nice. Thursday I met with Julie and Tami again this time at our favorite coffee shop. We waited till Sarah showed up then went over to Shelly's again so Julie and Tami could visit. We also got a little shopping done, picked up lunch and came home to spend the rest of the day scrapping again. It was so much fun to spend time with "the girls". Julie returns to California Monday evening and if she has some time we hope to see her before she leaves. I spent today doing laundry after meeting Lisa for coffee. Haven't felt good all day and only got half the laundry done. Great I know what I am doing tomorrow.
Oh, my goodness was my first reaction to the headlines one dead, one wounded turned to shock and dismay as the death and injured count went up drastically. What could possibly drive a person to do such a horrible thing? We may never know the answers to this question because the shooter is dead. My prayers go out to the families of the wounded and deceased.
Okay, I know that many of you are thinking "So?" but this is more rain than even we get on a normal basis. To top this off it is cold too! Complain, complain I know but I want some sunny weather. Steve is home sick from work today and I know he isn't feeling up to par when I don't hear much from him. I woke to the house temp being just 63 degrees! For some reason the furnace stopped running sometime during the night. I thought we were out of fuel and I called to have some delivered. In the meantime Steve started a fire in the fireplace and returned to bed. Not long after they delivered the furnace oil thank goodness. Steve restarted the furnace while I was at the drug store getting more cold medicine for him. It is now livable in here. I am back in my scrapbook room working while listening to some old seventies music. Wow, right now if it weren't for my aches and pains I would think I was in my twenties again.
I passed on going outside to take photos and I am so glad I chose to get my scrapbook room more organized. I kept my friend Anne (sorry, it's not the greatest picture of her) in mind the whole time I was working, remembering how easy it was for her to walk into her room and find just what she wanted. Just putting paper away by manufacturer forced me to see what I had and also gave me renewed scrap ideas. I have my work table and small table left to clear off and then I can scrap!! I also decided that I needed to get another organizer cube to store my Karen Foster storage boxes so I could get them off the floor. As my dear friend Mary can testify to, it is no fun tripping over stuff in your scrapbook room. Both of us have done this and our first thoughts were "oh, I hope I don't land on any paper" and that is sad. I just need my three shelves for my room to store my photos and I will be a happy camper. I have been getting the "It is on my list of things to do" for quite awhile and I may be forced to take matters into my own hands. While I have been busy upstairs poor Steve is on the couch sick. It seemed to come on all of a sudden. I left for an hour and when I came back he was all stuffed up, running nose and eyes and looking really bad. Made him some of his killer chicken soup and now I am going back to working in my room. As we all know ladies there is nothing worse than a sick husband.
Everything smells so fresh after it rains. I had to go in to town to pickup somethings that I purchased for my sister-in-law Aurora at my favorite scrapbook store and that meant stopping at my favorite coffee shop too. I called Sarah and told her what I was going to do and she said "I'll meet you at the coffee shop after I drop Nate off his lunch." So we spent about an hour together having coffee and looking around at all the new stuff Shelly has in her store. I only bought what I was going in there to purchase, and though Sarah said she wasn't going to buy anything, spent less than twenty dollars thanks to a VIP coupon she had not used. It was a quick trip and it is nice enough that I don't want to work in my scrapbook room now. I may just get my camera and go out and take some pictures. If I am lucky I may be able to find at least one of our two kitties.
I am tired of the rain! Though I have allergies (hay fever) I want sun and lots of pretty flowers in my yard. I decided that spending the day cooped up in my house looking at all the rain just wasn't any fun. So instead I spent the day with my friend Camille scrapping at Scrapbook Fever, one of our local scrapbook stores here in town. There were lots of new, fun and pretty stuff in the store but I pretty much resisted. I managed to get a few pages that needed just a little extra finished as well as a couple of two page layouts. Not too bad considering that I had a very slow start. I am looking forward to next Thursday when I get to spend the day scrapping with Sarah and Julie! Julie flies into PDX on Monday and we can hardly wait to see her.
For all of you who don't know this my husband Steve is a pilot. And yesterday he had his BFR (biennial flight review) and he passed. Though he did say that he did a couple of things that you really shouldn't do when you have an instructor with you, one of them being a poor landing. He said he can't believe he did it, me either since he has over 300 hours logged as a pilot now. He had been waiting to reach this milestone so he could sign up for Angel Flight. It is an organization that provides free air transportation to people for medical treatment or compelling human needs. This is something Steve had expressed a desire to do since he became a licensed pilot. Helping others has always been something Steve has done and now he can do it both on land and in the air. Gee, more flying time what a sacrifice he is making. :) The picture was taken by Sarah last May on their flight to California to see my parents.
Today Sarah and I met at our favorite restaurant, Willamette Noodle Company for lunch. We try to do this at least once a month. She works less than five minutes from the restaurant so it makes it real convenient for her. We chatted about Easter at Aunt Chris' and at Nate's parents. His nieces had already finished with their egg hunt by the time Sarah and Nate got there. She took some pictures of course and has them posted on her blog. Nate's nieces are crazy about Sarah and love to pose for pictures for her. We also talked about how anxious we are to see our friend Julie. She is flying in from San Jose on Monday and will be here for a week. Oh goodie more opportunities to take pictures.
From one day to the next we go from temperatures in the high seventies, lots of flying bugs and air conditioning in the car to cool mid sixties and rain. It is a good thing I like to take pictures of flowers and other scenery to remind me of how pretty it does get around here. This was taken in my front yard in the flower bed by my front door. Sarah had brought Saphira and Boston over to run around in the yard a couple of Saturdays ago. I did take a few pictures of them but didn't go overboard since she does that all on her own. I chose instead to take pictures of the daffodils and the bumblebees. The rain has stopped and the sun is trying to break out. Here it is almost 4:30 and I haven't finished the laundry. I am just not in the mood. I would rather be finishing the scrapbook pages I started last night. Didn't take anything out for dinner so I am going to ask Steve to take me out. This just turned out to be one of those days where I didn't want to do much of anything.
Wow, after saying I was taking my camera to the crop I forgot it! Then I sent a text to Sarah to bring hers, which she did, and we never took any pictures. We were having too much fun, taking shots at the hubbies and boyfriends, scrapping, eating Mexican food and drinking margaritas. Then in the last hour I discovered that I had forgotten some of the pictures I was going to be doing layouts for and I remembered exactly where they were, on the stairway to my scrapbook room. Anybody know if there is a pill for old age? I need one badly!!
While I should be staying home and trying to get some things done, I chose not to. Instead I am joining the wonderful ladies I scrap with to do more scrapping. Because there was no room downstairs at Shelly's and with my knee bothering me so much I didn't feel I could hike the stairs with all my stuff, Janet and I passed. While talking about where to go it occurred to us to try Scrap Happens. So we extended the invite to Angie, Megan, Anne, Camille, Mary and Sarah. Mary can't make it, I haven't heard about Camille or Anne so at the least there will be five of us. I am bringing my camera because I don't always remember to get pictures of us having fun at our favorite pass time. I promise ladies to only post the really good ones.
Well, I decided to post the "silly" picture of my girls. I realized that no matter what silly faces or stunts they pull I totally enjoy it. When I told the girls I would be putting the picture on my blog, one said "okay" and the other "fine, her butt is bigger than mine anyway", true sisterly love. Aside from the silliness serious stuff is happening with my family. Lisa decided to at the spur of the moment apply at Columbia Sportswear and it appears things may be progressing towards a job offer. She likes the people she works with at Adidas but there is a situation that is making it impossible for her to enjoy her job anymore. Sarah, according to her blog yesterday, loves her job and was showered with compliments and praise at a company dinner last night. Things are going really well for Audio-Mojo, so Steve can't help but love his job too. He is even flying to work everyday now. It seems all is right with the world.
After years of pictures of their hands or funny faces I was actually able to get a couple of very good pictures of Lisa and Sarah. Not to say that I didn't get a picture of their backsides first. I asked them to pose and that is what I got and it would serve them right if I posted it here. So be forewarned my sweeties, be nice to Mom. :)
These are a couple of the pictures I have managed to find of my girls that I don't think they will squawk about my posting them. Darn if they don't deliberately make faces or clown around when I am trying to take pictures of them. One of these days they are going to regret doing that and it won't be because they weren't warned. These pictures were taken in September of last year at my niece Katy's wedding. Sarah was her maid of honor. Nate took the picture of Sarah and I took the one of Lisa with the bride.
