Thank you Kevin and Jay!

Look at this beautiful gate that Kevin and Jay built for me. Yesterday working outside with a

cold wind blowing, the boys built this beautiful gate. It swings inward from the center and over to the right in accordian style. I LOVE it! It is a beautiful gate and a wonderful gift of their time and talent. Now I have several more I would like for different areas on the deck! ...in case they are still bored with no job....

Jennifer is 37!

Wow, where did the time go? My oldest child is 37 years old as of yesterday morning at 3:50 am...more or less. Our tradition is to spend the day together if possible. So for this birthday Jennifer and I went to La Conner to one of her favorite restaurants!





The bonus was that two of her brothers got to go with us...Jay and Kevin were available to join us.
We picked Kevin up on our way north and spent the day hanging out together. We had a wonderful lunch at the Calico Cupboard in LaConner and did a tiny bit of "shopping" in the darling shops there...it was VERY cold and blustery, so made that short and sweet.
We then went to check out the site for our family reunion this year. Kevin and Sherry chose Bay View State Park. A really cute park with a nice big wonderful lawn for games and kids space, cabins and access to the beach. Just a very short walk from the cabins and camping area!
We found a gas station/mini mart with gas UNDER $2 a gallon...a bonus for sure. Heading home, it was hard to remember these were grown up people that had once been my babies. It is good to have Jay living on the mainland again...the only thing that would have made our little mini road trip more fun would have been if Brian and Greg had been with us. I should have planned a little better!

Home from California

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Kula, Merl and I are home from our latest adventure. We were down in San Jose for the Northern California Cairn Terrier specialty dog show. Merl and his littermates,Tipsy and Ivy as well as his best friend Padme were entered over the weekend. They were the youngest entered and did a wonderful job in the ring. Confident and well behaved (for the most part). They all placed in the ribbons and we had lots of compliments about them, so I was very pleased with the results (of course, we would have loved to win something .... that will come as they get older).

Pat Gentry and I drove my van down, looking forward to some balmy California skies...DENIED~

We stayed in Yreka the first night with Ivy's family. What a wonderful time we had with them. Yreka is a darling town and Heidi and Mike are such a wonderful couple. Lucky for us too, because the puppies got to run and play hard before starting out for the day. We awoke to two inches of snow...and I had left the chains in the garage!!! No problem, Mike and Heidi led the way to Les Schwab and $90 later, we were on the road. Twenty miles down the road we were required to exit the freeway and put the chains on. (THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU TO MIKE. He insisted on doing the cold dirty deed. THANK YOU AGAIN!) For the next 40 miles or so we poked along safe and sound with our little caravan of Mike and Heidi leading the way.

We made it to the show ground, depositing our gear and then on to the hotel to settle in. It was fun seeing friends we don't normally show with and all the lovely dogs. The weather was HORRID...cold and rainy. Luckily the rings were inside, the grooming however was on a covered breezeway porch...and it was breezy and damp and very, very cold!!! Pretty miserable experience on that front.

It was a very safe and uneventful return trip. We scooted away from the show grounds as fast as we could to try to beat an incoming storm...success! We made it back to Yreka staying with Heidi and Mike again. Greeted by homemade turkey and rice soup and a huge bowl of fresh cut fruit. Puppies racing, racing, tumbling and playing, glad to be free again...if only for the evening. We left early yesterday morning and made the trip with no incident or bad weather, whoray!

I wonder where we will go next...

BIONIC GIRL

The good news is that Kula had her second ACL repair today. She came through the surgery today with flying colors. The doctor was very pleased with how it all went.
It was a really hard wait from December 25th until today...but we made it! Hopefully by the end of the summer we will be back training..my very own bionic girl! My first best girl...

Passion for fiber

Just added to Ravelry (www.ravelry.com) more yarn for my stash. A good thing to do, since I forgot I had some of it! Isn't it beautiful?

A generation gap regarding Facebook.

I have come to the conclusion that facebook is a social network for a different generation. I won't say younger...I refuse to play that card, just different. I don't understand why I would need or want to know that a friend of an acquaintance of my nephew's wife went to coffee (and enjoyed it) with another friend (who she graduated with 15 years ago and hasn't seen or spoken with since). My generation doesn't use it for anything...well, some of us kicking and screaming so that we can know what is going on in our children's lives. Kids like mine really don't use it either though, so there goes that rationale. I got on so that I could be part of the family and know what was going on. I have an incredibly hard time figuring out where things came from or how to get to the place to answer them.

I know I am not the MOST techno savy person on the planet, but neither am I the most dense. I just don't get it. (Now MySpace made sense to me..but everybody left there.)

I have gotten into one really good scrabble game with Jay, but it is so ssssssssssllllllllllllloooooooowwwwwwwww moving I want to pull my hair out. There are no tiles left, I still have 4 and we are tied. We have been playing for a week now. I tried to start another couple, but those pooped out really fast.

So, basically I think I am about to pull the plug on Facebook. It is too frustrating.

Latte foam

I can not make anything like this art. I can however make absolutely beautiful, thick, rich wonderful foam. I love my ancient espresso machine. It is a renovated Starbucks Estro Vapore. I have had it for 11 years! I usually only make one latte a day. Now and then I go crazy and make

two. Sometimes, I take it with me when I travel and make wonderful foam and lattes for my friends. It is crazy how happy it makes me to make foam, makes me even happier to feel it on my lips as I drink the rich lovely espresso it is cloaking and keeping warm. The grand finale is sharing the foam at the bottom of the cup with my dogs!