Monday, December 29, 2008

Pictures


Cotton-eyed Joe.......

My picture of Kristen and Alex with their mustache's turned out, but my picture of Lisa's eyebrows was just black....must not have flashed!? (She's probably glad....!)

We made spinning pictures

We still eat breakfast in the hall......

Kristen gave Alex Shoots and Ladders for Christmas. They want a supply of all of the classics!

We just stuck our Christmas tree in the middle of the living room!!! (Well, by the edge of the living room/dining room) This is the day after Christmas.....the snowman must be sleeping!

Thankful

I am thankful for nice fresh clean sheets to crawl between at night.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Shoveling snow with our noses!


We had a Christmas Party (Mom, Dad, Lisa, Kristen, Alex and the Rigby's) on Monday night. We played 'shovel the snow with our noses'--which means putting a bit of vasoline on the end of your nose, and moving a pile of cotton balls from the table into the bowl. We 'played' (Michael won).......and now we are just enjoying 'playing around' with the cotton balls. When I download my other camera, I will post the pictures of dad with cotton eyes, and Lisa with cotton eyebrows. Fairly amusing!

Loser........

I spoke too soon, the next game DAD got THREE 7 letter words IN A ROW!!! I lost by 200 points!! Joy.

Friday, December 19, 2008

I won!

After a LONG losing streak, I won Scrabble with our highest scoring game ever: Mom at 565 and Dad at 528! I beat the highest points ever for one turn at 128 points with the word Syzygal (when the earth, moon and sun line up in a straight line). It was with the Z on a double word score, and the word on a triple word score, and the S making another word.....plus using all 7 letters! Cool, huh! This game I used all 7 letters twice, and dad once.......that is a record, too. It was a fun one. Took us 3 days to play in and amongst all other activities that get in the way (like work)!
Hurray for me!

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Merry Christmas to us!

Lisa took us to a Voice Male concert tonight! It was FABULOUS! Made me feel in the Christmas Spirit. They are SO good, and funny, and heartwarming, and it was great. Thanks a million, million, million to Lisa. Merry Christmas to dad and me!

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Birds of Prey Assembly


Great Horned Owl

An Owl

This is a little dark, I can lighten it up in Picasa, but then I don't know how to get it from Picasa to Blogger, so you have to just look at it dark........I thought it was funny, this falcon just ran across the floor!!!

A beautiful falcon
Pretty Birds

Saturday, December 13, 2008

At Wheeler Farm


When I was doing the fair at Wheeler Farm with/for Annie; Cade and Brennan and Michael and EmmaRay came, and I got to take a break and go on a tour of the farm with these precious little grandchildren, that I don't do near enough fun things with! They are so sweet.

Brennan riding a saw horse!

We got to look at chickens, pigs, horses, cows and sheep (who 'baa' with their tongues hanging out). I forgot I had my camera with me, so we only got pictures witht he chickens! It was too cold to go back and see the other critters again!

Peeking out the windows of the play house

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Wow!

I paid $1.27.9 for gas today!!!! I filled my car from the empty light on to full for under $23. Felt good!

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Thanks

By the way, I just want, again, to thank you all for the wonderful camera for Christmas. I use it 'exclusively' as my purse, too!! It is so great, and little, and with a little more practice will take terrific pictures. (Well, I like the pictures that I have taken so far, but a professional (like the rest of you are) might not....:)
We love it. What a terrific Christmas!

Friday, December 5, 2008

Just a reminder


This is just a reminder for anyone that hasn't paid Annie for the Tux's/suits yet.......:)

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Our vacation


Ok, I finally got our vacation all blogged in about 5 posts.........so keep on looking down. I will just add this one more picture of our first sunset at sea. We thought that it was funny because the sun was setting over the land instead of into the ocean!

Sat, Sun and Monday at Sea........Our grand vacation!


Eating breakfast at the motel in Florida before beginning our Journey. We traveled a total distance of 2,357 nautical miles by ship at an average speed of 20.3 knots

Waiting at the hotel for a shuttle bus to take us to the port. There were 18 of us in all.

Unbelievable how HUGE this ship is: 18 stories tall, 948.02 feet long, breadth 165.7 feet, and 219.8 feet tall above the keel. Passengers: 3,599 Crew: 1200 A city!!!

This grand plaza is the first thing you see when you board the ship. This was the Princess Ruby's 3rd week at sea, she was a brand new and BEAUTIFUL ship.

How annoying, here is another one that WILL NOT stay turned the right direction! Anyway all of the dining rooms had the greatest lights that twinkled, like stars, on the ceilings.

We are aboard ship!

Playing mini golf on deck 18 (we were still in Port at Fort Lauderdale)

This was a great place, four outdoor decks, the big outdoor Movie Screen, the lounge chairs, the pool. Rarely crowded, either!! {This movie was Hair Spray!}

This is so odd, because the picture is edited to be turned the right way, plus I ONLY took pictures from one direction......plus I edited the ones that came out turned, and yet this one will ONLY display this direction. So, tilt your head. This was one of our favorite things to do. Sit and read, or watch a movie on the outdoor screen or just sit! It was great: outdoors, and beautiful! We couldn't stop in Jamaica as it was too stormy to pass the reef. So we spent Monday as sea, also. Sunday was stormy enough it made walking on the ship a little difficult! Kind of fun.
It is the 'Tuesday after', and I am still rocking a bit. Kind of strange.


Dad with his chocolate something or other. I kind of caught him talking--but soon he was eating up every delicious mouthful!!!

Bobbi with her key lime pie and Neil with his Creme Broulee

All the food was so beautiful. This was Stephanie's favorite dessert, she ordered it almost every night: Chocolate Mousse on a brownie. The brownie was thinner than a cracker at the bottom of this beautiful chocolate mousse. It was delicious and beautiful!

Tuesday at Grand Cayman


Grand Cayman Island from our ship-it was cloudy in the morning, but cleared and was beautiful!

On the tender heading to Grand Cayman Island looking back at our magnificent ship. We slept on the 11th story!! It had 18 stories. Th 7th had a deck all the way around which was a fabulous place to take a walk or a jog---1/2 mile once around!

Our first view on Grand Caymen was this very tall man!!!

On Grand Caymen, we rented a car. We drove all the way around the island. We didn't stop to get a picture of the church there, but it was 'Mormon church shape' so easily recognizable, but it was painted a bright yellow. I wanted a picture, but wasn't the one driving!!! One had to be careful when you parked anywhere--hence the above sign!!

This was the first place we went snorkeling. We had the fins and the masks, but no flotation devices. The dark places in the water were seaweed beds that were very close to the surface...so you could go WAY out a long way. I got out past all the dark and into the turquoise, and then I got a mouth/nose full of water. {Extremely salty} I realized that I was tired, and I kind of went into a panic and thought I was going to drown. It wasn't too thrilling.......but I managed to turn around and head for shore, snorkeling all the way. Later when we snorkeled with life jackets on, that was thrilling. I could have stayed out all day!!! Something akin to swimming in a salt water aquarium. Quite a magnificent world under the water!

First time I'd ever seen a poinsettia growing in the wild. Merry Christmas!

Mom and Stephanie walking along the path lined with Conch shells

A beautiful, secluded place along a river

Beautiful orchids everywhere

Dad and I enjoyed looking at the fruit trees. Most were not in season yet, but this was a Calabash tree. Wonder if calabash tastes good, and what color it is when ripe?

If you look really hard, you can see the little bird with the yellow belly. They flew and flitted so fast it was hard to get a good picture......they were so cute!

There were tons of these cute little birds with yellow bellies flying all over. Sweet.

I thought this looked like a prehistoric plant with man eating capabilities!

We heard a rustling in the underbrush as we were walking through the woods, and we saw this very angry looking crab--walking sideways as crabs do, and very unhappy that we had invaded his territory. I've never heard of a dry land crab!

This is called a 'Blue Iguana'.......looked like all the other gray ones we saw!

On the tender heading back to the ship from a fun day in Grand Cayman

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Wednesday-Cozumel, Mexico


We left our room for a fun day in Mexico (this was before the steward came in to clean the room, which he did about 5 times a day)!!!

The ship from Cozumel

Wouldn't this be a nice place to stay?? On the Mexican Mainland.

A person carving obsidian trinkets to sell....

This weaver was making GORGEOUS tablecloths. This was probably the only souvenir that I would have purchased, money being no object. As it was, we so enjoyed looking :)

We had taken the ferry from Cozumel and were now somewhere in mainland Mexico

Native Mayan's in Native costumes. One interesting fact: All people of Mayan descent have a round purple and green circle birthmark at the base of their spine about the size of a 50 cent piece. Many orientals also have this same birthmark. Amazing!

These buildings were put together with limestone and a mortar of sand mixed with chickle [chewing gum!] No kidding!! And here they stand all these years later!

I took a lot of pictures of Iguana's because they were novel (at first).....then they were just 'everyday' normal. This one was right at my feet in the path. A bit startling!

The Mayan city of Tulum sat on the cliffs above gorgeous aqua blue waters

Mom and Dad in Tulum

Heavenly Father makes the most beautiful flowers EVERYWHERE!!

Random horses on a roof

A street scene in Cozumel

In Cozumel, the Green Frog was the designated meeting place!

Oops, I didn't realize this turned our blurry. Cozumel was the only place we docked at a pier, the rest of the time we had to be boated to shore in the tenders. This was coming back to the ship after our fun day at Tulum.