Just a Quick One

I havent been updating my blog..as I'm sure you are aware...but I have been so busy that there just hasn't been time but just to show you that I dont always sit around doing nothing , I put what I was working on tonite on here. Now that you know I am still alive and well..I'm going to bed.

Trip up North

This was my weekend off...wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...so Cecil and I decided we wanted to head up to the UP and get some photos of Tahquamenon Falls before they melted. I have been up there many times in the summer and wanted to see how it looked in the winter. I had heard it was just gorgeous, so I wanted to get some pics. Then we thought we might head over to a lighthouse near Brimley and get some photos of it covered in snow as well. It seemed at first that our plans would be ruined because the weather was calling for it to warm up and rain on top of it. We decided to go anyway and hope for the best. By the time we got to Macinaw City, it was so foggy you could hardly see and so we ate breakfast and went on across the bridge, hoping for better weather when we got to the falls. A note here, I had never been to Macinaw City in the winter and was really surprised to see that 90% of the businesses were closed! I never knew that it was strictly open in the summer. As we crossed the bridge, I was looking down at the frozen Straits. The ice breaker had been thru the week before and you could see where they had made a path and it at frozen over again. It was something to see. I had hope to get a glimpse of the island but it was way too foggy. the fog stayed with up til a ways past Engandine but then it started to clear up. We stopped at the Upper Falls first . There were a ton of snowmobilers there..just taking a bathroom break i guess..lol...cause the gift shops etc werent open. We walked in to the falls and we could hear them but not as loudly as usual. We were hoping they were still frozen but they were partially thawed. It was an amazing sight! Very dramatic! The snow was up to the backs of the park benches and that was kind of cool. We went on to the Lower Falls only to find that we couldnt go see them. There wasnt a path plowed into them. Would have been a mile hike each way and we didnt have any snow shoes so it just wasnt possible. That was kind of a bummer but what ya gonna do...
We headed on over to Brimley to get some shots of the lighthouse there. We ended up taking a short detour over to Whitefish Point to get some shots of the lighthouse there too. If that name sounds familiar, think of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It went down not far from there. Also tried to get some "arty" lol..shots of the fog coming off Lake Superior where the snow was on it but they didnt come out real well.
Then we went off to Brimley to get our photos of the Iroquois Point lighthouse. Also got some shots of some snowmobile riders riding thier sleds across Lake Superior. On the way home, we wanted to get some photos of the bridge with the ice under it and maybe the lighthouse there at Macinaw City but the fog was still there. So off to home we went. Made it just in time to watch the hockey game, which we woudl have been better off not seeing..lol..
That was my Saturday..how was yours?



upper falls march7,2009


another shot of the falls


cecil at the falls

notice how deep the snow is.......

lighthouse at whitefish point


same lighthouse, different angle



also at whitefish point. notice how deep the snow
is on the walkway to the lake?


lighthouse at iriquois point near brimley, mi


the tower at brimley



snowmobile on lake superior

see how high the snow is getting by the deck



huge icicle on the back of my neighbors house


looked much prettier from my kitchen window

this is actually kind of pretty

good thing the birds went south..lol

view of my front yard..well it will be a yard
this all melts

Well, before I get started, let me just say that whenever I post the pictures after I write whatever I decide to write about, the pictures always head for the top of the post. This time, I put the pictures in first, trying to see if they will move to the bottom of the post where I want them. All of this extra effort could be avoided if I could only remember how Susan told me to move stuff around. Every time I try it, I end up deleting stuff...

As I was looking out my kitchen window yesterday, I was briefly charmed by how pretty everything looked with the fresh snow. Notice the word briefly..i got over it. Anyway, you know how fresh snow looks...when the sun is shining on it and nobody has walked on it yet? It absolutely glittered! It looked like someone had thrown thousands of tiny tiny diamonds all over it. The sparkle was phenomenal. I was so enchanted by it, that I threw on my coat and gloves and went outside to take some pictures. Of course, the view from the deck was not at the same angle as the view from my kitchen window, and the snow was way too deep to walk out into it to get the picture to look like what i saw. But I took some pics anyway and thought you might like to see what Monday morning looked like here. Then I was playing in Paintshop and made something out of one of the pics that I thought I might share with you as well..Arent you the lucky ones..lol...I took the photo of the tree in my front yard..cropped it to a smaller size and used a program called virtual painter on it..then I used the results to make another project which I will post also..hopefully at the TOP of the post..lol.
Meanwhile, I have weather news...we are going to hit 30 on Thursday! Now I know that this doesnt sound exceptionally warm and a few years ago , I would have said that was freezing..but you gotta see...it's 3 right now..thats right..3 lousy degrees..and I just had to take the dog outside for the millionth time since I got home. Ok, I exaggerate..I took her out twice,Alec has been taking her out tonite but he was in the shower just now. So of course, it takes her forever to find the perfect spot to do her business...and it really shouldnt cause the only space she has is the spot we shoveled for her..the rest of the yard , the snow is over her head!!
Little Mali is home from the hospital..poor little buggy...it's awfully hard when your children are sick and you have to trust other people to make them well..Hope she is doing better today and that Boo isnt totally worn out.
Well thats it for now. I need to work on some more of those Christmas pages so I can take those scrapkits off my desktop and move them to the storage drive!!
G'nite.

The cure

I have finally found the cure for hot flashes. Are you ready? It's winter in Kingsley,MI..yup..its the truth. How do i know? Well after scientific testing of course. The temps this morning when I went to work were -2 and we ended up with a daytime high of about 11 I think it was. Right this minute, the computer says it's 5. My sorry excuse for a dog..she's in my bad books at the moment..she found and ate half a bag of chocolate covered peanuts..if she lives I might have to do something drastic..i was saving those for tomorrow..anyway...she decided she needed to go outside...again...for the 14 millionth time this evening...I wasnt very happy about this..you couldnt tell, right?...so im fussing as im putting on my coat and boots and im starting to really get warm..sweat is forming on my forehead and my back..well folks..it only took about 3 seconds outside and I wasnt hot anymore..That's right, No sweat, no red face. I'm not sure I'm up to running out there about 3 am when I have the next one though. Now if I could find a way to put that cold air in a pill..Fai?Can you help me out here? We could be rich!!!

The new year

not sure if you can tell what she did..but under her eyes you can kinda tell where she cut her face.

my baby before she decided to tear her face up
Well, once again I'm behind in posting on my blog. I guess real life just keeps getting in the way..lol. Not a lot going on at our house just now...well except for the dog tearing up her face trying to get out of her kennel. Yup. We came home from work/school this past Tuesday and the beast had broken 4 small metal bars..with her teeth apparently,as her gums were bloody though luckily there were no teeth missing. She then tried to push her face thru the opening she had made. You would think that when it hurt her she would have stopped but not my dog. Nope, she just kept trying even though all she managed to do was cut up her face.
I guess everyone knows that I had to have a colonoscopy this year. Actually, I was supposed to have it last year when I turned 50 but I managed to put it off for a year. I was really dreading it too. I was the last holdout in the family and finally gave in and got it done. I gotta tell you, it wasnt as bad as I had thought it would be. The prep was terrible.. and not only because my insurance didnt pay for the pills. Pricey things they were too! Along about the 3rd dose of 5 I was starting to feel real nauseous and it didnt get any better after that. The actual procedure was a piece of cake after the pills..lol. They had to call IV Therapy to get my IV started. Something about my veins having brick walls..lol...I asked them what they expected after making me get totally dehydrated for the procedure. I told the RN in the procedure room I didnt want to wake up early and she made sure I did'nt..lol..As a matter of fact, I could have slept the whole day! If Cecil hadnt gone with me, I still wouldnt know what the doc said..lol. All I remember is him saying everything was clean...I thought he meant that I had done my prep the way I was supposed to, so I thanked him and went back to sleep..hehehehehehe....Turns out he meant that everything was as it should be which considering our family medical history is nothing short of a miracle. I'm just glad its over for another 5 years. The bad part is that Dr. has patients on the unit where I work so I have to keep hiding when he comes up there..lol..One of the RN's that I work with suggested I ask him which smile he likes better..lol...but I dont think I have the nerve.
Later...oh..by the way..3 new scrap pages over at the other blog..check 'em out!

Christmas at Nana's

Well...it's over. Bummer...Christmas this year came way too quick and left the same way. I had a fabulous time though! My daughter Susan and her family came for the holiday and stayed a week with me and I loved it! Those little girls of hers are adorable..and thier mom isnt half bad either..lol..thought she does resist sitting on my lap! They had a rough time getting here ..took them 16 hours to make a 9 hour drive. They ran into a bunch of bad weather. Apparently they dont care much for snow either. WE had about 2 foot out in the yard and Susan flat out refused to let the girls go out and play in it..lol...I told her it would be ok. If Noe fell thru a snowdrift we could dig her back out but she wasnt having any of it..lol.. So, instead we baked and decorated gingergread men and put glitter names on stockings. Noe decided that her new name was Pumpkin and Mali learned to say Nana and how to do a "victory dance" ..lol...I'm going to post some videos and pics here..for the better looking ones(I made some scrapbook pages) head on over to the Christmas in Kingsley blog. It isnt really finished yet but some cool pics are there. I'm going to get the neat videos on here before Susan does..lol..

Christmas shopping

So, i started Christmas shopping today. I guess you can tell how much I dont enjoy it by the fact that I put it off until the week before Christmas. I did pretty well too considering I have come down with an ugly cold..figures doesnt it? Anyway, I had some questions for Susan about stuff I saw for the girls but she didnt answer her phone so hopefully she will read this blog tonite and respond while I still know where the receipts are. I got both of the girls pjs..kind of a Christmas tradition for our family. I think it all started with the fact that the folks wanted us wearing nice pjs for the Christmas morning pics , so we all always got pjs that were opened on Christmas Eve. I got the blanket kind, heavy fleece with feet in them. I also got Noe a microphone, clipo's, and a pink My Little Pony. Alec got her a pretend mp3 player with headphones. I got Mali some stackable stars that play music and a purple My Little Pony and I still owe her one. Alec got her these drum things..cant remember what they are called but they light up and make noise..lol..now, if Mali doesnt like My Little Ponys then I owe her 2 presents. I also got the girls frosty gum bubble bath..well its from bath and body and its shampoo, bodywash and bubble bath all in one. Need a few more suggestions for Mali....I got what I was told to get for Fai but for Susan I have a couple questions..like...what season of Bones is she looking for? All of these could have been answered if she would answer her phone..hmmmmm..maybe she knew it was me.
When we got home,..the dog had managed to get out of her kennel..we still dont know how because its still latched shut...makes you wonder doesnt it. At least she didnt really destroy anything and Alecs room is already so messy that you cant really tell she did anything.
Hopefully,Susan will respond quickly so I know if I did ok or not..and if she is bringing the glitter or was I supposed to buy it cause I cant remember. Guess I'll go blow my nose again, wash my hands and start making some of that tons of junk food that Susan thinks is gonna be here..lol