HELLO TO MY LONG-LOST BLOGGIN' FRIENDS!!!!!!

Can you believe I have been away soooo long?
I have been a busy, busy girl lately. Seems I have not even found time to sleep. Seriously! I have been staying up til 3 or 4 every morning and getting back up by 8am! Today I decided to get some of my affairs in order. As well as not sleeping, I have not been cleaning my house, grocery shopping or any of those other life duties. I haven't even been using my camera and until today had not gotten any of my trip photos (and a bunch of others waiting on my PC) edited and uploaded! But today I had the whole house to my self and even though the house is not spotless, it is at least picked up and clean. And I did get all of my trip photos edited (Bryanna & Darwin have been dying to see them).
Tonight I am going to attempt to catch up on my blogging, lots of photos and stories, grab a drink and a snack!

So, last we talked I said I woudl post some more photos from our trip up the coast. . .
This is King City where my SIL is from, it is a small agricultural town. I was teasing him that I needed to get Monkey a pressed penny from King City. He assured me there were now penny presses in KC. I asked if there was a train track - there ya go - we would have pressed penies from King City! I placed 5 pennies on the track when we got there and once we heard the train go by we took a walk to the tracks and Monkey got her penny off of the tracks. Where there's a will, there's a way!!!!!

While we were in San Francisco I got to go see Alcatraz - it has been on my short list of places I want to see. We didn't get to see a lot - Monkey was not enjoying prision life! But at least I got to see it and got to check it off my list!
Traffic at rush hour in LA is NOT YOUR FRIEND!!!!!! We were literaly stuck on the freeway for 3 hours! As soon as we got the opportunity to get off we did - how about that we were right by Disneyland! We didn't actually go to Disneyland, but we did go to Downtown Disney so that Monkey could stretch and play. She was miserable being stuck in that car! There was music playing and the Disney Magic is just so strong that She began to dance,

and dance. . .

and dance some more!!! I have never seen anything so cute in my life! Peaople were stopping to watch her and talk to her. We should have put a hat out for coins!!!!

Silly as it will sound - this next picture is probably one of my favorite parts of the whole trip! That's right. . .we found a Winchell's Doughnut shop right down the street from where we were staying in Poway! Finding this gem really changed my mood for the rest of the day! I had not slept well, and had nightmares all night long. I even woke up sobbing and couldn't stop for about an hour. Thank God no one else was awake! But finding this little piece of heaven from my childhood just on accident was a little gift from God I am sure. Thankfully I used my camera bag as my purse on this trip so I had my camera with me when we found it. I even asked another customer to take this photo of us with our doughnuts in front of the traditions poster! Do you all know about Winchell's? They are the best!!!

Later that day and before we left for Phoenix we went to the park in Poway with Darwin's family for a birthday party for him. It was a beautiful day and a great end to a great trip. This is of the boys doing the see no evil, hear no evil, speack no evil thing. Silly boys!
So that was a few highlights from my trip. Now onto just my life. Once we got home I was busier than ever. I had a couple of classes to get ready for and a photography talk at the West Valley Mixed Media Club meeting. Did I mention that at this point I had still NOT done my taxes? Yes that is true - but finally the day before they were do I got them all done and e-filed. Thank God for computers!!!!
Even though I still had a lot of stuff I really NEEDED to get done I decided to work on a project I have been thinking about for 3 years! I have been wanting to make a little cloth book all our of the left over fabrics from My Mom's and my wedding dresses. So this is the beginning of that project.

The pearled lace is one of the sleeves from my wedding dress. The lace on the spine is from my Mother's.
It took me forever (okay - that's an exaggeration) to get the cover made. But finally I started on the first page. this is it just laid out on the graph paper to make sure it worked.

This is it once it was all sewn together. There is alot more finishing work to be done to the page, but this is what the layout will look like. The cover and this one page took me about 22 hours to make! I frankly don't have that kind of time to spend on this right now. So it all got carefully packed away today for another time.

This brings us to the next class I am offering at the Creative Quest. It is a very cool travel journal/album made with (my favorite) Graphic 45 papers! The class will be a Sunday class - June 7th. I took this with me on my recent trip to Calif, writting in this album was a great way to unwind at the end a busy day on the road.

I am sure you are like me and want to remember every little detail of our summer vacations, this timely class will really help you do that. It is almost an instant scrapbook. Once you have taken the class and made your album you will be all set! All of your journaling and momentos will be collected each day of your trip and placed easily in one of the pockets. Once you get home you just need to print some pictures from each day of yoru trip and place them in the album and you are all done. Nothing could be easier. It stays closed with and elastic closure so you wont lose anything while you are traveling. Call the store or pop by if you want to sign up for this one.

Thursday was such a BEAUTIFUL day!!! The weather was perfection! Those of you that are not from AZ you just don't realize that scortching temps are just around the corner so you have to get all of your outside adventures done pretty soon or it will be too late. Monkey and I had the whole day to ourselves and I decided about 9am that we would get ready and go to the Phoenix Zoo. I have never had good luck at our zoo, it is always too hot and all of the animals hide. But hopefully they would all be out enjoying this gorgeous day. I was right - they were all out and Monkey loved it!!!! Since we were all the way downtown I dropped her off at her Mom's office so they could drive home together. We ended up meeting an hour later for dinner at Chic-fil-a and then I ended up going back to their house to play until 9pm. It was a long day but a GREAT day!!!!

Oh. . .I forgot. . .EASTER! That's right, in the middle of everything else I have going on, I hosted Easter dinner and festivities at our house for 30 people! My girls and my Mom really helped - thankfully. So actually I just had to clean (okay straighten up, no time for real cleaning) and bake a turkey and a ham. Everyone brought a dish and it was an wonderfully easy day. And surprisingly enough the weather was nice and sunny, it had rained ALL day on Saturday!

My Cousin's kids after the egg hunt

Egg Relay Race

Monkey with a mouthful of jelly beans!

Yes - she even has an Elmo for her Easter basket!

Monkey's first time at dying Easter Eggs. Didn't she and her Mommy do a great job?

So there you have it - this is just a little bit of what has been going on in my life lately. Cutting paper, teaching, doing taxes, Helping the kids with the broken water pipes that flooded their house, watching Monkey, and even a little bit of playtime - not much.

I hope you guys are all staying busy doing something you love!!!!

Hopefully I will be back soon

M