My Surprise Celebration!

 My family surprised me with a party with cocktails, balloons, cake and gifts!

My gift set of rocks....
that's a whole other story and post.

My sisters, Rhonda & Melinda

My older sister, Patsy

My fabulous suitcase cake

My brother saying the shield no longer belongs to me
and he will gladly take it from here.

Thank you family & friends!

20 years of service!

Congratulations!

My sister, Melinda, 

works with the school system.  

She works with special needs children. 

She's amazing & celebrates her 20th year!

Dog Days

It was such a nice day out 

I decided to take photos of my dogs.

Winston, he looked so serious
and I couldn't get him to lighten up.

Maximus also looked a little serious but curious.

Bella, she's all game

Maximus was staring right at me!
 Winston on the other hand would not come near the camera

Again!  Winston would not come near the camera!

And when he did he was distracted!

Finally, three together, see how nice Maximus & Bella pose.
Not Winston, he's annoyed.

Handsome Dog.

Wise Dog

Fun Dog

I may have to photoshop some holiday hats on them

 for this year's christmas card,

what do you think?

On the road, again!

Heading back to Arizona and looking forward to some warmer weather.  I'll be checking in with my blog when I get back to my craft studio to show you the goodies I made......

Metalsmithing & plastersmithing

I know you ask what the heck is metalsmithing and plastersmithing....just hang on a little bit longer and I'll be showing  you.  My on-line class was awesome and I love what I've learned.

Still on the road...........

I'm still in Nebraska and it's cold here.  Currently, I'm in northeast Nebraska visiting my father-in-law.  Today has been spend on the laptop & internet, whoo hoo.  I downloaded some of my photos.  As usual I don't take enough photos.  I stared out the car window today and can see the beauty of the land in this area of Nebraska and I ask myself can I catch the beauty with my camera?  Ah...my camera is not with me!  I've been so careful not to have it out in the cold temps that I've not had it with me much.  

I will share a few of a trip I took to Lawrence, Kansas

Home of University of Kansas Jayhawk football team. 

My nephew, Pat Lewandowski, #91 plays for KU 

and I couldn't pass up the chance to see him play.

Road trip of seven total hours through four states

with my sister, Melinda.  We had a blast!  

We met up with Pat's parents, Mark & Julie and

another aunt and uncle, Joyce & Doyle.

I keep saying this...but it was windy and cold.
Julie, Joyce, Jobi, Doyle & Mark

Pat, #91 waiting to get on the field.

Defense needs to get ready #91

#91 coming off the field

#91 looking awesome on defense!

#91 FANS!!!

Me & Patrick 

This is Coach Turner Gill

I don't know if you know this about me...but I graduated from the University of Nebraska.  The other thing you might not know about me is I'm a huge football fan and a die hard Nebraska Husker fan. 

( For my 8th grade art collage project I made a collage of football players!)
  
Anyways, Coach Gill was the quaterback of the Huskers in the 80's and I have been a fan of his ever since.  
Now here I am within yards of him!  What an honor.  I followed him when he went to the Green Bay Packers to work with players.  I followed him when he went to the University of Buffalo and made champions out of them.
Well, at KU he's having trouble getting wins.  On this particular day, his team tied it up in the 4th quarter and went into OT.
He went for the win by going for 2, but an epic fail and lost.
I'm still a fan of Coach Gill!

Halloween at the Haunted Mansion!

My sister loves Halloween at her house.

  The table was set with lots of goodies, cupcakes,

 cookies, candy bags and scary stuff, too.

Here's the outside of the spooky house!

Her house was one of the local paper's 

Top 10 scary houses!

I'm in Nebraska

I'm in Nebraska visiting my parents and family.  I have limited access to the internet, which I'm finding not to be so bad.  I went to a craft show but really what it was, was a large building full of some serious merchandisers, not so much "crafters".  Mostly western themed things, not my thing. I walked out without any treasures.  I have down time but can't seem to find a comfortable place to create.  That's my mission is to set up some space in the basement to start on my next project.  I'm also working on my christmas card idea.


Before I left on my trip I cooked up a turkey ... had
to make room in the freezer for this year's turkey that   my husband gets from work.  Normally, we have it during the Super Bowl, but for some reason we didn't do that this year.  Anyways, we had a full blown turkey meal.  My brother mentioned he wanted apple crisp, so I remembered I had two large apples, butter crisp apples?  Here's my version of apple crisp, it was very tasty and my brother approved.