Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July!! I hope your day was as fun and relaxing as ours. Nothing like a four-day weekend to relax ya (and make you completely lazy).

The park they use for our city's fireworks is only about a mile from our house. Usually, we'll go outside on the driveway, or walk down to the park with our lawn chairs to watch the show. This year, we both decided it was just too hot. However, we can also see the fireworks fairly well from our upstairs windows. Maybe there was slightly less ambiance, but it was definitely more comfy AND it had the side effect of not being so loud. One interesting thing that I hadn't known before: Sara kitty was actually interested in watching the fireworks!! She didn't stay for the whole show, but she definitely watched a few minutes with us. Our cats never fail to surprise me.

Starting Over

When we went back home in May to visit family, I took my finished Colorado vacation album to show to my family. On the way home, about halfway through Kansas, I realized that I had left it on the bookshelf in my parent's family room. My mom had loved the album, so I called her and told her she could keep it. She was thrilled!! :) But now I don't have an album from last year's vacation!! So I'm starting over. It's actually kind of fun so far; I can tweak the pages I loved and redo the pages I didn't. Here's the first page of my NEW Colorado album:

Paper: Little Yellow Bicycle. Cardstock: Bazzill. Letter stickers: Making Memories. Flowers: Prima. White pen: Signo. Font: CK Racer.

I also worked on one other page last weekend. I found this picture of Sara hidden away on my laptop. Whenever we're in the bathroom, she can generally be found sitting on top of my jewely armoire, which gives her a good view of pretty much everything from the shower to the sink and into the closet. This particular day, we were installing a shoe organizer in our closet. The other three cats were "helping" us in the closet, but she sat back, as cool and regal as ever, and just watched the chaos.

To make the layout, I decided that Sara deserved a bit of pink and a lot of sparkle. The paper is all from We R Memory Keeper's Tiffany line. The brown flowered paper was an entire sheet covered in swirls. I decided it was a bit too busy to use as it was, so I cut the swirls up and spread them out. The swirls had some glitter on them and I added more by outlining things with my Sakura Stardust pen. I also sprayed the blackboard flowers with several layers of glimmer mist; first coffee, then key lime, and finally blue skies. Glimmer mist has a different effect on blackboard than regular chipboard, but I think I like it.

Paper: We R Memory Keepers. Cardstock: Bazzill. Alpha stickers: Making Memories (shimmer), American Crafts (fabric Thickers). Chipboard: Cosmo Cricket Blackboard. Rub-on: Basic Grey. Glimmer Mist: Tattered Angels. Bling pearls: Crystal Stickers. Pen: Sakura.

My laptop is all better now

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. My laptop got sick for a while. I eventually figured out what was wrong with it after some trial-and-error and it's all better now. So, I'm back!! Amazing how much you can depend on those suckers. Romeo would let me use his when I needed to, but it just wasn't the same. His is bigger, slower, and runs XP (mine is Vista). The icons aren't in the right place, the start menu is different. And his can't run PhotoShop!!! Horror of horrors. But all is well - mine is working again AND I didn't lose any data or have to restore anything!! Happy dance!

They're cooler than we are!

My parents, I mean. Last night, we went to a biker bar out near the state fairgrounds (Main Gate Bar & Grill for any Iowans). The bar has live music a few nights a week, but Sundays are special. Sundays are a kind of jam session/open mic nite. Musicians come with their instruments (at least twenty musicians were there, maybe more) and form different groups to play sets. Guitarists, drummers, singers rotate in and out. And the music was fantastic!! As good as anything I've heard in Austin from local groups, and Austin is the "Live Music Capitol of the World".

But more than that was the sheer number of people in that bar that my parents know. People that they've apparently partied with outside of that bar. And my parents drank Romeo and Radu under the table; the guys had a hard time getting up this morning, but my parents were just fine. So, with all the evidence laid out, we were forced to conclude: they are cooler than we are. But that's a good thing!! They've done their duty - raised two kids (one a severly handicapped special needs child), 'adopted' my immigrant husband, his brother and brother's wife, saw three of us through college, and provided suppot through the inevitable ups and downs of young (broke) married life. So I'm glad that they've gotten a life; it's pretty cool that they're cooler than us! Maybe some day, when our kids are (born and) grown and gone, they'll be able to say the same thing about us!

Somebody smack me!

Next time I decide to go on vacation in May, somebody smack me, OK? Such a busy time at work; trying to get everything wrapped up and/or ready to hand to my backup made for a crazy couple of weeks. Plus I had to finish my album from last year's vacation to show my family. Luckily ... I managed to get everything done!! I finished the last page of my album Wednesday night, which is perfect since Thursday and Friday were a combination of working late, laundry, packing, and giving extra attention to the felines.

So ... here we are in Iowa!! The drive wasn't too bad ... we left home around 7:30 a.m. and got in just before 10:30 p.m.. No mishaps (unless you count the 183 morons who think it's ok to hog the left lane). I did see a deer once, but it decided that running in front of my car was a bad idea. And there are approximately 2,537 dead bugs on my formerly clean car, but that can be dealt with later. Let me just say ... the louder the thud, the less I want to see where it landed. Ugh!!

Enough ramblings ... I should really be getting to sleep. We have a family reunion/picnic tomorrow, which should be a blast!! Have a great Memorial Day Weekend.