Happy New Year!

This is Keenu, my 140 pound Alaskan Malamute Grandpuppy.   What a beauty!  

      We visited him and his parents (my son and daughter-in-law) over the Christmas holidays.   Had a great visit with them and other family and friends.      We even had a White Christmas since their city has had snow on the ground since Thanksgiving, and a few more flurries fell on Christmas Day.

       When we returned to Arizona, we brought the cold weather with us.   We had a hard freeze two nights in a row, and it has remained chilly during the day.   All the plants that could be moved were placed in the garage.   Frost cloth was draped on all the others.    We've been a little under the weather ourselves since then so I haven't had a chance to see if the cold weather killed any of my favorites.   I hope not.

       My Christmas Cactus will be blooming soon.  They are actually succulents, not cacti, and I hope to get a good picture when the blooms finally open.   I need to fertilize it again to help encourage more blooms since there are only about seven buds right now.   There should be a lot more than that!  It only blooms once a year, even though it takes up space all year and has to be tended to. If it's only going to be showy for one month out of 12, I expect a really GOOD show.

       I've been seeing a lot of Red Tail Hawks on the drive to work.   They love to sit on the telephone polls to watch for mice and other tasty meals.  On Sunday morning a nice sized coyote walked down the sidewalk in front of the house, too.   They are plentiful, but I can't seem to get a good picture of any.  

        I haven't made any New Year's Resolutions (if you don't count the perpetual "lose weight") so maybe my resolution will be to work on getting better blog photos.    Which means I need to make a resolution to Blog more.   

        Hope you had a great New Year's.   If you made any resolutions, please post them.  Maybe you'll inspire me.   

     

   

Beautiful Ohio

We went back to Ohio recently to visit family, and that includes visiting my grandpuppy Kenu. He´s a beautiful Alaskan Malamute-- 130 pounds of puppy love.

Of course he has beautiful parents, my son and daughter-in-law.

We had a great time at their Memorial Day picnic. In fact, I was enjoying visiting with friends and relatives so much that I failed to take photos.

It was perfect picnic weather--sunny and hot. Later a brief Ohio shower cooled things down but didn´t keep us from going back outside as soon as it passed. We don´t have those here in Arizona this time of the year. We also enjoyed seeing the bright green foilage everywhere. They have had a lot of rain this year, and everything was lush and blooming.

While we were there, we celebrated my mother´s 95th birthday. WoW! Way to go, Mother! This isn´t a milestone that many of us will reach. She had to go to the doctor on her birthday, which was a bummer, but she was a good sport about it. Later we had a small celebration with family, pizza, and chocolate cake. Mother´s memory isn´t good these days, but she enjoyed the moment. Which, when you think about it, is what we all should try to do.

One of my favorite things to do when we go back to Ohio is visit Marco´s Paper. This is the greatest paper (and more) store in the world. If you like any kind of papercrafts, you need to stop in and see them. They are on the web, but I love the store best. There is nothing quite so much fun as looking at all the neat paper, stamps, pens, charms, inks, etc, and dreaming of all the great things that could be made....if only there were more hours in the day. The bane of crafters and writers everywhere is the lack of time. And when the crafter/writer has to be a working stiff too, it is terrible!

So while I was at Marco´s I bought some cover stock to back the rest of my Yellowstone photos, and some album paper that was on sale. Pinecones, ivy and some coordinating colors. The pinecones will be used soon to finish off the Yellowstone album, but the others may go into the paper stash. (You can never have enough paper.) Also found some great cowgirl rubber stamps that were new, must-have items. Then I found some had-to-have ink and a couple of more sale items.... Everytime I go to the store I suggest that they open a store in Arizona. But considering my inability to pass up their bargains, perhaps I couldn´t afford for them to be here!!

We also stopped at the Cox Arboretum for a quick visit one afternoon. This is the Monet Pond, a lovely tranquil spot. There were a couple of weddings that day, too. The turtles were sunning themselves, and birds were singing. Beautiful Ohio.