Hip Hip Hooray!

Renee's hip surgery went really well! They were a bit worried that the cancer treatments would make it beyond repair, but the Dr. was pleasantly surprised and said it looked good. She has the best spirit and is so positive about her healing, she just astounds all the Dr.s that work with her!

I have the best sisters in the world...I really do! Here they are at Cheryl's sons wedding in May...


Left to right:
Renee-The hardest worker I know, doesn't let anything get her down, and introduced me to the love of reading, and most importantly laughs at all my jokes.

Cheryl- She's my foo foo girl consultant, we are a great shopping team, she's even crazier about dogs than I am. We also travel well together and I laugh at all her jokes.

Georgia- She is loyal, fun, sweet and the most generous of us all and, and she laughs at all of our jokes, plus she is the only one that got mom's cute nose! Anyone who meets Georgia just loves her!

Whenever we get together all we do is laugh....we really do! I'm thinking it's because we don't live next to each! :-) It really is a treasure each time we get to visit!

Have good Monday!

M

There will be no living with me...

until this puppy gets a little older.

Lego Boating and Lola...

We're home! We took a small vacation to Lake Barkley in Ketucky. Beautiful, beautiful lake, lovely area, but unfortunetly I booked a place online and the pictures of the accomadations were nicer than the real deal. Brian said it looked like the average log cabin...meaning lot's of bugs dead and alive!

We rented this cool pontoon boat with a slide, so it had two decks. Lego was also able to come on board, her first boat ride. She is sleeping in the picture, we went on a two mile hike that morning, and she was just wiped out.


There was a big state park in between Lake Barkley and Lake Kentucky, they had Buffallo park you could drive through. It was Africa hot and in the afternoon we didnt think we would see anything. They have 70 buffallo in the whole park, and as soon as we drove in we saw about 30 of them feeding right there.



There was a mix-up in our boat reservation, and so we ended up doing all the things we planned in one day, and we called the breeder and asked if we could pick up Lola a day early. I booked a hotel room in Louisville just in case they said "no". Thankfully they called the next morning and said we could pick her up that afternoon, I never saw four people pack up so much stuff so fast and get in the car.

Breeder was about an hour outside of Louisville. We drove up and the puppies were in a pen outside.


There were two female blacks and we got to pick which one we wanted, they looked exactly alike, so we picked the one with the biggest head. :-) She's home and resting...

...and get this,
we're filling out the AKC paperwork and it has the puppy's birthdate listed on it...
May 4th. It was the day Montana died. So we took it as a wonderful sign that it this puppy was meant to be with us!

Lego is steering clear of her for now, but she's coming around. Soon as she picks up a toy and sets it beside the new puppy all will be well.

And yes, she slept with us!

Damn M...

The bathroom is done...except for the "M".

The mirror I bought was silver with a glazing, but it looked gold next to the gold walls, so I made a bit more silver. Here's a close-up of the light fixture I got too on clearance marked down to 49.00 from 125.00, so both mirror and fixture came to 80 bucks.


The cabinet doors are on, and new hardware. Should of bought the hardware on Ebay, saw it at my favorite little knob store for half-price from what I got at Lowes.


That picture now has Ian and Lieber in a pool, instead of some married couple we don't know.

We added some decorative trim to the beadboard that even makes Scott's tissue look good, be sure to enlarge this one.



Today I spray painted and put silverleaf on a bunch of little frames and a mirror I bought. I filled the frames with pics of the boys when they were kids in the tub in sepia tones.



I have to do the damn "M" again. I don't know why but I've always wanted one of those big initials like Mary Tyler Moore, and the name fits too. :-) This is the "stunt M". I had bought scrapbook paper and did each slant a different paper, and then outlined it all...took me forever to get right. Then I went to put this new type of glaze stuff on it I bought, and it all rippled.....grrr! So ripped and sanded that all off, and went to work with the paper I had left in the scrapbook set, then went to spray some shallac on it. I sprayed adhesive on it instead, this is why I shouldn't get out of bed before 9 a.m. So I just tossed some little flowers on it, and ribbon on the sides and it will have to do till Hobby Lobby runs its scrapbooking kits half-price again, so I can rip it off and start all over again. I mess up too much to pay full price.:-)


And all done...



I prolly won't post now till we get the puppy which is Thursday. We can't wait! Lego needs the company, we didn't even realize till after Montana had passed that Lego had never ever been left alone she's either been with a person or Montana has always been with her. So she goes a bit nuts when we leave her alone for long periods...poor baby. The two Maggie's are still here till Sunday. We have deamed Li'l Maggie the Piggiest Eater, and big Maggie the Canine Speed Bump! They all get along, they are really really good dogs, but it's a nice reminder that three dogs are a lot of work, and I need that reminder sometimes.

Have a great weekend!
M

What's a Doula?

Do you know? I didn't have a clue, till a friend of mine asked me to make a website for her, she is starting a doula business. I didn't know what a doula was, not a clue.

Turns out a doula is someone who will begin a sourdough starter for you, make one batch of dough and then kneed the dough till its final rising stage and then bring it to your home to bake. Oh wait...that's a doughla!

A doula is basically someone to help your through your pregnancy and the birth of a baby. I thought it was someone that tried to talk you out of any drugs, but that's not the case they support you in whatever you choose. Me, I'll take the drugs...always!

My favorite website is always the one I just finished. Carla, the doula, found a cool celtic knot graphic on the net, so cool I wish I thought of it! :-) She contacted the artist and got permission to use it on her website.


And she found some scrap book paper she liked and I went from there. The most time consuming but what I enjoy doing the most is making the logo.

My first tries..



Then the keeper...


I experimented and made lots of knots and stuff...
I didn't use any of them.

then I gave a baby some beautiful green eyes,

and then lot's of little grapics to make it look at pretty.



Put it all together and you got a website.

Trinity Doula Care

All done!
(Well, almost all done, I have a few things left to do.)

M

I was rude to a wingnut today!

So we are watching two dogs this week. My neighbor's Brittney Spaniel named "Maggie" and my sisters black Labrador named "Maggie". I've come to the conclusion if there is a household with Irish blood in it, they name their dog...why yes..."Maggie!"

Day 1, is like.....Oooooooo my doggie friends are here, but there's a little stress from all the dogs.

Day 2, is like... we all like each other let's play.

Day 3, well the visiting dogs are very happy, because they have realized they get little new foods mixed in with their blah dog food, they get to go in and out through the doggie door whenever they want, and all is good. But the home dog is feeling like...I've shared my toys, my house, my master...when are you leaving?

Day 4, they all settle in.

So on this Day 3, Lego and I sneek out of the house for a little walk in the woods, for a little quality time. I'm sure you have those county parks, that are all wooded and have the dirt paths scattered throughout.

We get to the woods and for some reason Lego always takes a dump as soon as we get in there. She is such a good dog is practically doing her business right next to the doggie dump station. The dump station being where they have little plastic bags and a trash can for your dogs doo-doo, because God forbid you let your dogs go in the woods and you leave it there to naturally disintegrate instead of throwing it in a plastic bag to be thrown in a garbage dump.

Im picking it up, and a woman comes down the path with a stroller a toddler in it, and baby in a backpack on her back, and two dogs on flexi leashes. First of all, there's not a lot of places you can go with a stroller on a nature hike, one gravel path, about one block and that's it. If you have a dog you know that a flexi leash is a long retractable leash but mostly cord and if you have more than one dog you spend most of your time walking untangling the cords. And there was an umbrella in the mix somewhere, I don't remember if it's on her head, attached to the stroller or what? She looked like a "one man band" but instead of instruments it was babies and dogs.

So Im waiting there for her and her dogs to pass by, and the dogs are coming right at us and she says, "Would you mind if we all just got to know each other a bit?"

To which I said, "What the F#$& are you?", oh wait, that's what I thought! I said, "You know I'm standing here with a bag of dog poop in my hand, if you could move on that would be great."


I don't know if that was rude or not, but she's got two dogs coming to meet my one dog, the last thing I want to see is her fall with a baby on her back. She seemed a little offended that we didn't want to do the whole dog sniffing each others asses scene, but went on her merry way, albeit a bit slowly while telling her older child maybe some other day.

So Lego and I take our walk in the woods and on the way out, I see something standing a few feet from where Lego left her little gift to nature. It looked rust colored and huge, and too big to be a deer, we walk a bit further, it was a deer, two deer, a Momma and her baby feeding. No stroller, no baby riding on her back, no umbrella on her head...and no the momma deer didn't ask "if we could just get to know each other a bit?" either before they ran off.

(stunt deer)

I thought for sure the deer were going to run into the road and get hit and that was by punishment for being rude to the wingnut.

Thankfully no roadkill, we drove home and Maggie and Maggie were happy to see us!

M

Mmmmmmmm!

You all know I hang out on the Internet, and I do know it scares some of you! :-) But how I figure it is that the people I hang with read really really big books, and that sets them apart on an intelligence level from 99% of the population. So actually someone you work with that doesn't read really really big books is a bigger threat of murdering you with an axe than my good net friends. We jokingly refer ourselves to as "axe murderers" since that's what the general population seems to think of us.

Now what does the title "Mmmmmmmmmm" have to do with axe murderers on the Internet?

Cheesecake Baby! Preferably White Chocolate Cheesecake!

We are going to my sister's Georgia's tonight and I'm bringing a White Chocolate Cheesecake. I pulled out my recipe I got from a net friend and the date on it is October 28, 1998, and I thought, man 10 years already I've been socializing with these axe wielding readers and I'm still alive!



(This would be Jack who I met on the Internet.)

I wanted to post the recipe since it is so wonderful!

The big book reader I got this recipe from named Rie created it herself...I've never had a better cheesecake, and I've eaten quite a few(too many) in my 45 years.

White Chocolate Cheesecake

Heat over to 300

Mix-
1-14 oz. can Sweetened Condensed Milk
3-8oz packages of Cream Cheese
3-large eggs
2-tsp. vanilla or the seeds of one vanilla bean
Approx. 1 tbl. of corn starch

Next, melt 12 oz. of good quality white chocolate
(I use one bag of white chocolate chips, name brand though. Heat one minute 50% power in the micro, stir, then 30 seconds on 50% power, stir, and then in 10 seconds increments at 50% power, stir till all melted. Or you can melt in a double boiler)

Add melted chocolate slowly into the cheesecake mixture.

Pour slowly into prepared crust in a spring form pan.

For crust, I have used-
Crushed Nilla wafers with a little bit of cinnamon, vanilla and melted butter.
Crushed chocolate graham crackers with a bit of melted butter.
Crushed Oreos with a bit of melted butter.
(of all I tried I like the chocolate graham cracker the best)

Make sure you put a cookie sheet under your spring form pan, in case any melted butter leaks out of the crust.

I also put a 9x13 pan of water in the oven so the top of the cheesecake doesn't crack.

Cook at 300 for 1 1/2 hours.

Turn oven off and let sit in there for 45 minutes, this will also prevent it from cracking from the temperature change.

Refridgerate, and then eat as much as you can before you bring it to someones house and have to share it!

M

Lola...la la la la looooooooola!

We have put a deposit on a puppy. A black female lab, who is named as of right now...Lola! Brian and I like the name, my two sons...don't. But they haven't thought of anything better so it's still Lola. Ian's "Peanut" didn't make the cut. :-)

Everyone is a bit surprised we didn't get a yellow, but the yellow hair is worse on my allergies and they shed more, so we wanted to try two blacks. Thought about a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog...



...but they have a life span of usually 8 years, and we just can't do that short of time and when it comes right down to it, we just love our labs.

Here's their 10 day old picture...


And here they are on the first adventure outside...



Unfortunately I don't know which one is ours...just one of those black ones. :-) We pick her up end of June.

Hope the dog days of summer are going well for you!

M

Side Note: The song Lola by the Kinks is here:

LOLA
Most of you may not of realized that Lola was about a man who was dressed as a woman. I swear everyone thinks Lego is a boy, when she is a girl. It's just a black dog thing. :-)

Class of 2008

Last Saturday our Ian graduated High School! He makes us proud, he graduated with an Academic Honors diploma!

I was waiting to post a picture because there was a professional photographer at the ceremony, that took the kids picture when they shook hands and received their diploma. So yesterday I went online to get it, and Ian was no where to be seen, nor a lot of other kids in his row.

Wrote the company...yada...yada...yada...turns out the photographer had flash problems and it must of been during Ian's walk. Offered a free cap & gown sitting, which would be great if I didn't have to rent another cap & gown for 70 bucks! It's always something! :-)

So a backyard one will have to do.


It was a great day! Grandpa & Grandma came down for the ceremony, which was held at the Pepsi Coliseum, on the Indiana State Fair Grounds. We then went out to eat at Stir Crazy. If you have one of these places near you.....try it......it's great!

Time just goes too fast!



One day you are holding a little baby in your arms, the years rush by, and it's time for them to start their own journey.

Ian is quite the boy...man. Smart, funny, and compassionate, I can't imagine not seeing him every day. It's worth repeating...he makes us proud.

M