Heatstroke

Which is what I thought I was going to have today at Busch Gardens. It was about 97, so the heat index was about 107 we were told. They cancelled the Pet Shenanigans show, because it was too hot for the animals. Icecream melted faster than we could eat it. It was still fun though, Rachel and I did our rollercoasters, the Big Bad Wolf and the Loch Ness Monster. Don't they look cool? I couldn't get her to go on the Apollo's Chariot with me, but I am counting my blessings. We all did the Darkastle. Overall it was fun, but a lot of walking in this heat.

Yesterday we were at the Waterpark. That was fun, but would you like to swim in this? It was wall to wall bodies, like a meat market.

I prefer our own pool. We did a lot of the slides though, they were fun, Michael was a lot braver this year.

We left early enough to be able to head over to downtown Williamsburg, which is just adorable. Phil loves the College bookstore there and we always stop at the Candystore right across the street. We will probably head over there again tomorrow, after checking out and before heading to the beach. We found a KMart tonight and got some water and other stuff. I just took advantage of the sale at DD, found some great stuff at a great price. So far it has been a great trip and Phil is relaxing. Just getting away from work is doing him good.

We made it

We are in Virginia, yeah! And the best thing (at least one of the best) is that we have free internet access, hurray! We just got back from dinner and I uploaded the pictures I have taken so far. I prepared stuff to take with us , so we had a fun picnic on the way down, look at the view, too bright but quite pretty!

This is our Hotel and Gabrielle found my laptop!!!

We decided we needed a bite to eat, so we walked over to Applebee's where there was a long wait, no matter what day we get here, we have to wait to eat. Nice ending to a long day. Just before getting to the Hotel we stopped for gas. I found a place that advertised 3.77 a gallon, so I swipe my credit card and then notice that that was a cash price, credit would have been 4.17. I almost fell over, that's quite a price difference. Needless to say I stopped the transaction and paid cash. I am just glad I noticed the little sign!
Look at the banana plant!

It is Sunday....

.....and I finished the next 2 pages for the Cancun book. Here we went on this really cool Jungle Cruise, speed boat through the Mongroves and then snorkeling on the open water. The kids were squealing under water with delight, it was so cute! DH had to do the driving. It wasn't easy to avoid the wake from the other boats, but he did okay.

credits here

We are trying to get ready for our trip tomorrow. The birds have been dropped off for boarding, instructions for watering left with the neighbor, clothes have been piled up, laundry is almost done. I have to make sure I pay all the bills, then pack the suitcase. I cooked some stuff to take along, we will just have a picnic on the way down instead of going to a restaurant. I always did that with the kids when we went to the local amusement park, that was their favorite part. It's amazing the things they eat when they are really hungry!

I will miss all my buddies during this week, but a week in Virginia will be fun. I hope you will keep checking in. I will post if I can, but I doubt that I will have a connection. Ciao a presto!

Dinner twice

wow, my lucky days! Yesterday we went to the CountryClub to hit some balls and to have dinner, since I realized that the month is almost over and we still had to use up our minimum dinner requirement. With us being away next week this is it. I hit a few fairly good balls, so it was fun and I loved not having to cook. I took my camera with me and shot a few pics. This is one of them, I don't want to bore everybody.

Today was my last day to train for over a week, I can give my body a little rest, but I will gain a few pounds, I'm sure (especially with us eating out all the time) I have been eating joghurt with fruit and a little granola for lunch every day and it really made a difference. I was down 3 pounds! Let's see how long this will last. We went to Mass at 4 today, so we won't have to rush in the morning, plus I wanted to pack and clean everything up. DH agreed to go out to dinner because DD asked him. He can't resist her puppy eyes. He is just a pushover, dear guy. So we went to our favorite Chinese place, the kids love the buffet, it really is good, of course, here come the pounds again!

The girls actually went swimming after we got home. I don't get the fun of it when it's not even sunny outside. It was getting dark. Before that we took a few pictures in the neighbor's yard. She had this gorgeous Lilly blooming, I had never seen this particular color before, I love it. I played with layers a bit and added a ghostbone texture.

Here are some more pics, just for fun, Gabrielle took a few (the butterfly is hers, isn't it gorgeous? Of course I had already put in the settings on the camera)

So Gabrielle wanted to know why they are called Lamb's Ear and I told her to touch it. I think she figured it out. Two of my Clivias are blooming, the one in the foreground is a little bit darker red, I love it! Last but not least I finished a quickie LO. I really liked this photo, Gabrielle took it one day on our way home from piano. I couldn't believe it turned out this nice. I added the birdies in the photo.

K.Pertiet Vintage Text paper (background), stamped moments, under the Tree bracket (recolored), ledger grid, barely there alpha A.AspnesZigzagframe Dana ZarlingInspire paper MAWiseFrame of Mind font: Anke calligraphy, brush SS birds

Homework

Well, Doris from TempusFugit (she makes these fabulous freebies and her address is on my sidebar) didn't just want to hand us her latest kit, so we had to make a LO with one of her kits in order to get the link. I thought that was a great idea, so this is what I came up with. Now, this is not normally my style, but I thought it was kind of funny and the monkey pictures really didn't come out that great like I said before.

I really enjoy playing with the dropshadows now that I know how to create them (Thanks Cassie) and bend them. Anyway, I got my links and I got my kit, it was cute, plus I got another page done.

My backup system is driving me crazy, I can't get it to work. I keep getting these error messages, have sent Mozy several emails and not heard from them. I never had this problem before. I can' t imagine what the heck is going on there. I even left a message for my computer geek, maybe he knows something about it. I don't feel comfortable without my backup, I mean, I still have my book which I just backed up to, but that's not enough, I am paranoid!! Just imagine loosing all your stuff and your pics, I would be hardbroken!

Today is another beautiful day, the kids were in the pool and I had to put supports under my Peachtree. The branches are so loaded, they are hanging down to the ground. I found some old fence posts that were pretty long and stuck them underneath. Hopefully that will hold them.

My residen groundhog got into my vegetable garden again and chomped on my green bean plants, I could strangle that animal. Just when they were taking off and putting up flowers, now some of them are just hanging there. I still have quite a few but how will I keep him from eating those too. Pests!

Photography class is interesting. We had to take pictures with the focus off the side. I did quite a few of those.

Herzlichen Glueckwunsch

supplies by AprilDawnCreation

Happy Birthday to my sister, she was 65 the other day and I had to whip up a little card for her, although I did talk to her on the phone yesterday.

Nochmal Herzlichen Glueckwunsch und alles Gute und viel Glueck mit Deiner Knie Operation. Ich hoffe, dass alles gut verlaeuft und dass Du dann wieder richtig gut laufen kannst und Deinen Mann durch den Garten jagen kannst!!! Hoffentlich liest Du das auch mal und ich hoffe, die Karte gefaellt Dir, ich habe sie gerade fertig gemacht!! Bis bald und coco lieb.

Well, I promised my family that if they would read this blog, I would actually write a little german too, so they could understand more easily. We'll see how that goes!

Finally

I got some more pages done. It has been a week since my last post, I can't even believe it! Our days are just so busy, every day there seems to be something going on.

















Saturday we took the kids to the Carnegie Science Museum in Pittsburgh. It was okay, but not nearly as interesting as I had thought. The submarine outside was quite cool, we were able to walk through it. I have no idea how these poor guys can stand it in there, those bunks are so tiny, you couldn't even lift your head off the pillow.











The miniature train set was great, I really enjoyed that. The details were something else, there is a replica of the incline, all very cute. Then there was a robot exhibition for the weekend, this little guy was adorable. He held conversations with the people and made sad faces. Rachel got a ride on the big guy.

They had a Titanic exhibit going on which we had to pay for (quite enough). There were some nice artifacts found at the bottom of the ocean, interesting yes, but quite overpriced in my humble opinion. The thing the kids enjoyed the most was the earthquake simulator. I really enjoyed the Imax movie (it's called something different, but it's the same thing) That is really incredible. We watched a movie called the Alps, about a mountain climber in the Swiss Alps. The story wasn't earthshaking, but the images certainly were, especially since they were all around and below us. It really felt like we were right there, very cool! Well, at least we got out of town and did something. Here are some more pictures

Sunday we had our Church festival, I worked in the food line. It was really hot and we had a lot of people, so I hope we did okay. As soon as I came home it started to rain, so the second shift got rained out.


Here is one more page I did. It's the challenge for this week over at the Spraground.








These are all pictures of flowers from my yard. I took them all at different times during the season. I always wanted to find a way to put them all together and this template (by SimplySarah) worked great for that. The paper is by K. Pertiet (Botanist #13) I had fun with this.

I bet you couldn't wait

to finally see my zoo pictures, hee hee. I know, once you have seen one, you have seen them all. For me it was a chance to practice my new skills (if you want to call it that). It is frustrating me to no end. I still can't wrap my brain around this stuff, I will have to reread the shutter speed lesson, combining them into manual is just beyond frustrating. I have taken some pics today, but I have no clue what I was even doing. Anyway, I know you can't wait, so here are some pics (not too many, don't worry)

That baby elephant was just 2 days old the day we went there, of course it didn't move at all while we were there. That and the monkey picture were shot through filthy, yucky looking glass, I am surprised you can actually see anything.

Yesterday I finished my next set of Cancun pages for the book. Here they are

credits here

Cancun update

I just finished pages 7 and 8 for the Cancun book. See what you think. I hope the stronger color
will still go with the rest of the pages.










credits here


Jessica's Friday tutorial was about this really cool photo treatment, that makes the colors pop. It is so simple and yet so effective. Even I can remember how to do it without looking at the notes all the time. You can find the instructions on her blog here. This is my example.











Today we went to the Pittsburgh Zoo. It was so stinking hot, I was soaking wet the whole time. It was great though! I took over 200 picture, of which I will probably have to throw most away. (Does that even sound like english?) We really enjoyed all the animals, especially the deer enclosure, where we got the licking treatment from Melvin, one of the deer running around in there.
They also had a newborn elephant baby, Angelina by name. I just hope that my picture is the slightest bit presentable. The windows were so smeared and filthy, it was hard to shoot through them. If I find anything nice, I will post tomorrow or so.