Name That Bird

Mickey and I got home last night and today Lloyd and I are heading 5 hrs. south to Lethbridge today for the Thanksgiving weekend.


Mickey and I thoroughly enjoyed our week in Arizona. From the first day we were there, whenever we were in the back yard or at the pool, we heard a new birdsong in our tree. We would occasionally see the birds but whenever I tried to get a picture of one of them they hid in the branches. For awhile this one is the only picture I was able to get.




Then, yesterday as we were cleaning and preparing to close the house up, we spotted a pair of them inside the pool enclosure picking stuff up. I guess they thought we were gone and they felt that they had 'their' pool back. Here's some pictures of them. If you know what they are, please let me know.

I've never seen these up here in Canada. I liked them. They were nice company in the back yard. They would respond when we whistled or talked to them, and I love taking pictures of birds. If you know what they are, please post it in the comments here. Hopefully they're not what is considered pest birds like the Magpies are up here. Enquiring minds want to know.

End of the Line

I guess it was inevitable...we've had our final swim (water temp. 74F - air temp 89F)...gone to our final restaurant...taken our final pictures of sunsets and cacti...and are packing up to go home. It's been a busy six days but we've had fun.

Just so you won't think I haven't accomplished anything, I'm going to show you some of the layouts I did at the convention and at home in AZ.

Are you ready?..... Keep in mind when looking at scrapbook layouts, that you don't just look at the picture - you study the techniques used, colors, composition, embellishments, texture, etc. and then you admire the lovely pictures :)

Max and Charlie on the waterslide

Elly picking flowers - I'm going to enlarge that picture so it fits the layout better - it's just temporarily placed there now. It's hard working without all my equipment.

Me with granddaughters Charlie, Kenzie and Sydney

At the Japanese gardens in Lethbridge, AB. This, and a couple following, are two-page spreads, each page is 12" x 12".


Elly picking flowers again. These photos suited several of the layouts we did at the convention so I used them on two.

Son Mike and his family at Japanese gardens in Lethbridge.


Grandson Aidan playing with the hose.

Elly eating a cinnamon bun. The owl consists of 12 separate little pieces, outlined and glued into place. The flowers are attached to the branch with brads and each leaf was individually cut out, outlned with ink and glued into place.

There are more layouts completed but without the pictures added. After I go home and have a chance to finish them, I'll post another blog with 'the rest of the story'. Thanks for looking.

This and That

Today was to be a quiet day spent at home relaxing and of course scrapbooking. When I came out of my room and sat at the computer at 8 this morning, I was pleased to see that Mickey was just getting up too. When I commented on this to her (she had been getting up early every morning and this was a nice change), she said "Oh, I'm just going back to bed. I've been up scrapping since 3:30). She's nuts. After another hour of sleep she was ready to go!

As I got to the top of the stairs after breakfast, I looked down, and tucked against the stair riser in the carpet I saw this critter...



Isn't that a beauty! Of course the scorpion was dead or else I would never have touched it. That's also why his tail is out straight instead of curled up. You can see his stinger at the end of the table. I know you can't tell from the picture, but he's no more than 2 inches top-to-tail and he's belly-up in this photo.

So naturally an incident like that called for a chocolate therapy session. Off we went to Arrowhead Mall where we headed to Mrs. See's Candy shop for our chocolate fix. It's so nice to be able to pick and choose the candy you put in a pound box. I got half a pound of key lime truffles and an assortment of my other favorites. Yum! We did a little more shopping too but that was the highlight.


Our feet and legs were tired when we got home, and it was too late (and a bit cool) for our daily swim, so we just sat on the edge of the pool and soaked our feet. Aaahhh...nice. We also played with the timers on our cameras so we could both be in the picture.

Sometimes I didn't make it back before the shutter clicked!


We met Penny and Les for dinner at The Islands - great meal, good friends, and fun. As we pulled into the parking lot the sun was setting in all its splendor. Someday I'll get a good sunset shot but this will do in the meantime.


All in all, it was a nice day, busier than we had planned, but we sure enjoyed ourselves. Tomorrow is our last day in Arizona. We head home on Wednesday.

We Have A Convert!

Mickey and I were up early this morning scrapbooking. Actually Mickey was up at the crack of dawn - I stumbled downstairs at 8 to find her already well into her layouts. We scrapped until early afternoon.

This afternoon our non-scrapbooking friend Penny came over with Pauline to see what the fuss was all about. Penny just happened to bring along a box of photos and a scrapbooking kit that Pauline had given her some time ago. As she was eager to learn all there is to know about organizing her photos into a scrapbooking album, we were just as eager to help her get started.


She looked a bit overwhelmed at first but as we showed her some tips and ideas, she got more and more excited about it.

She went right to work cropping photos, working out placements, learning about matting, punching, using bling, adhesives, embellishments, etc.


And ended up with a lovely 2-page layout of her wedding. Didn't it turn out well. Now she's excited to go out and buy the list of tools and toys we told her she needed. She's going to get some bling and finish off this page and get to work on the rest of the pictures. We're so proud of her. And we had a great couple of hours with her and Pauline, who also had a hand in the production of the layout. Next time we come down, we'll have another scrapbooking session with them. Great fun.

Convention Day 2 - Mickey's Birthday

Day 2 of our scrapbooking convention dawned bright and sunny and so did Mickey as she celebrated turning another year better. To celebrate, she cooked scrambled eggs and toast and as we sat down to eat, she had fun opening her birthday gifts. You probably think it's mean of me to make Mickey cook her own eggs, but you don't know Mickey. She's not one to sit by while someone else is working so while she cooked the eggs, I made the toast and set the table.






When that excitement was over, we got ready to go back to....

the frantic, exciting world of scrapbooking. It was a busy day - Mickey and I took two classes in the morning, starting at 8:30, and while I took a third class at 12:30, she left her bags with me and checked out anything she may have missed at the Vendor Faire.

Our first class involved creating our first acrylic albums. This was the most important one for us to take as it involved learning a technique neither of us had done before but have wanted to do for quite awhile. It was surprisingly easy to do. The best part of the class was the prizes. I won the very first door prize of the day - a set of acrylic stamps - and both Mickey and I got a prize for being the ones who travelled the longest distance to get there...an honor we shared with the girl who was there from Holland.

I know it's hard to tell from the picture, but that's my finished acrylic album and it really is a lovely piece of art. now I just have to add the pictures. I'll do that when I get home.

And now the convention is over. It's been a lot of fun. We came home and, after a swim, got down to scrapbooking again...stopped to go out for dinner, and have been sitting at the dining room table working on our projects ever since. There's never a dull moment around here!!!

We have a few days now of fun and relaxation without schedules to follow before we head home on Wednesday. We may just stay in our pyjamas all day tomorrow and scrap...just because we can. Good night for now. And Happy Birthday Mickey.

Our Trip So Far

Well here we are in Sunny Hot Arizona - and none too soon apparently according to the reports of snow up in Sunny Frigid Alberta. But we won't gloat because we're all too aware that in less than a week we'll be leaving this balmy paradise to brave our familiar cold Alberta fall and winter.

We've been here (Mickey and me) for a few days now and today was actually the first full day of our scrapbooking convention. We are exhausted already, convinced that such events are not for the overaged and overweight. I mean, walking the floor of the Vendor Faire alone is enough to make a 20-year old drop with fatigue (and the weight of all her purchases). We were very conservative in our purchases though and only bought the absolute essentials! The class we took was excellent - we completed four 12 x 12 page layouts and brought home 4 companion pages (2 page spreads) to complete at home - which we've already done. Mickey has two classes tomorrow and I have three so it's a good thing we 'did' the vendor faire today as we'll have no time for it tomorrow.

But scrapbooking isn't all we're doing. We had an agenda of 'must-do' items while we're down here. The first, and most important, was to take our 1995 Ford Windstar van in to have the AC fixed. When Curtis and Amy were here last weekend they had it recharged but it still didn't work so we had to take it in for heavy duty repair work because, as you can imagine, you simply cannot drive without air conditioning down here. We took it in yesterday and today we got it back, although we're over $1000 poorer for our efforts. As the service rep told me, 'there are a bunch of penquins sitting in the front seat of it now because it's so cold'. So far it seems to be working well. A good thing too because we just couldn't stand to drive Sara and Quincey's Mercedes around any more...it's just not good for our image!!

This was another of our must-do items and we're proud to say we took care of it on our second day in town - lunch at the Paradise Cafe. You can tell from Mickey's expression just how much she was looking forward to biting into her chicken walnut sandwich. They are soooo good. We bought a loaf of their fresh baked whole grain bread too. It is the best bread I've ever had.

Although we didn't take a picture of it, our first stop for food was Macayos Mexican restaurant, and today for lunch we went to our third essential restaurant - Chipotles. So now that we've got those places out of our system, for a couple of days anyway, we'll calm down and eat like we're supposed to...whatever that is.


This is the site of our convention this weekend. The Renaissance is a lovely luxurious hotel. Our conference space is comfortable and spacious and the classrooms are large, comfortable and not at all crowded, which is an important consideration when everyone there is working with knives, scissors and glue! We were so excited to be there, and busy, that we forgot to take pictures of our classes, etc. so maybe tomorrow we'll remember.

And when we get home we head straight for the pool to cool off after the incredible effort of working (playing?) all day in an air conditioned luxury hotel. Really sucks to be us!

And then after a light supper at home we settle in to continue working on scrapbooking projects we started at the classes we took and projects we brought from home. And that's a brief look at our life away from our families for a few days. We're managing just fine but missing the men, who Lloyd says should be here taking care of us!

They Call Him Papa

After we finished raising our seven kids, Lloyd and I discovered the joys of grandchildren. It's such a rewarding feeling interacting with your babies' babies...spoiling them, playing with them, teaching them, and then giving them back to their parents. We both love the little critters and over the years Lloyd has become a loving and involved Papa to the 17 we have so far.

This is Baron, #17 in the line-up.

Lloyd likes exploring the world with them (Kenny)

He sits and plays games with them (Brooklyn)

He jumps and plays with them (Sydney)

And plays in their back yards with them (Anson)

He teaches them to play golf so that he'll have partners in his old age (Layla, Nathan)

Sometimes he just sits and relaxes with them (James and Micah)

Other times he lays down and relaxes with them (Micah)

and they climb over him (Kenzie and Brooklyn)

He goes climbing with them at Writing On Stone Park in Alberta (Nathan, Jonah and Sam)

And at White Tank Mountain in Arizona (Charlie and Max)

And sometimes he has to carry one of them down a mountain (Elly)

He listens to them while they go through the Christmas Wish Catalogue (Layla)

Eating with them is always fun too (Sam, Jonah, Nathan, Micah)

But most of all he just loves them and they love him back. I hope they all realize what a great man their Papa is and how much he loves them.

My apologies to Aidan and Alex not being able to find pictures of them with their Papa.