Misc. Cards

I made up a few more of those 2x3 cards to give to a few people. The one on top has a sticker that says "Through Thick & thin" and I used two different papers on it. The middle one was made with two types of paper, a patterned paper star, and a cool "Birthday Boy" sticker. The bottom one was made with three types of paper, some ribbon, and a beautiful butterfly sticker. I wrote thanks on the bottom.

I've got lots more to make for thank yous for the wonderful gifts I received this week. I'm hoping to sit down on Sunday and crank them out! :)

Office Birthday Bliss

Do you see the kitties hanging from the ledge? There was confetti with flowers and kitties spread around my desk as well.

Here's the whole view with the birthday sign and all. They decorated it for me to find when I came in Monday morning and we left it up through Tuesday when our bosses were back in the office. Mary (my desk mate) made cupcakes that we shared on Monday & Tuesday.

BUT, they got me good. At 2:30 on Tuesday, they had a surprise part for me in our area. I was definitely shocked. They had cake and ice cream, cookies, and nuts. My boss gave me some cool gifts from Hawaii and I got a very funny card from the rest of my department.

The birthday celebration continues on...

Fortune Cookies

I'm not so big on Chinese food and for the most part it's better if I have it earlier in the day. Barry is pretty keen on it so I decided to surprise him by going to the Chinese buffet by my office since we were in Nashville on Sunday. He was pretty excited about that! :)

Anyway, we got our fortune cookies and these were our fortunes. The top one is Barry's. It fits him to a tee. Isn't it amazing how God puts things together like that?! The bottom one is mine, but I can think of a few other people who have better taste than me (for one, Abby!).

Pretty neat, huh?!

Zoo Animals

I wanted to share some animal pictures. I just marvel at this new camera. For example, the picture of the rhino, I was standing on my tiptoes and holding the camera way high over a wall. The zoom is just unbelievable. Then the picture of the butterfly... wow! We were inside a separate area that had all sorts of butterflies in it. It was really cool. The zebra picture is for my friend, Skye. She LOVES zebras!

A great weekend

Birthday boy with his gift from us (the lawn chair).

My sister-in-law Lindsey, her daughter, and our nephew.

Me and my niece at the restaurant -- waiting for our food.

Isn't she so cute? We swam at the pool at the hotel.

My brother, Jeremy, and his daugher.

We had a great weekend in Knoxville with almost my whole family (only my brother-in-law Andrew didn't make it). This was sort of a central spot to catch up with everyone -- 3 1/2 hrs. for my sister & family in Bluefield, VA, 2 1/2 hrs. for us, 1 1/2 hrs. for my sister in Cleveland, and then my parents and brother had been at my sister's in Bluefield so it wasn't so bad for them either. We had talked for a while about going to the zoo and this seemed to be the right time.

It was a great time as you can see! I'll put some zoo pictures on tomorrow.

View from my office desk chair

Here are the cards that I got for my birthday all set up pretty on my desk. In the back you can see the pretty purple mums that Beverly got me as well. From left to right, the cards are from Beverly, Abby, HR Dept., and Martha. Martha is a retired employee (I blogged about her before) who I occasionally get to see for lunch. She even called me on my birthday to wish me greetings -- even while she was in Florida. I was pretty impressed. I think I'll have a few more cards to show when the bosses come back next week, but I just had to show these off.

Here it is!

Can you guess what I got for my birthday? A new camera! It's a Canon Power Shot. It has 12.1 mega pixels in comparison to my old 4.1 mp. The quality is just amazing! We're going to be with family this weekend and I just can't wait to whip this baby out! It's a bright red color and so tiny. Happy Birthday to me! :)

My birthday!

Here we are at Outback at dinner on my birthday. I had been given a $25 gift card from my small group at church for my birthday. We enjoyed it! I had a steak and sweet potato. Barry had a pasta dish and broccoli soup. They even brought out a birthday sundae for me (of course, Barry ate most of it)!

Check out tomorrow's pictures for the gift I got from Barry!

Barry's Face

Every year (since we've been married) around the time of my birthday, Barry shaves off his goatee/mustache. It's quite dramatic as you can imagine.

What do you think?!! It's a big change that only lasts about a week. He'll start re-growing it after the Sunday shave.

Friday Party Night

Cathy always has a party at her house before convention starts. We spend weeks preparing for the convention and it's a relief when we have sent off the men. Here we are (Cathy, me, Elizabeth) in the pool. It was not very warm (we tried not to complain very much!), but we played around anyway.

The bathing beauties! Elizabeth & I pose for Brooke. Only 4 people got in the pool. Others sat around the edge and put in their feet. We had a potluck of sorts and ate bar-b-que sandwiches left over from one of the ladies' daughter's wedding. Fun times!

A few cards

Here's a card for my sister.  I used a cardboard letter m, cream ribbon, and then 3 different papers.
Here's a card that I did with a stars theme.  The quote (on vellum) is from Theodore Roosevelt, "Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground."  There's 5 different pieces of paper and a piece of white ribbon.
I have a friend, Martha, who loves bright colors and I hope that this card will hit the spot.  I used the cardboard letter m and 4 different papers.  There is also some green ribbon.
And last but not least, here is a card for my friend Tiffany.  There is the cardboard letter t, 3 types of papers, two ribbons that cross under the t.

Each of these cards are blank on the inside so that I can write a short note.  Hope they'll like them!

Hawaiian Goodies

My boss just came back from 2 weeks of active duty at Pearl Harbor.  He brought me back these fantastic macadamia nut chocolates.  They are delicious.
Then, he was working with Commander John Sager on a submarine.  When you become a commander you can get a coin commissioned.  Cmdr Sager sent this with Rick for me.  Since Rick is a commander, he can get a coin too.  Maybe this coming year he'll get one.

A few things I've made lately

I made these 2"x3" cards for 3 special kids that I had the opportunity to be with a few weekends ago.  I hope they like them!
This was an experiment and I'm sorry the picture didn't turn out so good.  We had gotten several magnets that weren't anything that we cared for (freebies in the mail & such) and so I thought I might make one over into a cool thing for my co-worker.  She loved it!
Last but not least, here is a little card that I made for the gift for my Grandma.  I tried to imitate the pink and red flowers on the wrapping paper on the card.  Kinda cool...

4th of July

We started our day with a bike ride.  This was the first ride that we had gone on together in Tennessee.  Kinda sad it took almost 4 years to happen!  Barry's rode his bike a few times as he's accompanied me when I go running.  We went all over the place in Lebanon and had a great ride!
We spent some time taking pics of things to list on ebay and Oreo decided to help us!  Isn't she a cutey?!
This is in the front of the house with our flowers and such.  We're all decked out in our 4th of July attire.  
Here we are at the Sounds game.  We got there about an hour early and sat at our seats, watching the players get warmed up.  About 20 minutes before the game was to start, they pulled out the tarp and it started to rain...  We were prepared with our slickers, but it just got worse and worse.  We went down to the concessions to try and stay dry and ended up staying there for 20 minutes or so.  The game was delayed a total of 84 minutes.  We watched till the top of the fourth and the showers started again.  At this point, we just left.  It was pouring and we were drenched.  There was not much chance of the fireworks being shown anyway.  

This is the scoreboard!  When the game was called, it was 2-1 in the Albuquerque Isotopes favor.  They are supposed to play the rest of the innings Sunday evening.  We do get to use our tickets for another game.  So, hopefully, we'll go back in the near future and catch a whole game.  Our seats were pretty good, though -- fourth row on the 3rd base side.

This pic was taken before the worst of the storms...  We were soaked but not as bad as when we were running to the car.  We needed the rain, but were sorry it spoiled the fireworks show.