The Beach is Made for Beading!

Last week, my girlfriends and I had our annual beach beading soiree. This is a blissful time for us beadaholics as we enjoy five days with nothing better to do than bead. We sleep as little as possible (or as much as you wish), bead a lot, drink if we want, tell stories, and basically have a fabulous time. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for loaning us the location, we are truly grateful!

Just to prove that we really do bead, I thought I would share what I got accomplished. For those non-beaders, it may not look like much, but I was pleased with the outcome. Some of you may know that I have been working on an extremely large undertaking -- a 20" x 14" Christmas tapestry of the North Pole. Here is a picture of what it will look like when finished:

There are over 400 rows to the pattern and I am only on row 89. I did 14 rows at the beach. Each row takes approximately 1/2 hour to an hour. So, for the first two days, I worked on the tapestry, here is what I have done so far:

To give you an idea of 14 rows, it is about 1/2 inch. I did the area between the bottom of the light, down to the bottom of the picture. Pictures do not do it justice, the use of beads in this pattern is incredible. The stars in the sky appear to twinkle, the snow on the roofs glisten and the light has a soft glow to it. Doing a project like this is as close as I will get to painting, I guess it is my version of paint by number. = )

Besides the tapestry, I made a couple of bracelets. One was this cute snowman pattern. It is finished except for the button closure (I forgot to bring buttons so the bracelets I made are almost finished).

I made this mini-tapestry using the beads that were called for in the pattern. I am not happy with it at all because the sky is way too dark. After I was halfway through it, I made the decision to finish thinking it would be better. Wrong decision. I will probably end up taking this completely apart and salvaging the beads. It is a cute pattern, just a poor bead selection.

My next bracelet is my favorite. It is a goddess bracelet and is quite colorful. I just love the wild colors. It was a very fun pattern to do! Now, I just need to find the perfect button to close it up.

The last bracelet is a cool snowflake pattern. The colors do not show well in this picture, the beads have a metallic finish and it glistens quite nicely. As you can tell, I didn't get it quite finished before it was time to pack up and go home.

Well, there you have it. This is what I have to show for myself. I had a great time and I'm already counting down the days until next year's getaway!

Fall Is In The Air!

It was such a beautiful day today, so we headed out in search of Fall colors, and boy did we find them! There were so many pretty pictures, I had a hard time choosing for the blog. I think I narrowed it down to 11 here, but this is just a sampling.

Silver Fun!

The Special Olympics Regional Bowling Tournament was held Saturday and Seth received a silver medal! It was a long day, but Seth and all of his teammates did a great job handling the waiting. Five teams from across the region competed. Our team took 54 athletes to the event which was a huge turnout for us.

I don't have all of the results yet, but will edit this post when I get that information. It seems like we were pretty heavy on golds and silvers so it will be interesting to see. Everybody had a fabulous time and that is the most important.

As The Clock Turns

Grover and Goni had a garage sale last weekend and Seth was mesmerized with this clock. He wanted to buy it but I did my best to sway him away from it. The "cherished heirloom" hung in the Laseke's house for many years, but they decided it was time for it to find a new home. Unfortunately....er, I mean ..... fortunately, nobody else decided their home was the place for it, so Grover graciously brought it in as a present for Seth. I will forever be in their debt.......The clock can be set to play every hour on the hour, OR (and this was it's only saving grace), it can be set to play only when you push the button. Also, another very important quality is that there is a volume control. Mind you, in this video the volume is set on approximately 2 on a scale of 10. Can you imagine this playing every hour! Aaagh! The repertoire consists of about 12 songs if Lacey counted correctly. Yes, she did play it many times to come to that conclusion. MANY times!

I suppose I am glad that the clock has found a loving home instead of the garage sale reject pile. Seth can be assured that he will have at least one piece of "furniture" to take with him when he moves out someday. = )

Safety First

Seth is doing very well with his new job of safety patrol. I parked near the school this morning hoping to remain "incognito", and for the most part I did. I also wanted to make these pictures into a slideshow but could not do that within the blog post so instead you get one picture at a time -- pity, pity! Anyway....here is Seth bringing out his safety patrol cones and flag.

He has to place the cones to block off one of the lanes, and here he is checking for traffic prior to stepping out to place the cones.
Now he has placed them, but he is not positive if they are where they should be so he is checking with the teacher who is just out of the picture.
Now he is at his post. It looks like he is looking at me, but amazingly, he has not spotted me.
His first student of the day.

Doing his job -- except his right hand is supposed to be out too (we are still working on this). = )

OK, now I'm busted! I would have gotten away with it, but I cleared my throat and he heard that and spotted me. Dang! This look was followed by a "Maaaahhhmmm, what you doing here?!" and then a look that clearly told me he wanted me to go.

It is obviously not cool to have your Mom taking your picture. How dare I?? Later I told him it's my Mom privilege but he's not buying it!

Beach Babes

It's a miracle, but we finally got the entire family, including the dogs, to the beach for a weekend. The weather was beautiful, a little cloudy, but warm and very pleasant. Lacey practiced her golf swing out in the yard. She actually sent one of her hits into the dunes! I'm not good at distance, but I'd guess 75 to 100 feet.

Erik went to the local fish market and bought items for the boy feast. Here's Seth with his dinner. And the boys getting ready to dive in. (It's root beer in the wine glass) :-)Unfortnately, Seth talks big, but he actually only ate the fish, he sent the crab, clams and oysters to Erik instead of trying them. I think he would have liked the steamer clams if he had tried them, but it didn't happen.

On Sunday, it was time to take Lily to the beach for her very first time. She was excited about riding in the truck with the kids but as it turned out she is not very much into the beach. She was a bit of a wuss. She was skittish about the waves coming in, scared to death when she stepped on a piece of beachwood under the sand and the other end popped up, and was not impressed with the fact vehicles are allowed on the beach. Within 15 minutes, she drug Erik back to the truck and begged to get in!Even though Lily was not enthralled with her beach experience, she made up for it by being beautiful! Is this a pretty girl or what?

The kids had a great time playing in the water. They took off running with the pant legs rolled up and enjoyed letting the water swirl around their ankles. You can tell by the lack of coats, that the weather was very nice.

The incoming tide dictated when it was time to head back to the house, we decided getting the truck stuck on the beach is not our idea of fun. On our way back, we drove by this pelican hanging out with the seagulls.

Bowl, Baby, Bowl

Wow! Seth had a great day bowling! During league play, he bowled right around his average -- a 76 and an 82. Then, he wanted to continue bowling by himself while he waited for the other lanes to finish. He bowled an 88, 91 and 115! Typically any games after the third game start to go downhill because he gets tired. But, check this out -- this is his fifth game!

This game would have been way higher, but you can see where he lost the momentum in the 7th frame. He was really on a roll for those first six frames! It would be awesome if he could bowl like this during regionals, I could see him adding a gold medal to his collection. Stay tuned....

Fun at the Beach

We ventured to the beach for Saturday night expecting the weather to be rather drizzly and cool. This picture was taken about 2:00 on Saturday and it was easily shorts and tank top kind of weather.
On Sunday, we had cloudy conditions but it was still quite comfortable. Tenley and Lacey enjoyed riding "the bug".
Lacey insisted on riding this ride, but after it got going, she was not very happy about her decision. DeeDee is definitely thinking twice about it too and Seth is having the time of his life!
Apparently the weather at home was monsooning and downright awful. Looks like we made the right choice!

Nelson's Birthday

The kids and I, along with my co-worker Jennifer and her baby Logan, went to Jill and Shayne's to celebrate Nelson's (Nellie) first birthday. She squealed with delight with every toy that made noise, and sported some pretty good dance moves too. I have never seen a one year old handle the huge crowd and overwhelming stimuli so well; it didn't seem to faze her one bit.

Logan had a great time eating an enormous chocolate cupcake and managed to share the joy by getting chocolate cake and frosting all over his mom and himself!
I tried to talk Seth into eating his cupcake with a fork, but he informed me that he was going to "eat it like a man". He watched Grover eat the cupcake this way, so he figured if Grover could do it, then so could he.
At the end of the party, Nellie showed us how she had the whole birthday thing "in the bag".
Thank you for inviting us to share this day!

Wow!

I had to share what I saw tonight. I was sitting in my chair working on the computer and I looked up and saw this beautiful site! I went and grabbed the camera quickly before it got away from me. What do you think?



Even as brilliant as the colors in these photos appear, the intensity of the colors were ten-fold in real life. I love sunsets! It was worth the mosquito feeding frenzy that occurred on my arms and legs while taking the photos.