Older than dirt ...

Yesterday was my birthday ... whoopee! The highlights of the day were talking to the grand kids! Ava sang me a sweet rendition of Happy Birthday, and Sam demonstrated his counting skills by counting to 58 in multiples! I spent a lot of time on the phone ... literally hours! I talked to or got messages from 9 of the 10 kids, so that's about as good as it gets! Brian & Joann brought me a beautiful batch of fresh asparagus from their garden, and my neighbors Jon and Floyd made me a special birthday dinner and a chocolate cake!

All in all, about as good as it gets! Oh, & I treated myself to a rather splendid trip to Lou's, the local greenhouse. ( I was there for 2 1/2 hours - I'll let you imagine what I spent)

In the digi world, I received the most beautiful card from my friend Mary Hampson, who lives in the UK.

She has been helping me the past few weeks on some technical help with the 3 blogs I was designing, especially the one for the local cancer support group. She is a real genius when it comes to computer stuff, and also a wonderful designer. Check out the 3 blogs and see the amazing blinkies that she created for me!

If you have a blog and want a copy of one of them let me know! I'll help you get it set up!

Believe it or not, the fishing opener has come and gone! Most years it has been a major holiday at my house, but this year it turned into a major work weekend. I can never say enough about my amazing family! The saying "many hands make the load light" hardly begins to cover it! This year I had Shae, (my son), Kurt, (step son & very close friend), Kari, (daughter) & Jim and Jan (ex husband and his wife). And yes, we are all family! Here's a few shots of what was accomplished ...

Dock in -

Trailer loads of branches that I had cut were piled on trailers and burned -

And a couple of shots of the lovely spring flowers that are popping up!

Nearly bedtime here, but I wanted to share a couple of my favorite layouts from the last couple of weeks ...

One about the flood -

One about my love of/ addiction to caffeine

And a few of the Grand kids!

That's it for tonight, but I will sleep better knowing that this poor neglected blog finally has a new entry!

It's official ... Spring has sprung!!

Wow ... I am really bad at this whole blog thing! I guess I need to add it to a list somewhere ... comb hair - check, brush teeth - check, write in blog - ya right.
In any case, spring has officially arrived! Yesterday I took 11 wood ticks off Maizee, and 4 or 5 off me - a sure sign that it's spring in Minnesota. The flood waters have finally gone down to an almost normal level, and I guess I need to post some photos of what it looked like around here. I am still counting my blessings that I emerged almost damage free. Kurt came for the Easter weekend and helped me pull the plastic and wet insulation from the basement, and clean everything up with bleach water. Inside all is well - outside, not so much. There is so much debris all over the yard that it will take forever to clean it up! Oh wait - I don't have forever. There's going to be a wedding here in August! So why can't I stop playing on my computer and get to work? (I blame it on Hummie)
It's also pruning season. As always, that's a slow go. We have had a few really nice days, and I can accomplish a lot when it's nice out. But while most of Minnesota has experienced above normal temps and sunshine it's been mostly gloomy and cold here. And wet ... let me repeat that... wet. Even wearing my tallest Wellies I need to change pants 2 or 3 times a day because everything is so soggy and muddy, and I won't even mention what Maizee looks like! My living room looks like a tribe of grade school kids have been building tents. Every possible surface is covered in old blankets and towels, hoping to save what is left of my aging furniture. The folks from HGTV would have a stroke! Ok, back to the pruning ... I was working out a formula. If I could do one tree every 2 hours, x 300 trees, = 600 hours. Oh ... that's not going to work - by then the trees will have bloomed, and have apples on them. ah well ... another year of a lick and a promice.

The ice officially went out on Saturday, about a week earlier than normal. The open water has brought me several new neighbors! I have several pairs of Canadian honkers, and Mallards that must be nesting on the shoreline, because they spend their days gliding back and forth, driving Maizee crazy. I need to do some research and find out how to teach her that the birds are our friends! Before long there will parades of fuzzy babies learning to swim out there, and I would be heart broken if she hurt any of them.

Ok ... it has reached 40, and the sun is shining. I must drag myself out to the orchard! On the bright side, I downloaded South of Broad by Pat Conroy onto my ipod last night, and I am excited to listen to it! (all 21 hours) It's been on my to read list for a long time, but I just keep moving it to the bottom of the pile.

What do you do out there every day?

I know it's hard for people to understand my life right now.  I appear to becoming one of those crazy cat ladies, sans the cats. I rarely leave the house, and except for my nightly visit with Pam, I can go days without even talking to anyone. But right now it suits me, and I know that if the mood strikes me my family and friends are only a phone call or a short drive away.

Normally I am motivated to keep very busy... gardening, doing yard work, pruning, canning, crafting, etc. I always feel like I need to acomplish at least a couple of things everyday. But this month, my motivation seems to have abandoned me. This could be due to the five or more feet of snow on the ground, or maybe because of the nasty fall I took. I didn't mention the fall to many people - it would just give them another reason to say I shouldn't be alone out here. But when my dear friends the Tschetter's heard about it they came to the rescue as usual! Miriam, who happens to be a massage therapist, came over and gave me  a 90 minute deep tissue massage. I will admit that I accused her of using hammers and knives at the time, but the relief was amazing. Two days later, & I almost feel healed. JoAnn came to keep us company, and dear Brian attacked all the nasty ice build up on the sidewalk & porch for me. They even brough me a couple of jars of a special herbal cream for Finn and his poor dry skin! I am so blessed to have such giving friends!

What I have been doing this month is finally trying to learn more about Photoshop Elements. It's the program I use to do my scrapbook pages, and although I know the basics I have wanted to know more for a long time. I subscribed to an online group - Hummie's World a couple of years ago, but at the time we were driving to Willmar everyday for treatments, and there just wasn't time. So this winter I'm giving myself a "get out of work mode" pass, and I'm spending many hours a day trying to teach this old dog some new tricks.
Here are a few examples of what I'm learning :

How to create a "faux" layer mask to extract a photo

A new technique for cutting papers, and using a photo as a background

Using brushes! Always wondered what those dang things did!

Adjusting photos so they match better, using opacity, recoloring grid lines

recoloring papers & elements so you can use them with more photos. (very cool!)

I could go on, but insted I think I'll go make another scrapbook page. How cool would it be to have all the Christmas books done before the orchard blooms this year? (Shhhhhhhhhh ... don't tell anyone!)

So I'm not really much of a blogger ...

So much for good intentions! The blog for the Walk of Hope has been up for a while now, & I'm not sure if anyone even looks at it. And really, why would they? I don't even know if there was a February meeting while I was gone. It's tough getting the news out when you don't have it. Ah well, on a brighter note the facebook cause now has over 80 members. Not too shabby for a months time.
Note to self - quit whining & do something about it.

So, since I last stopped here February 11th has come & gone. I chose to spend a couple of weeks with Shae & Marisa helping out with the kids, knowing that it wasn't a great time to be alone. It was an unremarkable day. There were tears, there were smiles, but mostly just a sense of emptiness that I seem to carry with me. I can't help but wonder if the day will ever come when I will go a whole day without thinking about Jerry, and how much I miss him.

Good Lord ... it's a blog!

Today I am creating a blog. I have no idea what I will use this thing for. I am determined to create a blog for our cancer support group, and I wanted to make all my rookie mistakes in a less public format.

Perhaps I will use this as a place to post some of my favorite scrapbook pages. Would that spoil the surprise on Christmas when everyone is opening their latest scrapbook?

Or perhaps I should just post some of the thousands of photos that I take every year? It would be great to be doing something with them.

For today, I will try adding some photos of the amazing hoar frost that our latest winter storm left behind. A simple reminder why I choose to stay on the banks of Big Stone Lake.