It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas- 1 day

Home from Christmas eve service, Jesus's birthday cake is in the oven. Now time to rap gifts; one of my favorite things about Christmas. But the greatest gift of all is the birth of a beautiful baby boy named Jesus. Merry Christmas!

White Christmas - 2 days

Its snowing now! There may be a white Christmas after all.

Santa Baby- 3 days

Well, it rained. Looks like we are going to have a green Christmas this year. Tomorrow is my last day of work, then nothing but Christmas.

Light of Christmas- 4 days

I now have three kinds of Christmas cookies made and my shopping is almost done. It's almost here!

Christmas Tonight- 5 days

The Christmas count down begins! However, I missed yesterday. The truth is that I forgot about my Christmas count down until yesterday. So I'm going to finish up the last 5 days til Christmas.

The Big One

 The tree is up! And it is most defiantly feeling like Christmas. Every Year we like to do a different tree. We've done the nature tree, the candy tree, the purple tree etc. This year we went BIG.











And it didn't even fall over.

The guy at the store looked a bit shocked when we told

him the giant bulbs were going on our tree, you know, the one in our living room. 

 Oh Christmas, you make me want to bake cookies.

The One and Only Cake

You will be happy to know that we had it out of the Grand Canyon alive. My absence in the blogging world does not signify my demise. We made it home from our adventure safe and sound. I have a lot to catch up on but first, in the light of thanksgiving, I am thankful for my mom. There are many reasons and I won't go into a long list. But, one reason is her ability to make a cake. My birthday cake!

After I turned 18 I stopped receiving presents for my birthday. The only thing I get is a cake. A fancy cake of my choosing. This year I picked a chocolate cookie dough cake I saw on Pinterest ( I never have the same cake twice). My mother made it for me. It took her hours and according to her, after step 215, it was finished. She swore to never make this cake again.  But I tell you what sir, it was delicious!

Something Grand

We went to the Grand Canyon, stayed with friends in the sun valley Indian school and crossed off a lot of miles. We made it to Tennessee in time to get Spencer settled at school. And tomorrow we head out again on our trip home. I'm getting tired of driving but I'm having so much fun.

Pictures

I added pictures to my posts. Go back and see. I'll be back on the road tomorrow so no more pictures till I get home, which is in 1 week.

Yardsales

We went yardsaleing this morning. Oh, and what good things we found. $8:50 later and I'm am the owner of a cheese shaker, a large bowl, a garden fairy on a stick, the movie August Rush, a horse bean baby, a hedgehog bean baby, and a puzzle. Look how good we all did. The most interesting find was a set of kempul Indonesian gongs.

We leave Wyoming tomorrow for our return trip. Our stay here wasn't long enough but if we don't leave we can never come back. We'll be driving through Colorado and the plan is to see the grand canyon, arches park, and four corners. So much to see, so little time.

Ride 'em Cowboy

Our second night here in lovely Wyoming we did the cowboy thing and went to the rodeo.

To tell you the truth I didn't think I would truly like it. I always thought it was stupid that men wanted to be nearly killed by large angry bulls. However, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

  I think I like cowboys.

Something Different

Today, I almost hit a pronghorn with my car. It was right after I soaked in a natural hot spring and ate a buffalo burger. I love vacation!

And there are real cowboys here! How great is that!?!

Yellowstone

We got up at the crack of dawn, or before, I wasn't awake enough to tell. But we were dressed and leaving the house by six. We arrived at the park a bit after eight. The day was full of sight seeing and fun. I was able to cross some animals of my mental animal to see list. Two of which were pelicans, and a wolf. Both of these were extremely exciting because I have never seen either of these in the wild before.

 At first we thought the wolf of a bear, I guess I never realized how big a wolf really is. He was eating was looked to be a elk or bison, it was hard to tell because he was standing in a creek. He was pretty far away but we could see him through binoculars. It was very cool.

Yellowstone is a beautiful place!

It was windy and when old faithful went off we got a face full of geyser water.

We saw beautiful waterfalls, geysers, hot springs, canyons, and a wonderful sunset over the lake. On the way back we were able to see the Milky Way and the biggest shooting star ever.

It was a perfect day!

Facing Death...

..and enjoying it. Well, at certain times it wasn't that much fun. I guess I should have realized  that when one says " lets take the 4 wheeler up the mountain" that there is indeed a mountain involved. What I really want to know is who's idea was it to build a trail on the side of a mountain. Let me say, they were crazy. Imagine a dirt road; now cut that road into thirds. Take one of those slices and dump a truck load of rocks on it. Big rocks. Then on top of those rocks dump a pile of dry loose dirt. Add more rocks. Now, put that whole thing on the side of a mountain. Making sure there is a shier drop on one side and plenty of blind corners. Just add me in a gaiter and the scene is set.

 It started out nice and flat, mom and I in the gaiter, Samantha and my uncle on the 4 wheeler. Then we started up. Higher and higher.

  The whole time we were thinking, ' if this is bad going up just wait till we have come down'. I made good use of the bar that was known by the locals as the ' oh s*** bar'. We didn't go all the way to the top so we had to turn around. Mom, a first time driver, who was doing amazingly well, pasted the wheel over to my uncle for our dangerous u-turn.

Heading back down surprisingly wasn't as bad as we thought. My uncle only had to jump off once to save himself and Samantha from tipping over. But no one plummeted to there death. So in the end was it worth it? Yes, for the view of the Wyoming outback and the lizard that ran across in front on us. I have dust in places that dust shouldn't be but I had a blast! I wouldn't take it back if I could!

I wouldn't take it back if I could!

 

Almost There

We are in Wyoming!! We crossed the line last night during a huge lightening storm. We still have several hours left to drive but this is the final stretch.

No stops today, mostly because there is nothing in Wyoming to stop at. Yesterday we spent the day at Mount Rushmore. And the day before we spent most of the day in the bad lands. So far this has been a great adventure.

And there is so much more to see.

The Mighty Mississippi

We left St Charles this morning and made our way to Freeport Illinois, the home of the tower of plates. A tower made out of plates, sounds interesting doesn't it. But it's not. It wasn't worth our time. But it was on our way so it wasn't really out of our way. We stopped in Dickeyville at the Holy Ghost Grotto, a shrine of weirdness.
Cassville Wisconsin was our next stop. We drove along a Mississippi River and came into Cassville where we took the Cassville car ferry.

 My car was on a boat! The trip a about 10 min long across the river into Iowa.

It let us off on a little dirt road in the middle of nowhere. We then got slightly lost but soon sorted it out. We ended the day in Fort Dodge Iowa. Tomorrow is going to be a big driving day.

Every Mile Counts

Yesterday we did not cover much ground. We crossed from Indiana into Illinois and spent the day driving around Kankakee and Herscher. I saw where I was born and where I lived when I was a baby.

We spent sometime with some of my moms old friends, drove on a part of Route 66, saw Gemini giant, and ended up staying in St Charles.

Drive On

Our adventure began with lots of driving. Hours and hours of driving. On strait roads lined with corn field. We cleared Ohio, stopping in Cleveland to get my chair adjusted at millers. And we also sopped at the giant Campbell's soup can in Napoleon Ohio.

We drove through Gary Indiana, and yes we did sing the song.
I am now sitting comfortably in a hotel in Indiana after a lovely swim. Tomorrow in more driving.

Something Important....Like Pants

The feeling you get when you are packing and are overcome with dread that you forgot something. You just know that when you get there you will have forgotten something so important, you know something like pants. I have never gone away for a three week period before, I almost don't know what to do with my self. I had the whole couch cover in clothing trying my hardest to simplify and reduce; giving up I went with the philosophy ' if it fits, it comes.' That seem to work for me and I am now good and packed.
Departure time-tomorrow 6:00 am.  

Road Trip

So I'm going on a adventure. A big adventure. A long adventure. The kind of adventure that takes you very far away from home.  But also the kind that brings you back again. To the kinds of places where your watercolor are essential and your camera soon becomes a permanent addition to your arm.  I am packing up the blueberry and driving her out west. To Wyoming to be exact. To see people that I love and places I have never been. This ones going to be good!

iPad

So quite some time ago now, I bought myself an iPad. It's great and I use it for everything. One of the  main reasons I bought it was so I could blog freely without taking up so much time on the home computer. As you can see, by the month or two gaps between my posts, it didn't work out the way I wanted. This is mostly because my iPad will not let me post pictures. And I love me a good picture. Oh well, back to the home computer it is.

The King

My contribution to Samantha's drama class. King Edward III. 

Art Class

Well, I'm back! And busy as ever. Work has been crazy rush, apparently everybody in the world needs new wine glasses. My hands seriously ache. We added two new designs to the line that people real seem to like, but I have no inventory painted for them.  Everything is a super hot rush. On a slower less stressful note, I teach an art class now ( well, maybe not less stressful. Just a different kind of stressful). I have twenty or so students varying from ages 4-16. I teach once a month and we are learning about different artists and their technics. We learned about Jackson Pollock and made a grand mess flinging paint on a canvas. 

Please

I hope this works because blogger has not allowed me to post in forever.