Hello Kitty

Yesterday April and I went shopping and then I made her dinner for her belated birthday. We hit Joann's, Savers, the new Hobby Lobby on Bell, Big Lots (make sure you ask her about the friendly cashier there) and ate lunch at 5&Diner. I found Hello Kitty fabric at both Joann's and Hobby Lobby and some ribbon at HL as well.

Dinner was at April's house because living in an apartment SUCKS! The kitchen is small and the stove only has one big burner. One CANNOT make nefflies with only one big burner, it just doesn't work. Although as it turns out, I only needed one burner, but the grills at the complex SUCK! I tried grilling hamburgers one night and it took almost an hour to cook them. So I needed a larger kitchen and access to an efficient grill............. It's difficult to describe what exactly nefflies are. My mother-in-law made them so the dish is either German or Polish in origin (she was German but learned to cook from a Polish neighbor/friend). They are an egg dumpling (similar to spaetzle only much larger), boiled, rinsed, and then fried with butter, onion, and bacon. This isn't exactly how she made them (mine are better!), through the years I have tweeked the recipe. It's one of the dishes both kids ask for me to cook.

Did I mention that the apartment and the complex SUCK? Only once or twice so far? I won't even go into how I HAVE SCRAPBOOK PAPER AND SCHOOL PICTURES THAT ARE SOAKING WET BECAUSE THE GARAGE I AM PAYING EXTRA FOR LEAKS! Does management care? Only if other tenants are in the office.............. so when I leave I am placing a large sign on the garage door saying that it leaks!

So, my project today is to rescue as many pics as possible and cut off the sodden parts of my scrapbook papers that are all over my tiny living room.

Back from Virginia

What I did on my vacation: flew across the country, got stuck in the snow, chopped out the ice and got unstuck, met really great neighbors in VA, coughed, blew my nose, coughed some more, petted donkeys and horses, wrapped up in blankets, took pictures of a foot of snow, met some more neighbors, ate mucho food, made one book, drove to NY, visited my mother on Christmas, drove south to Binghamton to visit my sister and her family, ate more food, drove to VA, picked up Dave in Charlotte, went to a picking party, ate more food, tasted Gumbo for the first time, spent all day flying back to Phoenix.

The first pic is my rental car stuck on our road (hit some ice and slid into a small snowbank). The car was stuck for a day until it warmed up to the 40's and I spent 3 hours the next afternoon chopping out ice. In the meantime our neighbor, Maggie, got me some groceries to tide me over until I could get to the store. I walked A LOT! Our "street" is almost 1/4 of a mile, so I trudged luggage both ways as I parked at the end of the street (where the Laurel Ridge Lane sign is). Our street is not flat and not straight, I was afraid of getting stuck again, so I parked by the gravel road while I was there. You can see how painfully close I was to the road where I got stuck:

Once I dug my way out, I drove almost 12 hours to visit my mother in upstate NY for Christmas. I got there Christmas Eve and left the day after Christmas.

Our house in the snow:

Our neighbor, Brian, was very nice and plowed our street so I could at least get to the house. He owns the farm behind our property so when I saw him I asked him if we could pet his animals. So instead of just taking photos, when Dave came out we walked over and got closer. The goats wouldn't let us pet them, but the horses and donkeys weren't shy at all. My camera got funky with low battery juice so I was only able to get pics of 'ole no. 10 (the big goat):

After walking home from the picking party (man, those two kids can play!) at Maggie and Bill's house it was snowing and I got a few pics of the snow falling that night. Even though the weather was horrendous before I got to VA, the weather while we were there was great!