I have been tagged… by haynes94, To list my top five vacations taken.

1.  Lenexa, Kansas- Salt Lake City, Utah… and everywhere in between. We went to The Dinosaur National Monument and several dinosaur and natural history museums. we drove through mountain ranges and hit truck stops. It was cool. I love a good road trip.
2. Sandusky, Ohio… We met my Aunt, Uncle, and cousin Frank at Cedar Point, One of my favorite places. It was Charlie and Isabelle’s first time at the park, my eleventh. (hehehe). We had great fun.
3. Traverse City, MI-from Provo, Ut… Drove cross country in 22 hours in  a car with four guys. My turn to drive I hit one hundred and ten miles an hour in a Dodge Neon crossing Wyoming. Great fun.(Ben was one of the guys… lol)
4. Alaska, all of it, well almost… When I was younger I lived for a summer with my Aunt and Uncle in AK. Every weekend I was there we were on the road. We went every where the road would take us. It was beautiful.
5. St. Augustine, Fl… Went with my Mamala when I as a bit younger and without children. I loved waking up in the morning and watching the dolphins from the beach. The churches are gorgeous. It is just a great place and anytime I go some where with my Mom its always a wonderful trip.

That’s all of my very favorites but there are so many more… trips to Chicago with my Mom and sister, Toronto with my sister and cousin. Cross country and down the East Coast with my parents when I was little, a trip I plan on doing with my own kids in a couple of years.

I can’t wait I hope there’s so much more to come. I want to travel out of the country. Canada and Mexico don’t count. I’d like to go to New Zealand, Turkey, Jordan… Petra is on my life list and The Great wall of China, Goa, India… Lets see… I could go on and on and on and on…

Tag… I tag Seedsower, meganbarnard, MotherOpearl, Leonidas, and LilianyB

This is a lamp mosaic I worked on when I was pregnant and couldn’t work with lead.I was going for the over grown Iris look.

 It has been sitting on my work bench for a year, mocking me because I didn’t feel like finishing it. Well I’ve finished it. Isabelle and I grouted it with a moss green grout the other day. There is more color variation in the green glass it doesn’t show in the pictures very well. It’s really quite pretty.

So now I just have to install the wiring and it’ll be good to go. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it. I think it screaming “Sell me on Ebay!”

Most definitely.

Ang

This is Rosie. My sisters pug. She is spoiled rotton.

She’s sitting on the quilt I made my sister when she graduated with her Bachelor’s. when She gets her Doctorate, I’ll make her another. If I made her a quilt for every degree I’d be quilting all the time. UGH.

We had lunch at Isabelle’s favorite eating destination, Steak and Shake.

She doesn’t care so much about the food. She just wants the paper hat.

She wore one around for a week once. What can I say, the girl has style.

We spent some time at my inlaws house. My father inlaw is a collector of things and I love looking at things, so we always have fun together. He recently bought a large group of puppets that he’s going through and sorting to sell and add to his own collection. He had about twenty boxes of puppets.

 I found this one particularly amusing. His real name was bad enough,Willie Talk, but they changed his name to Randy Dandy. Why?

Yes my twelve year old mentality was working full time on this one.

Would you rather be a Talking Willie? or a Randy Dandy?

We left Detroit early this morning and made the trip home in five hours instead of the four it usually takes me. We arrived just before the worst of the storm.

When I got here a gift from Lelo was waiting for me. I LOVE IT! Thank you Lelo!

This will definitely keep the ice out of my beard!

Hope your all keeping your toes warm, at least. Ang

Having a great time. Went to the ArtOMat and will post pictures later. The internet connection here is very iffy, sometimes it works but mostly it doesn’t. So I’ll post more tomorrow. Basically been going none stop and loving it. Ang

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THE MACHINE IS A LINK… CLICK IT AND YOU’LL FIND OUT… Ang

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Apparently you have to be awake at three thirty in the morning to upload photos here… So here are my most recent ArtOMat purchases.

This guy has information on the back of his card telling what he is and eats. He’s a chicken zombie, a former oven roaster with no insides…

I am not a big fan of Legos myself having stepped on way too many of them in the last few years, but I couldn’t resist this one. Now I have to keep Charlie away from it. He kept picking it up and eyeballing it.

For some reason the machine had almost all sculptural stuff in it this time. I was hoping for some good photography or painting… Oh well I guess that means I’ll have to go back next time. Oh the hardship.

Alright so this post has taken an hour to do… I think I’ll try to sleep again. Hope you all having sweet dreams. Ag

I cut Charlie’s hair a few days ago and he insisted on having a tail… ICK. I hated them in the 80′s and I still can’t stand them, but he wants what he wants. So I left him his tail. We arrived at my sisters this afternoon and she noticed it and started hammering him with the questions… Why? WHy? WHY???

Finally she just said “Charlie I’ll give you twenty bucks if you let me cut it off.”

He hemmed and hawed and then said “Okay. I want ten up front…” So thats how the deal went ten up front and Aunt D got the scissors… no more tail. After words she said “Why did I start so high? I bet he would have gone for ten.”

My response was ”Yeah…Now it’s going to be twenty for everything…”

More madness from the Motor City later… 

Trying to get some projects finished up and pack. The monsters and I are going to Detroit… Yes, we are leaving Ben alone for the weekend. Well he’ll have Max to keep him company, and the hamster and the fish and the turtles…

Since I am taking my trusty extra appendage a.k.a. my laptop with me, I’ll be posting while I’m gone so you won’t even have a chance to miss me.

 You’d miss me wouldn’t you? Guys? You’d miss me right? Aw come on…

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How rude of me. For my newer friends I am going to Detroit because that is where my baby sis lives… She is a Principal at a school down there. She’s beautiful and brilliant, and the best part of her is my NEPHEW… the wonderful SAMMAN… Who I can’t wait to see. He is five months older then Cooper so they are little buds.

So that’s why I’m going to the Big D…

Well and I of course have to do the ArtOMat while I’m there and Ikea… And probably Greektown and I might drag everyone to the DIA, and the Pewabic Pottery… Oh yeah. The big city has a lot to offer and I intend to get my fill. Ang

This is Max. He’s our six year old Jack Russell Terror.

I know your thinking why is she showing us her dog? What’s the point… yeah we’ve seen a dog.

Here’s why. We got Max because I wanted a dog that was mine. I knew that if we waited until the kids got older any dog we had would always be theirs. Of course Mom would feed it and walk it… well you all know how that goes. So we got Max.

And yes he is mine in every sense of the word. Except when I pretend he’s Ben’s because he’s done something naughty or it’s two in the morning and he needs out or when he runs into the neighbors yard.

Alright so the dog is mine, that doesn’t mean he listens to me.

So Max isn’t so bad. He keeps me company and he herds the kids back to bed when their out after bed time. He barks so I know someone is here, and he lets me rub his ears when I need to.

But Max is a tie me down…

When I want to go I have to consider Max. Can he come? Will he be alright at home? Who will feed him? Walk him? Yup a definite tie me down. Then I started thinking about the other tie me downs we have.

There’s a hamster, three turtles, four fish, and a three monsters. Wow that’s a lot of tie me downs.

I think I need to talk to Ben about some tie me ups…

How many tie me downs do you have in your lives?

This is what happens when I’m cleaning and not paying enough attention to the little monster. I thought the marker was dry, I set it on the counter and when I turned back around I had a little kitty cat. I’m guessing that is what he was going for since he kept saying meow.

I was going to say this qualifies me for the awful mother of the day award. But you know Isabelle used to cover her whole body in tiger stripes or leopard spots even sometimes before I would catch her. So I guess I get the awful mother for their life time award.

Ang

OH I’m not saying tie me downs are horrible, they just make things a little harder sometimes.

I love mine though… I could ditch the sudo rat though and maybe the fish… hmmm…

Yesterday the kids were home from school. The usual bickering and negotiations took place in regards to television and game playing time. Isabelle wanted Charlie to play Dance Dance Revolution with her.

If you have never seen it, this is my idea of the perfect video game… the kids have mats that they have to dance on copying the steps from the television screen.

Charlie wanted to play his computer game, which he had already been playing for an hour. Sick of listening to the seemingly endless argument I decided to try and come up with a solution.

“Charlie, if Mommy says you have to shut off the computer at two o’clock, will you go play DDR with Isabelle?”

When I paused waiting for Charlie’s answer Isabelle leaned over to me and said in a covert whisper…

“You’re the Mommy.” Like I had forgotten the fact…

“Thank you.” I replied laughing… It’s bad when I’m not even thirty-five and my children are concerned that senility is setting in.

ANG

Maxfield Parrish

The Frog Prince

This is one of my favorite Illustrators. I have this print hanging in the bathroom… Where else does a frog prince go?

Here is a link to another painting that I found recently that I really LOVE. In the past I haven’t liked this artist. His paintings always seemed cold and sterile to me, or worse, lonely and full of sorrow.  If you check the catalog on his site you’ll see what I mean.Although there are only a few samples of his work.  

It’s hard to believe this  is by the same artist.  It’s Andrew Wyeth.  The Carry.

Tell me what you all think.

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This is called boredom… maybe I should repost the finger spelling from my last post…

I think I’ll post one of my favorite poems instead. I already put up some ART so I may as well… I know you all are going to beg me to go back to sperm and snot posts soon…

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

Those that I guard I do not love;

My country is Kiltartan Cross,

My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,

No likely end could bring them loss

Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,

Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,

A lonely impulse of delight

Drove to this tumult in the clouds;

I balanced all, brought all to mind,

The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind

In balance with this life, this death.

                                    William Butler Yeats

Ben and I had a date night last night… Big deal for us, since we haven’t been out without children or child since early December.

We went to see Ghost Rider. Cheesy comic book movies… Gotta love’em. I especially enjoyed the soundtrack. Might have to purchase this one.

Then we went for dinner. I over heard something else that made me go HMMMM…

It was a very busy evening. When we hit the door we asked about the wait and were told that it was fortyfive minutes. We had the hostess add our name to the list and we started to wait. At one point we were standing behind the hostess stand and I over heard one hostess say to the other “Should we be telling people it will be an hour to an hour and a half?” to which the other hostess responded  “We’re never supposed to say more then forty five to fifty minutes.” 

HMMM…  So what if the wait is an hour and a half? Well you wait for an hour and a half because you were told forty minutes and you already invested a bunch of time… waiting.  So we waited. I think it was only an hour and fifteen minutes. We had a corner bench and found ways to entertain ourselves. I took lots of pictures. I’m sure some people wanted to hurt me. It was a very dark building and my flash could have been annoying… MAYBE.

So we waited… and waited. It was all good. We were together and had fun. We had some very tasty food and then went to Borders and spent a little money on books.

This morning we got up and went to breakfast without children.

SO nice. I had my own hot chocolate and no one stole my whip cream. A very nice morning. I did miss the babies a little… just a little.

These are my shoes… I like them.

I also took pictures of everyone elses shoes.

I took about fifty pictures of Ben and I but we were never in sync, either his eyes are crossed or mine are… It was good for a lot of laughs though. Funny, no one else offered to take our picture.  They were probably too busy trying not to be pissed at me because my flash had burned their retinas.

Another way I entertained myself… I also tried to pick Ben’s nose and got in a bit of public public

public

public groping… Hey a girl has to do what a girl has to do.

All in all a GREAT evening.