Bear Cabin weekend fun

Just got back from a fun weekend up at Bear Cabin, our fun little retreat home we love to go to. 6 other friends and I had such a fun weekend. We arrived of course on the coldest day of the year. It's right outside of Showlow so the snow was just beautiful on the trees as it'd just snowed the night before. I had to take a photo of my car thermometer as it's never seen that cold of temperature, or driven in snow! Yep, 10 degrees and that was at noon! It had been -6 that night. We didn't exactly even peek our heads out the door once we unloaded all our projects! And we were loaded! Sarah and I managed to pretty well fill my car!We had such a fun time, I won't show photo's of what I got done, some are gifts and you'll see them in time and 3/4 of them were for work so I'll be posting them too! I have 3 quilt tops to get quilted now this week! Here is Sarah...you can see the beautiful sewing area behind her, you feel like you are out in the woods, there are windows all around.
Here we are , we gathered here 3 times a day and never went hungry! That is Carol and Bob at the back, our hosts, she cooks such wonderful meals for us, then she cleans it all up too! We just stop sewing and come eat! ahhhhh! We don't sleep much as we all have lots to accomplish, altho there were alot of projects taken that never saw the light of day, I guess they went along just to visit and will get a turn another day. The sewing room usually had the lights on until midnight and then again at 5AM. Beautiful sunrises over all that snow.
And here is Maggie. She's the official greeter, she changes her scarf each day too! Denise has always brought her snacks and boy she remembers that, she comes in after each meal and goes right to Denise to get her treat. So another fun time at Bear Cabin is over, lots of good laughs and fun were had, and I for one was so thankful to have the concentrated sewing time to feel more caught up on obligations!

Caribbean Cruise

Our next stop was Belize. We did a ship excursion and had a great time on it. Cave Tubing! We went by bus out to the jungle, walked a path thru the jungle carrying our inner tubes with a helmet and head lamp . When we got to the cave opening we all got into our tubes and floated 1/2 mile thru the cave, what an adventure! We came out the other side and floated out thru the sunshine down the river. They fed us lunch then up in this wooded grass roofed structure that was up in the tree tops.
Belize is a very poor country, garbage just everywhere but the jungle and cave tubing was a great experience. It's in a protected area like in the US we'd have a national park. Our guide for our group of 8 was very knowledgeable about the local trees and poisonous plants and where their natural medicines come from. He picked us some "allspice" leaves as we went down the river, amazing to smell that out in the jungle, smelled like we should be having pumpkin bread!

We were glad to get off the Rickety bus and back to the big boat!

Caribbean Cruise

Day 2 was a day at sea, very relaxing with time for reading, napping, eating, games and lots of fun. We were in Costa Maya on Day 3. We took a little bus that went to the beach and spent the day there. It was beautiful out, Ken and Jeremy here off to do a bit of snorkling in that blue water! That is our ship in the background.

We had native man that set us up with a table on the beach ( for $10) and we had fun there just relaxing. We had some authentic beach tacos ( the price tended to change each time you asked too!) But it was a fun stop in Mexico with lots of things to watch around you, mariachi's and drums and lots of people selling their wares. They were not begging but all had something to win your American dollars! It was a nice day in Costa Maya.

Sailing Away

So I will post each days favorite pictures from our cruise as it's to much to tackle at once! After 2 fun days in Mississippi with Jeremy and Jamie, we all drove to New Orleans to board our ship. We had enough time to stop at a national park as we drove thru New Orleans and get a stamp, most of New Orleans didn't have us much impressed so we were glad to board the big boat! Here is our ship, it's the Norwegian Spirit. We'd never sailed on Norwegian before but enjoyed it and the price was right!Here we are on deck ready to sail. Only regret there was that is got dark and we couldn't see much as we sailed the 100 miles down the Mississippi river and entered the Gulf of Mexico, I could feel it about midnight tho as the ship had more movement.
Our cruising buddies, Jeremy and Jamie.
Here are Ken and I , we didn't sail under that bridge, we started out with a complete 180 degree turn and headed down the river! We found our rooms to unpack and headed out to explore the ship and of course find some dinner!

Caribbean Cruise

We are back, so here's just one photo of our grand trip! It was a wonderful week spent together, wonderful sights to see and fun times, great memories were made. We spent time relaxing at the beach, snorkeling in Honduras, cave tubing in Belize, mayan Ruins, and on and on. We loved it all, I'll post pictures one of these days as I have a TON ( imagine that!) But here is just one. This is in Honduras after we got off the ship, it was one of our favorite stops. A very pretty country and the snorkeling was lots of fun!

Sew and Go

Boy did we have fun at Sew and Go today! 44 showed up to make our fun project!Cute little notions totes, everyone was finished and moving into theirs by the time we were done!
Even appliqued initials on the front! We had great raffle prizes today and everyone got a mat in their kit and even a little 1x6 ruler to add to theirs.
It was lots of fun. I'm cutting kits for the next project tomorrow and it's really cute too!

Yahoo for Jury Duty

Some of you have been hearing about my jury duty saga. I was called to serve last summer, the first week of my new job...UGH....so I put in for a postponement. They gave me a date, then Jeremy called with news of his eye surgery appt. and asked me to come....of course it was the same date as Jury duty....new postponement. So the new date came and guess what, it was right when we would be floating around in the Caribbean on a big boat. So after faxes and letters...no response...I figured I'm going so we'll see what happens. No one was there to arrest me when I got off the boat for Contempt of court so I was relieved! :-) Chris actually called the jury duty number from his trip to check out the status of my number so he sent me an email saying I was excused! Yeah. So I guess I"m off the hook this time and after all the time and frustration of having the time moved I'm glad now to not have been able to change it. End of saga! I will get photo's up one of these days of our trip. We are home and loved every minute of it!

Happy Birthday Aiden!

Happy Birthday to one of my best little Buddies! Here is Aiden, today he is 7 years old, can you believe it! He's having a rocket launching birthday party in another week so we are excited to celebrate you Aiden! I hope being 7 is just the best!

Sew and Go

Here's a little tease for our Sew and Go, it's on Feb 1st, tuesday, 11:00-3:00. This is a tiny portion of it so you can just use your imagination! ha! We had 32 sign up for the class ( project unknown) after the last class....guess they must have had fun! So now everyone can wonder....what are we making???????

Going to Mississippi

Ken and I started our fun trip on friday and flew to Mississippi. We went by way of Chicago (strange way to get to Mississippi!) It was 3 degrees there and you could see your breath in the jet way, I was glad I wasn't staying in Chicago! There was snow clear across the US! Jeremy picked us up at the Birmingham airport and surprise!!! There was Aileron along for an outing! We got to go do a few errands and one of them was the baby store...Jeremy got to order the baby crib and pick up a few other things!

It was great to get to Columbus and see Jamie and all the great things they've done to the house since we were here last Feb. with the load of cabinets. Noah's room is all ready, painted, new wood floor, closet all decked out!

Here's the new chair in his room, looks pretty comfy!

Jeremy gave us a lesson in aircraft building, we got to actually try all the "dimples", "klicos" and today Ken and Jeremy did some riveting all along the tail section. I'm sure I have the official spellings and names all wrong but it was finally fun to understand the process!

Jamie and I had fun while they were busy in the shop. The guys were also building a pool table lamp out of that T-6 canopy for the squadron. We got to go get a pedicure to be ready for the cruise and then we went shopping for Noah's going home and hospital outfits! I'm sure there will be a blog soon about those, they are coming back to Az so that some more goodies can be made to match!

That picture was Riley...And here is everyone's buddy Aileron...

And here's Rio.

So tonight we had a great time and went to Little Porkey's for some Great southern Cooking! Denise said be sure and try out all the ethnic food along the way so I jumped right in and got Catfish! It was FRIED, then there were these corn things that were FRIED and then a hushpuppie that was FRIED, everything was FRIED! So that was true Ethnic cooking for Mississippi!

Jeremy and Jamie have made some great friends here, Anna and Robby, I can see they have so much fun together and it was great meeting them. They met us for dinner and then came back to the house to to play the new Monopoly card game, so we learned that and I heard it's coming with us. So tomorrow is the big day, we leave at 7 AM to head to New Orleans, we have 2 national parks to get to and get stamps while in New Orleans, then it's time to get on the BIG BOAT! And away we go come sunday afternoon. Off to the Western Caribbean for lots of fun in the sun. I'll be back soon, but first a bit of R&R! Bon Voyage!

Polka Dots and Pinwheels Class Finished

We finished up at our Intermediate Quilt class at Scrapbooks today, It was so fun to see the quilt tops finished and done! Alot of careful stitches went into them. Here is Julie, she's hoping for enough fabric scraps to make another one. Here is Marti, hers was so bright and fun! She's using some of her scraps to put on the back down the center.
And Jenny added an inner border to hers, it's so soft and pretty! She's got circles cut out yet to add in the centers of the blocks out of the brighter pink once it's quilted. We were missing Amanda today, she had class so I hope she gets her done too, it's for her son so I think she'll finish it up real soon. I'll teach this same class again starting the second week of Feb.

Sew and Go January #2 class

We had a great time at Sew and Go today, my co-teacher Barb is still in the hospital so I called Louise another teacher and friend and she was my helper today, whew! We had 47 take the class! Lots of fun hearts went out that door!
It's so nice to see new people coming and all the repeat ones, we have a few winter visitors taking advantage of it too.
We had 2 raffle prizes this time, here's one lucky gal, you can see the huge Hershey kiss with 2 fat quarters tied to it!
Everyone seemed to be having fun and I sure appreciate Louise coming in to help. Barb and I have a great project planned for next time, I worked on saturday making the prototype and getting the cutting sheet ready( I'll be cutting kits tomorrow at work), we already have 37 signed up to come again for the first one in feb. Actually the 2nd project in Feb. is going to be just as cool too, they are all things I love to get to make and all the students don't have a clue what they are coming to do, they just sign up and know they'll have a fun gift or project done to take home!!!! And guess who showed up at 3:30 when class ended......Ken came to vacuum for me! ( I had to be out of the class room right away as another class was coming in and it takes me a while to break the class down alone with putting the inventory we sell on the side back in the store and cleaning up all the irons and equipment and then it takes an hour to vacuum so whew was that nice to have help with that! We were out of there in an hour! Thanks to my vacuum guy!