Successful Organ Transplant!

My Summer Vacation

Hi there. Let's see if this photo thing will work this time. We had a good time at the cabin in late July. James tried to get hummingbird pictures. He got a few good ones, but I got these, which I am really fond of.

And here are the socks that I finished while we were there.
The color in this photo (and all of the photos I took of them) is a bit off. The name of the colorway is Blackberry, and it is a bit darker and a little more purple-y. I think the pattern shows up pretty well on it (again, the photo isn't that great), I am looking forward to wearing them this winter.

Then a couple of weeks after visiting the cabin, we went to the Boundary Waters. It was the first trip that we made on our own, and it went remarkably well. Yes, we made fire and ate dinner in the dark the first night, but the second day we moved to a campsite on an island and didn't leave it until it was time to go home. There were tons of berries on the island, mostly blue, but some red as well.
I forgot to bring my berry book, so I only sampled a couple of blueberries, because I was confident that they would taste good and not kill me. This turned out to be well placed confidence, and my prudence was rewarded as I looked up the other four kinds of berries that we saw when we got home, and at least one of them is indeed harmful. One or two of the others are ok, but apparently don't taste that good. So only eating the little blue ones was a good move. We also saw some mooses. If you look really close, you will see three dots in the lake. These are a mama moose and her two little meese. We watched them swim across the lake and go into the woods pretty much straight across from us. It was pretty neat, and the binoculars got a good workout.

To round out the summer, we went to my cousin Liz's wedding in Duluth! I finally got to meet Scott (groom in said wedding) as well as Margaret's intended, Ugur (the g is silent if you are not sure how to pronounce his name) and Fred's girlfriend Bri. It would seem that all of my cousins have picked quite nice partners. We like the nice in this family. It is so strange to see all of my cousins as parts of couples! Anyway, the whole weekend was terrific. The wedding was wonderful (yes, I cried, I do that). Margaret looked like a 1950's movie star. The dress and the hair were just perfect; she was beautiful (not that she isn't always, but I don't usually see her all dressed up and such). And Liz was positively radiant in her Grandmother's wedding dress (which her mother, and I think another relative have also worn). I loved the hairpiece that held her veil, and the hairdo with the baby's breath. It was obvious that she was spectacularly happy. I wish her and Scott many years of spectacular happiness. It was also great to meet some of their friends. They all seem like they are really fun and fun to hang around with people. I know I sound all gushy, but it was a great happy time, and I am so happy for Liz and Scott. I like to see my favorite peeps having a good thing. Anyway, it was generally a ridiculously happy weekend, so there.

They had a photo scavenger hunt (you can see my entry here), which was fun to complete. And I gave them this as a gift. And they liked it! Woo Hoo!

And just so you know, I still can't drag and drop the photos like I think I should be able to, but I used my incredibly limited HTML skillz to find a work around. I know this has been a crazy long post, but I had a lot swirling around in my head for quite awhile and just now finally managed to sit down get it all typed out and photo-ed up, and if I don't do it all at once, some of it will get lost, and I didn't want that. I wanted to share. Hockey season is getting underway and I get to go to a pre-season game on Sunday. The first regular season game is October 3. I am really excited for this season, and I'll probably want to share about that too.

What we have done to our house.

This summer (June) we painted our house,

made pizza on the grill,

and put a fire ring in the back yard (July).

Then we spent a few days at the cabin, where I finished a pair of socks which will have to be shown in another post because for whatever reason I cannot move pictures within a post anymore.

Start of short rant: I am now angry at blogger. I should not have to upload all the pictures in the correct order and then add text. I do not know why I cannot drag and drop pictures within the post like I used to. Blogger's help section is not helping me with this. Poo on blogger. End of rant. I feel a little better now.

Photos from Cabin and BWCA in the next (hopefully rant-less) post.

Smash/Up

So the weekend before last we had a nice Saturday outing. We went to the new Smashburger that opened near us. Tasty burgers and good shakes. The fries were ok, nothing spectacular, but good. We will definitely have to go back. It is a lot closer than Lion's Tap, and almost as good. After lunch we went and saw the movie Up in 3D. Excellent movie. I cried through some parts (if you've seen it, you know which parts, if you haven't, I won't spoil it for you). The extra money for 3D wasn't really worth it, but its good to try it out once in a while.

Last weekend was interesting. It started early with my Great Aunt's funeral on Thursday. It was a great service. The only time any of us will see a 21 gun salute to a paisley handbag. (Her ashes were buried in a Talbot's handbag wrapped in a Talbot's gift box. The national cemetery was perfectly fine with this.) We had a wonderful day with family, catching up and discussing the upcoming festivities in September. Friday we took it easy, did some light cleaning and grocery shopping. Saturday my aunt from Cali came over. She had never seen our house and wanted to, so I gave her the grand tour while James mowed the lawn. We didn't stay up too late or go see fireworks, just had a nice day at home enjoying the American dream. Sunday we got out our bikes for the first time this year (well first time for me anyway). We did a 6 1/2 mile ride at Baker Park reserve (near lake Independence). It was really nice, the hills were pretty small and not too bad. Hopefully we will get out much more the rest of the summer. Overall a great and pretty relaxing weekend.

Only two full weeks of work than I get a short week and a trip to the cabin. I can't wait! Also exciting, I finally get a haircut on Saturday. It has probably been six months since I had that done, and I really need it.

Next time, updates on the house and yard!

What about the knitting?? I can't talk about that, it would ruin the surprise. The other knitting? That's a sock (second of a pair) that I only knit on my lunch break so is coming along very slowly and is not worth talking about just yet.

I am nothing if not out of shape

I got a new work out dvd today, Jillian Micheal's 30 day shred, and I do feel shredded. I have not gotten that much out of 20 minutes ever. I will not worry about whether or not I can do it again tomorrow as tomorrow is soup night so I will not have the chance. Speaking of, I forgot to make the desert. I will have to look at the recipe and see if I can do it there. Probably, I do tend to get there a bit early.

Work continues to be craptastic as we hurdle into the abyss of store openings. Socks and bags and afghans are being knitted upon and I shall hopefully get back to the sweater soon. Here are my latest two socks. The multicolor one does actually have a pattern, it is just very hard to see. They are both pretty comfy.