Allen Philharmonic Orchestra

Saturday night we had a wonderful night listening to the Allen Philharmonic Orchestra. Which just so happens to have a very extinguished violinist... our daughter-in-law Heather!




It's hard to imagine that the little city of Allen has it's very own orchestra!! The music was wonderful with two guest artists.... A baritone Donnie Ray Albert and a beautiful harpist Yumiko Endo Schlaffer...both were excellent.



But not nearly as special as our Heather!



These are not the best photos but without embarrassing Heather and walking right up to the front, these are the best I could do...

Proud hubby and father-in-law~

Bravo Heather! We love you and the beautiful music you make!!

P.S.

Along with teaching and tutoring violin, Heather manages a very busy etsy business and keeps up with her own personal blog and is the perfect wife for that son of ours.

Voted Most Fun Couple on a trip to Seattle

I can't believe it was two weeks ago today that we were departing on our trip to Alaska!

It was the wee hours of the morning and we were both giddy....the usual...hubby making wise cracks with the air staff and them having the utmost sympathy for me for putting up with it for HOW MANY YEARS!?

Well it finally paid off.......

Shortly before touch down the stewardess brought us a bottle of champagne.....

and snuck in some grub from first class to us.

All at no charge!

They said we won the prize for being the most fun couple on board!

I was so excited I ran up a few rows to where our traveling friends were to tell (BRAG) of our good fortune.

Only to find why we must have been voted the most fun!!!!

Scrappy Supper in a jiffy

Take one pound of FREE Eckrich sausage (our customer who recently had a successful experience in our plant packaging their product...sent a pound of their sausage to each of our employees...aka "perk")



Scrounge through the semi empty pantry...find some spaghetti


boil and mix with a half empty jar of pesto in the frig....

Rummage through the freezer and find a hidden bag of yummy broccoli & carrots with garlic & herbs...(for real these are yummy, fast and only 40 calories a serving!)



Here's our cast of character's as all the food bloggers point out (usually at the beginning of their blog, not toward the end....oh, well)


Dressed up spaghetti with some pesto and parmesan cheese.



Browning up that free sausage...


Assemble nicely on a plate and devour.



This dinner was actually prepared faster than this blog was created. FOR REAL!!

Looking for motivation...

OK lurker, are you happy? I'm making a lame attempt at returning to my blogging.



There's been a few obstacles



(A trip to the other side of the world,

impending grandchild, ladies retreat....just to name a few),

but I'm putting a clean card in the Kodak and setting my sails toward some new blogable material.

Wish me luck!

P.S. The dead wasp in the previous blog post, was mysteriously "swept" away a couple of days after the post.....

Rest in Peace....

I'll probably lose my job over this one, but at least I will have made my point....

We have a very lame cleaning crew at my office. Things lay on the floor and they supposedly "vacuum" around them for days. Nothing ever gets wiped down including the window ledge in our mail room, where this lovely yellow jacket/wasp decide to expire.

I never get very far with calling the person in charge of building maintenance and usually get a reprimand for calling it to the attention of the cleaning company...so I decided to take a different approach.

I erected a simple tombstone with the date of the winged wonders expiration.




Really thinking that it would bring attention to the DEAD CARCASS and someone would dispose of it!

But no, it remains there for over a week now.



My next step is to fashion a tiny funeral wreath and lay it next to the deceased....if that doesn't work I'm going to cover the little guy with a ever so small mound of dirt and if THAT doesn't work I'm going to put out a tiny guest book for all mail room mourners to sign!! Stay tune...

Quick makeover

My co-worker and friend recently brought this little topiary to me for a make over.









Along with a roll of black and white dotted ribbon.
I gave it a quick shot of compressed air and a little sponge bath...wrapped the ribbon around the trunk and put a nice bow on it's head.

Now, I'll tell you about the funny part.... it just looked a little plain, so I called my friend and asked if she would mind if a put a "B" on it. Mind you I didn't say the LETTER B, so her reply was: "Oh okay, like up on the top in the bare spot?" and I said: "No, I don't think we're on the same page...I was thinking on the front of the pot" and she said: "Oh, I was thinking about a 3 dimensional one" and I was scratching my head completely confused. Well, it hit me about the time I finished it that she thought I was referring to a yellow and black BEE!

I think she was quite pleased when she saw the finished product and it didn't have a big bumble bee on the front of it. I'm sure it will fit much better this way in her pink and black room than it would have with a BEE on it!

A Fun Saturday with the Grands!

A couple of weekend's ago we had the younger three grands and we started off our Saturday with a trip to Farmer's Market..

They didn't even seem to mind that the temperature was climbing to three digits.


They were in hog heaven with all the free samples of melon, tomatoes, pineapple and the like. Of course it wouldn't be a trip to the market without stopping for a bag of peanuts!

And an ear of hot corn for the ride home!

It really was so hot you could hardly eat it!

But boy, was it yummy...

After our adventure to the market we headed home and put on our swimsuits and hit the pool...

But the party didn't end here...

Of course everyone was starving and Mom just happened to send along a coupon for....

So we loaded up Great Grannypa and spent the rest of the evening there.

This was the scene the next morning...I have NEVER had to wake these children up.

They are always early risers...but not this time!