Cards

A few of the cards that I did tonight using that beautiful paper I bought in Florida, some rub-ons an die cuts. Very simple yet I like them. No stamping on any of them.

Christmas Decorating

Not really great pictures, but I think we are finally done with our Christmas decorations. Can anyone say "carried away?" Our new additions this year are the santa-reindeer teeter totter and the carousel. Both purchased at discounts. We also added the candy canes, which was kind of a bummer. We bought the first four sets (thinking that would be enough) at Liquidation World at a terrific discount, but found out it wasn't enough, and went back the next night, only to find out that they were all gone. When we came out to the car, the battery was totally dead. We walked a mile to Schucks and bought another battery. The candy canes were originally from Kmart, so last night we headed to Kent for the nearest store. Unfortunately they were not on sale, but now we have enough to go all the way around. Our first inflatable was the giant snowman, then we came across the first snow globe at Prospectors liquidators a couple years ago. Then came the Let It Snow snow globe. Last year after Christmas sale yielded the Santa and Snowman snowglobe. We thought we were all done until one of the residents was driving passed today while I was putting up the icycle lights and told us that Lowe's had a 50% off sale so Dave got his teeter totter.

It took me two day to do the indoor tree. I thought I had a pretty well done last night, but today as I was starting to sort out what was left to go back in to storage (or St. Vincent's), I found all kinds of other stuff to go on it, and now it is loaded and looks very pretty. I will do a picture of it later. I think at any rate, we made up for all those years that we didn't decorate.

Christmas

We went to Snohomish today and started moving the stuff from the storage there to one here. The only problem is that the new one it is half the size. We brought our Christmas decorations home and it took the entire back of the Jimmy plus the top to get them all here. I'm sure that this is going to take up half the new storage unit. Oh well.... I am going to pare them down a bit too. I say that as I bought a darling 4 foot snowman for the house and four sets of candy cane lights for the yard.... uh hmmm. I'm excited to start decorating though. I got a little done this afternoon, and tomorrow will do the tree and Dave will put up the inflatables and the lights outside.

This evening I worked on Christmas cards. I'm doing mass production tonight. I had some pieces cut out from a workshop I had last year and I'm updating them a little with new stamps and such. I got a dozen done tonight.

Here are some that I made while we were in Florida. This is a really gorgeous paper pack that Christy and I bought on sale and split. You can't see it real well from the scans, but the paper is glittered.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful and thankful, Thanksgiving Day. I am thankful for our recent trip, for only having to work three days this week and mostly for my family and dear friends. I am thankful that we still have freedoms to this point... don't know what the future holds with our last election, so I will savor it while we have it.

We had a nice day with Skip and Clyle and my dinner turned out perfect. The turkey was done just right, and all the trimmings were yummy. The nice thing is that it's all cleaned up, even the turkey bones are boiled, stripped and in the freezer. So we've been just relaxing tonight. The guys did a little more relaxing than I did.... haha.

More Arabian Nights

A few shots from Arabian Nights. No, we didn't take them, we didn't know that they would allow cameras. The one with the guy jumping through the hoop of fire... after three tries he didn't make it the night we were there, but it was good anyway.

The center is Shaharizad and the Prince. Okay, so I was one of the suckers that actually buys the pictures that they con you in to taking when you walk in the front door. But it was well worth it, as getting a picture of all of us together almost never happens since somebody has to take the picture.

Busch Gardens Tampa - Pappa and Mamma style

The Edge of Africa has many different species of animals indigenous to Africa. The gorilla, lion and hyena's can be viewed at the beginning on a walk (with windows in between). For the rest of the tour you had to be on one of their tours or on the train.

The gorilla's were fantastic. This is a momma gorilla looking on after her baby (below) had just gone off to play.

The Majestic Lion sunbathing.

The hyena is a much larger animal that I had expected. Larger than a dog and closer to the size of the female lion.

We just missed a picture of the hippo with his mouth wide open, but this was a pretty good shot.

You can walk right in to the Bird Garden where there are over 500 species of African Birds. Dave got a picture of two of them that lighted on my hand, but unfortunately the camera focused on the person behind me.

There is a sign over these birds warning that they ARE NOT TAME birds, so we didnt' try to get up close and personal with these guys.

Busch Gardens Tampa - Excitement

The highlight of the day for the Speers was all of the great rides. Al, Christy, Kaitlyn and Keeley did all of them, and I mean all of them! Kaitlyn and Keeley are natural born daredevils. There were some the Kee wasn't quite tall enough to get on, but she was game for them all. I think these were going about 60 miles per hour.

This is Gwazi and would you believe that we all did this one? This prt looks pretty tame, but it did have some pretty hairy moments and you felt like your head had been scrambled by the time you get off. In fact, Christy and the girls took one last spin on it before we left and they all came off with headaches.

This is the infamous Sheirka! and let me tell you, it is every bit as frightening as it looks. This is just one of the dives... 200 feet in the air, and they bring you up this far and hold you there for a few seconds and then it drops at a 90 degree angle, 70 mph! I think the Speer family did it 3 times.

Al, Kaitlyn in the middle and Christy are on the back row right side.

There is another big fall like this one that goes down in to a tunnel and when you come out, it hits the water and makes a great rooster tail.