Whirlwind of Activity...

Happy Saturday afternoon to you! One might think that life would slow down a bit after Christmas. And for us it usually does, but this year has been a flurry of fun activities. On Christmas Day Steve's buddy, Dave called and invited Steve and I out for an evening of fun and friendship. Dave had procured tickets to go see Jeff Dunham. If you don't recognize the name, rest assured, neither did I.

This guy is a comedian and ventriloquist. And, apparently, a pretty popular one at that. We went to the 10:30pm show and it was a very full house. Steve pulled up this You Tube video for me to see and then I went ooooohhhhhh, I know who he is! If you don't check out the video (which is fine) this guy does a bit with a character known as Walter, an old curmudgeon. He also does a bit with Achmed the Dead Terrorist (a skeleton puppet), Peanut (some purple looking puppet with a yellow tuft of hair and you could see his belly button) and Joe, a drunk hick. Very, very funny show. The guy is amazing. We also got to walk downtown and see the horse drawn carriages and the holiday lights beforehand. A very nice, albeit late, night for those of us who normally are in bed by 10pm! LOL

Then, this morning, the girls were invited to a birthday party for a good friend of Jessica's from preschool. The party was at a local bowling alley! I'd never been into this particular one before (it's just a couple of years old) and was quite impressed with the setup. Very state of the art, clean and roomy, as opposed to the small, crowded alleys I've been to in years past. Steve went along because I think he wanted to watch the girls bowl. I took my camera along and here are just a couple of shots that didn't come out blurry. Amy scored a 102 and Jessica, a 63...not bad for girls who have very little to no bowling experience...of course the bumpers helped.

Jessica had a hard time with even the lightest ball, being the peanut she is. I'd never seen the contraption you see in her picture before. She started having a really good time once she used that thing! Amy got a few pointers from another girl who is on a league and I think her form was pretty decent! She even bowled a strike and a couple of spares. A gal who made balloon animals showed up mid-way through the party (she was a friend of the birthday girl's mom) and all the kids got whatever animals they wanted. All in all it was definitely a fun party.

Now we are home for a quiet afternoon. I just wanted to share a couple of more things and then I'll sign off.

I received a very neat gift that just makes me smile when I look at her from my buddy Erin. It's a beaded Crazy Lady and it even has my initial attached. Thanks so much, Erin! I love it!

And finally...Jessica has been so patient waiting for her crocheted poncho. I spent a good couple of hours yesterday searching for super bulky yarn, as required for the pattern Jessica picked out. I was surprised at how little super bulky yarn is available. So, I ended up buying some of the same type of yarn I've been using for neckwarmers and am making it work. Here's the progress I've made so far (and I love how well the colors work together). You can even see the large hook required for this pattern, which is called a ripple stripe. The first stripe is done and I'm working on the second. The orange looking yarn will be the bottom stripe. Jessica picked the color order she wanted for the stripes.

 

And a final jabber subject. I haven't mentioned it much recently, but we still have a mouse roaming around. I've got 7 or so traps out and even rebait them, but this critter keeps avoiding them. I've discovered he is taking food from the dog's bowl and going into the bottom drawer on my stove to eat. Yes...it's lovely to open the drawer and see evidence he's been there amongst pots and pans. I clean out the drawer and he comes back. Well, yesterday evening, as I was pulling out pots for making dinner I saw he'd been in there once again. I made a comment to Steve and he looked behind the stove and saw the mouse. He pulled out the stove and it went running off toward the fridge and microwave stand. That led to Steve cleaning out all the accumulated dirt and debris behind these two pieces as I was trying to get dinner together. As he pulled out things that had fallen behind the tall microwave stand, out shoots the mouse (apparently...I was busy with dinner prep). Steve said it bumped into my foot (ewwwwww) and even the dog's leg and the darn dog didn't even react! (he was watching me however, hoping for a dropped piece of food, so I guess he was distracted). Steve said he ran toward our dishwasher and it looked like it jumped into an opening in the dishwasher, but he didn't go INTO the dishwasher. Don't know where he ended up. Drat!~foiled again~by a mouse. I have to remember to put up the dog food bowl at night.

Now that I've probably bored you to tears, I'm going to close and veg for a bit.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great weekend!

Jeanne