It's the little things

Time management

and me, just do not get along. I am having the hardest time getting anything done. I need to get out to the garage and work on cleaning out more of my Dad's things. I am ready now and it has to be done.
HLC needs his garage back, maybe that is why he has been so cranky.
I have tons of other things that need to get done and all I can manage is driving to soccer and studying. Just too much for me.
Waiting on Sara to see if she is going to the first camp for soccer that starts today. I think she may pass. Then Lea and I have to shop for her birthday. Love that part. I will let you know what we find.
Other than that, just studying hard.

Happy Birthday Linda

Happy Birthday Barb!

Love you both!

Here are some pics

from the awesome girls weekend that I just got back from. Thanks again, Jill!

Have you all seen this?

Tasty Kitchen

PW put together this site for recipes. Now if you know me, you know I am a recipe surfing crazy person! This is sooo awesome.
The other site I have always used is RecipeZaar, i can save recipes into my own recipe file and when I need one, i just search through those that I found interesting.

Ok, I have to get back to studying but this was my break for today.

I set a date for my test and I will let you all know WHEN i pass!

Saturday at Boyd's Bear Country

We got up early and headed back to Gettysburg, that is where Boyds Bear Country is. I found their website last week looking for other things in Gettysburg to do...LOL. And saw on their site that Thomas Kinkade was coming for a breakfast on Saturday or an ice cream social. As much as I would have rather had ice cream, i really enjoyed their breakfast. They have a very nice little cafe there that served a great breakfast buffet.  But, here is the best part. OK... HLC was walking up to the door with me(i only bought a ticket for me, as he was going out to the 11am reinactment) of course he was there taking pictures.

ok, so then a man opened the front door and asked if we were there for the breakfast.  HLC told him that i was, and then asked HLC if he had had his breakfast yet. We said no, so he told him to come in with me and stay. He was soooo nice, everyone there was. He took us downstairs to the cafe and told the ladies there that - HLC would be joining me - ON THEM. So I got my goodie bag and we found seats and went through the bag right away. I got the Lakeside Manor painting in an 8x10, a print of Rock of Salvation ,  and a gold key worth $50 off of a painting. It was soooo nice.

Well, then we ate and people started speaking, first was the Director of Training and Development for TK inc. Can you believe it? Such a huge empire he has now, with being the painter for Disney, Nascar, MLB, so much. Anyway he did a trivia game that was so fun, and then the guy that let HLC come in spoke and he was the Director ___ something or other, can't remember. He was an amazing guy with his stories of TK and info. He then was asking questions about where everyone was from and me (and HLC) being far (Tampa) I WON A COFFEE TABLE BOOK - I am so glad that Kip was not there... she is technically further south than me...LOL.  Anywho, it is a gorgeous book with tons of paintings. I was just thrilled.  Then he introduced TK and his wife. They spoke for a while and then unveiled his new painting "Coming Home" It is a military theme.

Love it, we will definitely own that along with many many more. I will be saving my pennies. He then had another, with a Bear - more for a baby room, i think. Still very nice.

ok, then we went upstairs for the ribbon cutting of his new gallery.

then we went in and dreamed about which painting we wanted to buy in the gallery and did watch a few people buy. I then picked up my new "Thomas" Teddy Bear and got in the line for him to sign it. That was my treat. He also signed the Certificate of Authenticity for the painting. Too bad he could not sign my book...  :(. I had a ball, and surprisingly enough so did HLC. We then went around and got bears to take back to Lorelei and Amanda for keeping the girls and Sedona. And some extra bears that will make great gifts ; )  HLC also bought some Boyds figurine bears of the Civil war, they are so cute. 

We then took off to the battle field for our own auto tour to stop and take photos. I will show that all prob tomorrow.

Did you know today at   12:34:56sec  was 07/08/09... pretty cool huh, only happens once a century.

Our trip

So Let's see if I can re-cap this trip without dragging it out for weeks... LOL.

We left Thursday and drove 13 hours to DC to drop off the girls. Well, we did have to stop and sleep and we didn't take the camper. I ended up sleeping on the sidewalk with the dog. I could just not get comfortable in the car. Sedona did great, but I do have the magic drug to give her to calm down too, that helps.  We dropped off the girls around 7am Friday, showered and hit the road for Gettysburg, only 2 hours away.  We hit the huge visitor center right away and then signed up for a bus tour. Which I always love to take, I think the locals usually know so much and really want to share that. Well, I wasn't wrong. We had a great guide and the tour was of the battlefield, which is enormous. I never realized and all the hundreds of monuments out there. It was great. We then went to a cemetery there and saw a re-en actor doing a great show on what it was like in 1863. Afterward, we headed to the re-enactment grounds for the 5pm battle. 

We waited a couple of hours but had our chairs with us. I got so annoyed with people that want to stand up in front of others in CHAIRS... DUH, how stupid can they be. Needless to say, I did not see much.

We headed out to find our hotel, which was 45 minutes away in Frederick, MD, because of booking this trip last minute. We found some dinner and barely made it through that, since we had about 3 hours of sleep. 

Ok, that's  all for the first day. I have to run, be back later with the details from meeting Thomas Kinkade.

 

Tuesday already

I hate when vacation ends. We had a fabulous time. Dropped the kids off in DC with Lorelei, and then we went on to Gettysburg, Frederick and Baltimore. We had so much fun without kids. YIPPPEEEEEE - we could certainly get used to that.

I have a long list today and I will get some photos up. I want to run them through lightroom first and do my fave "colorsplash". Especially of the blackeyed susans.
Be back later today!