Thankful for the Silly Stuff

I am thankful for many things in my life. I have a husband who loves me most of the time, two adult children who have started families of their own which has brought me two more adult kids to love and four wonderful, energetic, engaging, creative, funny, incredibly loving children to be a grandparent to, a warm home, many accouterments of a comfortable lifestyle including motorcycles and my camera and a good life to live and look forward to.

I have lost my parents but have a wonderful, strong and caring step-mom who is one of the most courageous women I know and sisters who have brought yet more family to love and admire for their accomplishments and great nephews too cute for words.
 Friends who are family and their families that have made it more of an extended family of friends.

But... and here's the rub.... there are some things that I appreciate often due to a lack of it or the lack of "functionality" of it that I am thankful for....

So here we go:
(Those that know me will understand more how thankful I can be for these things)

• Indoor plumbing
• An oven that works
• A drain that actually drains
• Paint on my house! (that's a big one)
• New house numbers
• A car that runs
• Some time to myself
• Work
• Walking on two legs 
• My new computer
• Photoshop 
• A day without the television on
• My eyesight - even though my eyes are getting old
• My big blanket on my bed - how I love the weight and warmth of it!
• Going into the laundry room to do laundry (not the laundromat down the street)
• A day shooting photos of just about anything
• My external hard drive (backing up my photos and keeping them safe)
• The time my sister and I spent scanning the pictures from when we were kids
• A morning without hearing the stupid beep beep beep of my alarm clock
• My garden shed
• The strange twist of fate that has decided I can actually have a green thumb
• The boys of summer (SF Giants)
• Sunshine on my face
• Cookies
• My pampered spa treatments from my daughter
• Wrinkle reducer
• Acid Re-flux medicine
• The birds that sing (from Kim)
• Getting better after a bad case of the Flu (from Sonya)
• And yes, Sonya... I was thinking that same thing this morning... - My HOT shower and all the joy it brings

And so the list begins. Your comments would be nice if you can think of anything else. Remember this is for that kind of stuff that you really don't think about but actually would have a tough time living without. I plan on finishing out this year's blog by posting still more photos from the year 2011. A photo countdown so to speak. Keep checking for when you make the blog. My eyesight might be a tad failing but my memory for photographs is hanging in there. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. Keep yer stick on the ice.

New Paint, Quiet Time and Trees that Reach the Heavens

Well, that green house my son built was so stinkin beautiful that we just had to get a 5 gallon bucket of paint and start the process to make the rest of the house look as good. My son-in-law has spent many hours so far working on it. He got a friend to help one day and I was there with paint brush in had to do a lot of the detail work myself. It is looking mahvoulous!

Up on the ladder. This is pretty special, he does not like heights at all~

Thank You SOOOOO much, Jason!

He is really much further along than this, I just have not taken more photos.

Then I took a break from life. My sister has a very nice place up in Avery, CA near the Calaveras Big Tree State Park. We took some time to just chill. Both of us have little grandkids. She has a brand new baby grandson along with her "big boy" (almost 2) Lucas. We both have very busy lives and it was just time to take a break for some recharge. We took off for 3 days and had a wonderful time. We even went for a long walk in the Big Trees State Park trail with all the big trees we remembered from when we were kids. We visited, swam at the the park pool, hung out at the lake and touristed about. I shot about 700 pictures. Of course each photo takes 5 exposures the way I do it, so it was not really that many. It just sounds like it. I have some here to show y'all of course. But first, a very gracious thank you to my sister and her husband for letting me stay at their place. It was wonderful!

My sister's lovely trailer. It is so nice! And comfortable, quiet, peaceful, beautiful ..
...need I go on? It's a great place to just sit and read a book~

A little playhouse a local builder made from scrap wood. Isn't it the cutest?

At the lake. How peaceful is this?

The logging museum near the lake. That's my sis...

Me leaning on one of the fallen big tree trunks.Amazing place~

Our little spot in the woods. The porch room is screened in and there is a tent trailer in the back for overflow guests.

Stump of Chummps.... This is quite a story. It's about some logging greed that backfired. This poor thing has been a
dance floor that had a bowling alley and a bar constructed on top. It is still solid 150 years after being cut down.
Guess that's why we want redwood for our fences...

The walk-through tree. Look hard through the tunnel and then look up! It's a trip. Better yet,
click on the photo and look at it bigger.

This place was dizzyingly amazing!

Well, back to the real world tomorrow. Painting, hopefully working, and all the other stuff that comes along with it. Back to reality? NO! Oh well, Happy Trails my friends. Enjoy the summer while it lasts!