Anniversary and New Year!

Well with Christmas come and gone, it was time for hubby and I to plan a little get-a-way for our 48th wedding anniversary. We were married on December 30, 1962 in Boise, Idaho - seems just like yesterday. When we were younger it was always a decision every year whether to celebrate our anniversary on the 30th, or celebrate it on the 31st - New Years Eve! Sometimes New Years Eve won out and sometimes the actual date the 30th won out. As we grew older, we certainly either couldn't afford to go out two nights in a row when we were raising a family, and now we're too tired to go out two nights in a row!

This year we chose to go to the Quinault Beach Resort near Ocean Shores, Washington to spend some together time, rejuvenate ourselves and just plain "appreciate each other".

In this first photo, showing 3 inches of snow at our house on Wednesday morning when we left home:
This next photo shows the view from our room on the 3rd floor - note the blue, sunny sky which we had for all 3 days. Cold though - the highs were just about at freezing level and it was quite windy. Good staying inside and knitting weather!

The next two photos were just because I like looking at the ocean.


On Wednesday (anniversary day), we took a drive south to Westport, WA and drove out to the marina area. We stopped in front of a condo for sale, and when getting out of the car, I stepped on the only ice in the entire parking lot and fell grabbing ahold of everything I could get my hands on, on the way down (wasn't pretty). Consequently, I'm now wearing a sling for hopefully just a pulled muscle in the rotator cuff/shoulder area, and limping around with a twisted knee. I have to give them a week to get better or go back for x-rays and further treatment! So that was kind of a damper, but we still had a wonderful time and look forward to our next get-a-way.

I would like to thank all of you who follow my meager blog and wish you and yours a Happy New Year!

What a Nice Christmas

We had such a wonderful Christmas, with:

Family around playing cribbage


Grandkids playing with newly received hand-held games:


Lots of good food at one of my daughter's houses, so I didn't even have to cook, except to bring the "traditional" casserole: Cheesy Broccoli. Must have been a good dinner as the guys: hubby, and two sons-in-law went out and walked the neighborhood for 2 miles to "walk off dinner".

I'm kinda glad Christmas is over for another year, and now I can get back to the knitting. Knitted a swatch for the Every Last Yard cardigan in a beautiful charcoal color. Just have to wash the swatch now and determine which needle size I want to use. This cardigan is part of a KAL (knit-a-long for you non-knitter readers), so I'll have lots of help. This is the first clothing item I have knit for myself (other than fingerless mitts). Wish me luck!

I'm Done......???

Well, really, the only thing I'm done with is going to any kind of a store until next week! I have my gift shopping done (not my gift knitting done), and hit the grocery store this morning for the last time. Ended up having to go to a 2nd grocery store because the first one didn't have one of the ingredients I needed for the Breakfast Casserole I make for Christmas morn. Had to drive around and drive around to find a parking space, then inside the store, the aisles were very crowded and since I only had a few items (6 or so), I was trying to hurry along...well forget that. Anyway, now all I have to do is make the pretzels w/Hershey kisses on top for snacking, the traditional sausage/egg/bread casserole for Christmas morn, a broccoli-cheese casserole for Christmas Dinner at our daughters, as well as homemade cranberry sauce for the turkey! For Christmas eve, I think we'll do the pizza thing before heading out to Christmas Eve service.

Anyway, this is my last post until after company leaves and things return to normal, so Merry Christmas to all of you who have followed along with me on this blog, and I'll see you on the other side.

Am I Going to Make It?

I suppose there are others of us who are frantically trying to finish up the Christmas knitting besides me. I hadn't really planned on doing any gift knitting until about three weeks ago, then all of a sudden I got pretty excited about it. So...I knitted a one-row scarf for my grandson:

and 3 fun-fur scarves for the granddaughters:

Then I wanted to knit some fingerless mitts for our two daughters so came up with these Cozy Thermal Mitts by Karen Everett,


I still have to make one more of the "bordeaux"-colored mitts before Friday - eek! It would be fine if there weren't other things like last minute grocery shopping, house cleaning, a party to go to as well.

Carry on............A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone out there!

Rushin' Along towards Christmas

With just 18 days to go, I'm really behind. Of course it doesn't help that I have a cold, fever, etc. so not much ambition to do anything. We did manage to put the tree up yesterday.
Working furiously on some knitted items for daughters and granddaughters (so had better not post here in case they peek!
I don't know when I'll get to mailing out Christmas cards - this may be the year when it doesn't get done.

I went outside and took this picture a day or so ago - isn't it magnificent?

Thanksgiving!

We traveled to eastern Washington, Richland, to our oldest daughter's place. Her husband and two children were so gracious and a good time was had by all. Our younger daughter, husband and 2 daughters rode along with us in our van, which made for good company and a reasonably fast trip (about 4 hours). We arrived Wednesday evening and had some good Papa Murphy's pizza.

Thursday morning some of the group participated in a local 5K Turkey Trot in the freezing cold weather (low 20's), while the rest of us began preparing for the big Thanksgiving Dinner. We had broccoli and cheese casserole, green bean casserole, scalloped potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce and two turkeys - one cooked on the barbecue grill and one in the oven.

The grandchildren had fun in the hot tub in the 20 degree weather with snow all around them.

Some of my time was spent showing one granddaughter (aged 11) how to knit, and another granddaughter (age 7) and one grandson (age 9) how to crochet. The 4th granddaughter already has been taught - so we all sat around knitting dish/washcloths and making crochet chains. It was fun working with the kids and who knows, maybe one or all of them will still like this handcraft and keep it up.


All in all it was a great weekend and we returned to western Washington during mid-day on Saturday. The Pass still had snow on it, but was not too bad driving.
It was nice to get home where the 6' of snow we had when we left had all melted and it was raining.

WINTER HAS ARRIVED!!!

It's been snowing for the past 24 hours, but we only have about 4 inches so far. This is very early for this area to be receiving snow - sounds like we're going to be having a hard winter.


Finished a hat which is destined to be sent to our troops in Afghanistan for them to wear in their "off duty" times. It's made from Sunshine yarns worsted in Bitterroot color.
I'm finishing up a hat for Christmas giving and will follow with a picture later.