Birthday Cake

Owen's 1st birthday party Friday night had a Construction theme.

My daughter-in-law, Heidi made the cutest invitations. They had dump trucks on and said "Dump everything - Owen's 1st birthday is under construction."
Then they strung yellow construction caution tape around the house as well as yellow balloons with dump trucks on them. It was very creative and really fun.

Grandpa and I made this "cake" for him at Mama's request for scotcheroos. I made the Rice Krispies, Scotcheroos and placed everything else but Grandpa Dan got his creative juices flowing and crafted a little cement mixer for the chocolate mortar. Isn't that just too cute? We had a great time putting this together for Owen.



No worries, Owen also had a regular birthday cake. And of course, we had to take the traditional first birthday messy face picture.

Do you think he liked it?

Morning sky

Today is our grandson's 1st birthday.

The year sure flew by fast for us granny-parents but I'm betting it went a whole lot faster for Mom & Dad. When our boys were little, people would say to me about how fast that time would go, but as a young Mom with three boys under three, I pretty much thought they were crazy. Boy, was I wrong! Who would have thought that in what seemed to be a blink of an eye, one of those boys who is now 25 would have a son of his own celebrating being ONE! Happy Birthday Owen!

Owen's birthday dawned with this beautiful semi-foggy sky this morning. Isn't it gorgeous? And the best part is, I could go outside and take this picture at 5:20am in my jammies and not be cold! There is hope for our extra long, cold winter to be loosening it's grip yet.

They just don't make 'em like they used to

Son Joe's shop specializes in restoration of old street rods and muscle cars. It's always fun to see what he's working on.
They just don't make cars like they used to. Everything now is very sleek and aerodynamic which is great but there's just something about the design details on these old cars.

They rebuild alot of cars from the frame up but this BelAir was just a partial restoration. Even as a partial restoration, it took the better part of 4 months.

Some customers choose to restore their cars to only what would have been original for that car and others add new bells and whistles. For instance, instead of the gas cap distracting from the side profile of the car....to put fuel in, you push a button and the taillight moves out of the way using a small motor, revealing the fuel cap behind it.

As you can see, the hood had yet to be painted when we were there.
But just look at those design lines.


The dash on this car was autographed by Paul LeMat who played John Milner in American Graffiti. They were able to clear coat over it and preserve the signature at the customers request. How fun is that?

Do you have a favorite old car, street rod or muscle car? I'd love to hear what it might be.

Only 10 days late...

Let's take a step back in time to Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009. Maybe not so long ago, but it's been awhile since I've blogged.


Early in the morning we were invited to Jon & Heidi's house for breakfast. We were so blessed to be part of their morning and watch the excitement as the kids looked for their Easter eggs.


Spotting another one.


Getting up close and personal with a big, hairy Easter Bunny.

After breakfast we headed off to the northern burbs of Chicago for Easter dinner at Joe & Kristin's. Joe grilled some great bbq chicken and burgers. After moaning, groaning and laying around because we ate too much, before we left for home, we went to Joe's shop to take a peek at what he's been working on lately which I'll share in the next day or so.

It was not only a great day celebrating Easter but we were also celebrating our 29th wedding anniversary. Wow, 29 years and they said it couldn't be done! HA!

Utter random-ness

I warned you in a previous post that I had all of these thoughts running through my head but couldn't organize them and get it on the screen. I thought I'd share some of those bits and pieces with you anyway.


Spring is finally starting to show up around here. These lilies are on the south side of the house so they always come up first. You can disregard the corn burner exhaust pipe sticking out of the house. It's not quite springtime warm enough to remove it yet.


There is nothing sweeter than the giggles of a 2 year old and a pair of dollar store play high heels!


I am so excited about my new toy. This past October, I had been at my workplace for 10 years. For the ten year service award, they let you pick your own gift. I so much prefer that than getting a Highland whatever. For my five year, I got a Highland pocket knife. It was that or a necklace with the logo. I gladly took the pocket knife. Anyway, this time around I chose an Amazon.com gift certificate. I wanted to get something that would remind me of the years of employment but that I probably wouldn't just go buy for myself.
My new MP3 player and docking station came the other day. I love it! We already had one player which we use on the motorcycle but it has mostly music that hubs likes to listen to on it. To say that our taste in music differs would be quite the understatement. Now I can listen to my own "stuff" whenever and wherever I want. This is so cool!



We attended a housewarming party for my nephew Sunday afternoon. Is this not the most fun thing you've ever seen? How clever is that? A fruit monkey-man!

Hope y'all are having a great week!

Nothin' to say

Do you ever feel like you've got nothing to say? For me, that's pretty huge, as talking isn't typically a problem. However, I've had writers block lately. I don't know if it's coming down from the hectic pace of last fall and early winter or if it's the fact that it still seems very much like winter here. So, maybe it's just the winter doldrums yet.

I've got all these thoughts rolling around in the space where my brain is supposed to be ;( but I haven't been able to organize them to put them down on screen. Look out when they actually break loose!

Do any of you ever suffer from a "block"?