San Juan, Puerto Rico

This picture was suppose to be the second one down;
in fact, it was the second one down, but when I tried
to put some space between it and the next one down,
it disappeared. When I added it again, it was at the top
and I can't get it down where it goes...JENNY...help!



(Below)
After 3 days at sea, this lovely city of San Juan
looked beautiful to 4 land starved women.



(the top picture)
We took a ride up to the hilltop El Morro Fort
for a great view of the city and some interesting
history. This fort was built in the early 1500's and
took over 200 years to build.

(Below)
A view of the city from the fort.

(Below)
Liz and I in a nifty little corner gazebo
(or maybe it was used as cover while shooting at the enemy).



Lynn got into a bit of trouble while visiting the fort!

That fort was crawling (no pun intended) with these
lizards.

The hair-dos are courtesy of a windy day, but doesn't
that beach look gorgeous? Bet you wish you were there!
To make you feel a bit better about where you are
this winter, let me add that it was 88 degrees
with 100% humidity. Dang uncomfortable!

I took this picture because I was sure you'd all love
this sculpture. Sometimes I feel like I look just like her, only with
smaller boobies!

Next installment will take you to St Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. I'm giving you a heads up incase you aren't interested in St. Thomas, you can wait for the island of your dreams and tune in on that day.

Caribbean Cruise Continued

We had a fantastic time on the Maasdam, but the best part of the trip was being with my sweet mom and sisters.





Some might find the matching tee shirts a bit odd, but we had a great time picking them out in the ship's shops our first 3 days at sea.

Mom and Lynn opted for the blue.

The ship had a lot of interesting art displayed throughout the ship. Here's Lynn and Mom posing in front of an elaborate carving sitting in one of the passage ways. I'm not sure if Lynn was trying to dry out her ears after a couple of days at sea, or just doing her best to come up with an interesting pose. But either way, she was great fun to be with.

Another shot of us aboard the Maasdam. Our first three days were spent at sea, so there was plenty of time to explore the ship and snap pictures of every interesting place we discovered.

Jenny will be disappointed to learn that after her hours of tutoring me over Thanksgiving weekend, on the art of blogging and posting pictures, that it took me over an hour to figure out this post. I must have downloaded 10-15 pictures, only to have them disappear every time I tried to move things around like she showed me. Naturally, when she did it, everything worked perfectly. But when I would try to "click and drag" things would disappear or become distorted. I think I need a few more lessons! However, I will persevere and on the morrow, I promise to try again. If the Gods are with me, I will take you from the ship to some of the islands we toured.

Cruise

Here's a teaser picture from my cruise.

More pictures to come...

Halloween

I wanted to tell you all about our wonderful Halloween night, hosted by Amy (Hot Pants). But it won't be much of a post unless I can figure out how to add the pictures I took of our darling grandchildren. Darn! I can't get it figured out, so I will have to wait until I can get Sara to come and help. But we did have a great time and the costumes were wonderful and Amy's tortellini soup was outstanding and Katie's potato cheese soup was a hit and Sara made us some fantastic cheese fondue and the grandkids were super cute. For verification of all of these details, look to the girl's blogs, since they got all of the computer smarts and I'm a complete failure. :( My favorite part of the evening was when the kids got home from trick or treating and Winnie dumped her candy out on the floor and proceeded to take a bite and/or lick of each piece. Once she completed her sampling, she abandoned the gooey mess and Atticus came along and took up where she left off. I have a great picture of him with a handful of suckers he toddled off with.

The Hunger Games

I'm so disappointed that I missed the book review, so I thought I'd make a few comments on my very own blog. It's taken me quite some time to even figure out how to do anything on this blog (thus explaining why I never make any posts), so now my time is limited for the actual book review. But here goes: When I first began reading the book I found the style of writing a bit awkward, but soon got use to it and learned that it made for easy reading. It seemed that all of you found the lack of excess wording refreshing. I found the story a bit brutal at times and am surprised that it fit into the teen category. I guess our society has become much more violent so that this level of cruelty isn't as hard for our young people to accept. I read the book in a day and at the beginning of the month, so I've unfortunately forgotten a lot of the particulars, as my mind isn't what it use to be. But I can remember feeling a bit irritated with Katniss at times. I can understand why she would shut people out, but still it wasn't something that I enjoyed about her. I got a little weary of her inability to recognize the goodness in Peeta and accept his love for her. I liked Peeta as a person, but wasn't as enamored with him as Jenny. I like my heroes a little more manly. I have a feeling, though, that he will grow on me in future books. As far as Gale goes, his character wasn't well enough developed to cause me to form an opinion of his character or possible future relationship with Katniss. I hated this horrible government and can't even begin to imagine how it could come about, but am really looking forward to it's demise and how that will be accomplished in the rest of the series. I loved sweet little Rue and hated how quickly her part in the book ended; especially how brutally it ended. I did love the part about Kat covering her body in flowers in defiance with the government. I thought Haymitch was an interesting character that you started out hating, then came to understand, and soon found him intriguing. I'm sure that he'll play an important part in future books. I didn't like the mutants. That was my least favorite part of the whole book. Hope she leaves that kind of stuff out of future books. I did like the compassion that Katniss showed when she killed her suffering foe. I could see as I was nearing the end of the book that I was going to be disappointed in the ending, as it was obvious that so many questions were going to be left unanswered. In the Harry Potter series, each book wrapped things up at the end, so it wasn't so difficult to wait for the next book. But this one ended quite abruptly and I hate thinking about waiting a year or more for just a few more answers. Because I'm sure that she will leave us hanging just as badly at the end of the second book. Hope she's a quick writer! Though I was disturbed by much of what happened in this book, I will be hanging around the book store, ready to grab up the next one as soon as it comes out.

Happy Birthday, Sam. Hope it's the best!!!

Family Reunion 2008

Hey, check out these pictures from our fantastic Family Reunion!