We Love Our Furry Friends

Codi is 13 years old and doing great. Although she is slowing down a bit and she's almost totally deaf, she loves her daily walks, treats, and bringing in the mail every day. She's a creature of habit and bugs Hank first thing every morning until he gives her the "special chicken" treats. No, we don't spoil her, nothing like that! For many years Codi has brought in the mail to us, helped bring in the groceries, and she carries things (like clothes, shoes, etc.) from upstairs to downstairs on a regular basis. Of course she gets treats for her efforts and loves the activity. Check her out... too cute!! Here are some recent pictures of Codi.



We are babysitting our neighbors dog Bentley for a few days this week while they are away. Bentley just loves Codi and is so happy to be around her. They get along very well together. Although Bentley is very small, he's full of energy and runs around the house like a crazy doggie!

Here's Codi & Bentley bonding

Our Oldest Grandkids Live in Arizona

Matthew is 13 and Lauren is 7 (going on 18). They will be visiting California for about 3 weeks and staying with us for 5 of those days. We're looking forward to spending some quality time with them and doing some fun things together. They'll be here for cousin Lizzy's first birthday party on May 30th, which should be a lot of fun.

Here are the kids on a hiking trip in Arizona with their friends.

Matthew & Lauren are the kids in the middle.

Here's Matthew hanging out with his cousin and a friend.

Lauren was in her school play last week "The Velveteen Rabbit"... too cute.

Fun With The Bishops

Our good friends the Bishops invited us to their second home in Copperopolis, CA for two days of golf and fun... and boy did we have FUN!!! Although the course is difficult and filled with lots of sand traps, tall grass and water to loose our balls, we really enjoyed ourselves along with Larry & Susan's company. Our scores ended up in the high 90's both days. After a great BBQ dinner we played Mexican Dominos and the Almeida's kicked butt!!

Babysitting Our 3 Little Cutie Pies

We recently had the opportunity to babysit 3 of our youngest grandkids for a few days, Charlie 3 years, Lizzy 11 months, and little Joey at 8 months. Two of the babies were teething and all of them had colds and/or coughs. Oh, we had 3 dogs too. We are the adventurous ones you know. Although we didn't get very much sleep, ate at 9:30pm, and the kids didn't get a bath one night, we all survived and had fun anyway... LOL!!! Lizzy had been taking 6-7 steps by herself, she started walking by herself the night her parents left for vacation! It's too bad Mike & Pami weren't the first to see it happen, but I got it on film for them... check out the little walking machine!! I think she wore a hole in the carpet from walking so much!!

Here's little Joey, our youngest grandchild.

Charlie & Vovo had fun creating with Play Doh. Here are the zoo animals we made together.

Here's Charlie checking out the bike we gave him.

A couple of weeks later and he's a pro on his new bike, check it out.

Cutting Down our Diseased Tree in the Front Yard

The tree in our front yard is beautiful right now because it's in spring bloom, BUT it has a disease that cannot be cured. Every year the leaves develop a really bad fungus and it continually looses it's leaves throughout the summer and fall. It's also a really fast growing tree that the stupid city planted that is notarious for pulling up sidewalks and breaking PVC piping. So with that, we decided to take that bad boy down and plant something else. Here we are conquering the tree.

Now we need to do some research and find a nice tree that will give good shade for our front yard.

Long awaited craft/sewing/scrapbooking room!!!

Here's the start to decorating my scrapbooking room (AKA sewing & crafts room). I needed a work surface to make cards, scrapbooks, wrapping gifts and working on craft projects. We bought a kitchen counter at Home Depot and two bathroom cabinets to support each end. Hank made shelves for inside the cabinets and installed pull out trays that used to be in our kitchen. I found the large cabinet on Craig's List for $50. It's really nice with glass shelves in the top section behind frosted glass doors and it also has shelving in the bottom section. The blue tape on the wall identifies where some shelving will go.

Once I had the furniture in place, I designed the shelving I wanted to go above the work surface and Hank made that for me; here are some of the pictures.

I decided on my color scheme... brown, pink & lime green!!!! I know, it sounds really wierd, but I searched through books and found the colors compliment each other are very nice together, so here's the "green" wall.

We have just finished the wall, hung the shelves and placed the work surface and cabinet back. I'm still not done with this project, but at least I have a place to work instead of everything scattered on the kitchen table (scrapbooking & card making gets very messy). I'm thinking of stencils for the wall, hanging some pictures and maybe a few other things to tie it all together. It's a work in process and I'm learning as I'm going along. The cost of the room so far has been really inexpensive. Between gift cards at Home Depot, clearance bins, and selling some stuff on Craig's List, the whole room only cost $22 so far!!! I just love bargin shopping.

More pictures to follow as we continue on the project, so stay tuned!