A week of catch up

Okay here you go! People have been wondering what I have been up to. Well now here is a picture perfect version of what I have done (well without the pictures of knitted Christmas gifts since that would ruin all the surprise later).

I learned how to make grilled cheese. I never had made one before. I had to get a recipe... because my Mom always just melted cheese on toast - which is tasty... but, she didn't make grilled cheese so I never learned.



I also baked a pie for my work's Potluck. People really seemed to like it. Personally, this pie receipe is my favorite pie. I chalk it up to the superior quality of the cherries, as they were picked at my parents house. Everyone at work is always impressed with the quality of veggies and fruit my parents grow. In fact someone made some chicken wings that was spiced with some peppers from my parent's summer garden.

I also made this dishcloth with a new pattern.

I'm trying to learn how to do entrelac, so this was a good practice. It's all done in garter stitch so it is a little easier, and it also is done with one color so it is pretty easy peasy. If you want to knit one, here is the pattern!

401 days of learning

Well as you can see on the right hand side, there are a lot of new links that I have added.
One of them is my Hubby's new blog for his IRR call-up. He has his side written over there and I'm sure I'll add my two cents over here.

His blog is called "400 days and a wake-up" He's calling it that because in 400 days and one morning later he'll be back home from being deployed.

Anyway, please feel free to read his blog and give him lots of comments to keep up his morale. :)

You'll note the title of this post is about 401 days of learning, and this is me trying my best to put as much of a positive spin on this as I can. I decided that while H. is gone, I'll try to make the most of my days by crossing off as many of my "100 things to do before I die" list as I can. I'm going to try to learn a lot of new things.

I guess I should post that list, soon. I actually haven't figured out what the 100 items should be. I think I have only figured about half. It's a hard list to come up with. You should try it!

And I also added a few finance websites over there too that I enjoy. Another one of my goals is to save up as much of my free spending money as I can. Of course crossing some of those things off my list will likely cost some $ - so my challenge is finding a good balance.

the last few weeks...

Okay, So while I was posting the Aruba pictures - here are some other things that occurred...

I knit a bit (I'm also working on Christmas presents but I can't show those).

I knit some handwarmers, for Kristina Yarnsticks.


I also knit a little fishy washcloth...


We also carved some pumpkins... I liked Harland's pumpkins glinty tooth.

And Harland's parents came, we all went to Shenandoah.


Remember the pods from a few weeks ago? They were open now!

Last Aruba pics

Okay I have plenty more but don't want to bore all of you to tears.

Here is a cave that has early Indian cave paintings!!



The Cave paintings


We took a sunset cruise on another day...
Here is the 40 FT Catamaran


The view to shore

Here we are on it...



the sunset...

Technical problems

Right now I'm experiencing a few technical difficulties. We got a new operating system for our computer which rendered our IPhoto software invalid since it is so old. So I'll have to share more pictures with you later when I can get to them, haha.

Not much is going on here, Last night we went over to some Army friends' house for dinner which was really nice. I think we'll lay pretty low today, maybe catch a film - but generally will relax.

This isn't as fun as Aruba, but if you haven't seen this documentary, it's pretty eye opening. I haven't seen the whole film yet, but I did watch this 30 minute version. It's called I.O.U.S.A. and it is all about our national debt and the way America is headed financially.


If you want to go to You Tube to see the film instead of watching it on this tiny screen...
Click here to go there.

I think I'll keep this link nearby so whenever I feel like buying something I don't need, I'll be reminded to refrain. and save the money instead.

Some more Aruba

Okay - So we can keep on moving. So the next place we went to was the Ostrich farm. Just so you know, Ostriches are not my favorite thing. They're huge and they look like they'd poke out your eyes if you looked at them twice, and that killing you comes to them as natural as breathing.

So it took me the time it took about 5 other tourists to feed them to decide I would try it myself. You can notice this is not my natural smile, :).

But the babies are soooo fluffy and cute!


Then on the drive to the natural pool, we saw some sights:

Some wild Donkeys:

We went by htese big rocks. These are odd rocks in that Aruba is a volcanic island, and should not have htese kind of rocks on it. Naturalists do not understand how these rocks came to be on Aruba! Mysterious!


This crazy ranch with these weird huge plastic animals (like you'd see on a mini-golf course or something) and it had these catci fences. It was bizaro.

Then we took this insane dirt road. For about 45 minutes it was pretty scary. I was really worried people that people fall out the back. It was a little nuts. I'm glad I was not driving.

So you can see what the people in the other jeeps... but can you see the road below? No. Neither could we.

And here is Harland driving along a cliff.


But what we were driving to was sooo worth it. We went to the natural pool It was so beautiful. There was this circle of rocks where the waves would break over them, and it was like swiming in waterfalls. The water was clear and there were all kids of beautiful fish swimming in the pool. You can see the pool in the middle of the picture if you look closely.

The tour - take 1

On Wednesday we took a tour of the Island... but since I took sooo many pictures I'll have to break this down a bit.

We took a tour with ABC Jeep Tour. It was a good tour, interestingly, Harland got to drive one of these old Land ROvers. I'm pretty sure these wouldn't fly in the US. For one reason having a member of the the tour drive around 7 other tour members around just wouldn't work.

Anyway, Here is a picture of us in the Jeep.

One of the Shipwreck.


One of the California Lighthouse.

Of the Alto Vista Chapel.


Of some rocks.


We took a stop at the Gold Mines... But we didn't see any gold.




And we also stopped at the natural Bridge. The old one, which was the biggest in the Carribean collapsed in 2005, but there is another one next to it.





It was also nice to see what the "wild side" beach looked like.