November = Turkey Day and Mel and Brian's and Disneyland!

We've been making the trip to Victorville every November for Thanksgiving at Melanie and Brian's home since we moved to Arizona, since we're so close, and we were invited. It's turned into a mini family reunion every year which I love, love, love.

Last year was lots of crazy family and fun. The group was expanded by more of the Marnette family--Uncle Joey, my mom, Vikki and Trish--and other descendants as well as Brian's family.

We included Disneyland in the itinerary too, something we try to do every couple of years--this time there were 3 or 4 generations of us gallivanting about the enchanted kingdom for about 18 hours. Gotta love it.

We also all met up at Aunty Mary's to create some heirloom keepsake pieces from a couple pieces of Gramma Helen's jewelry. We took two necklaces and combined the bits with new beads and findings to make many bracelets and necklaces--all with a little bit of Gramma's legacy.

Uncle Don, Alec and Devin took the little boys out for a walk with the dogs while the gals all played with the sparklies. Check out the photos:

Disneyland

Turkey Day

Making jewelry

More hard work

Now, more on catching up. Last I posted about the house remodeling we were pulling up carpet and baring the concrete floors. Well, there was more of that to do and it required pulling up small glazed tiles that were apparently cemented to the cement. Argh.

The darn tiles were super slippery and not level. They were a type of saltillo but had a thick glaze on top.

It took a jack hammer and a whole lot of grunting, swearing and other  assorted sound effects to get it all up. They were clay based tiles too so red dust was everywhere and EVERYTHING was red when we were finished and stayed that way for a LONG time.

Ugh.

Click here to see more: Bare Floors and Red Dust

Late Desert Monsoon

Hmm, today is 9/11 and last time I posted it was July something... and that's how well the once a week thing is going. Oh well. Onward.

We had a hellatious storm last night and I got some pretty cool photos. To keep the blog performance up, I'm going to start including links to photos which are uploaded to Picasa. And maybe one photo just to pique your interest. :)

You can see the rest here: Photos

Post Dates and Photos

Just wanted to let you all know that as I catch you up with our adventures, I will mix posts with current and past info. And to make matters more confusing, sometimes the posts will have dates that are the same.

For example, when I upload a slog of photos all at once and parse them into separate draft posts, they all get the same date. This is a very efficient way for me to work, but unfortunately means the date I publish a post may have nothing to do with the date I started it or with the info contained in it. And when *you* receive a notification of a new post, it might not be in the current month's folder when you visit the blog.

Hmmm, there's something very existential about that. Maybe, I like it that way. Have to think about it, but later.

Anyway, I'll try to date things in the posts when this happens, but can't guarantee I'll catch them all.

Also, since the photos take up a lot of room in a post as well as room on the blog (in terms of storage), I will be cutting down the number of images within a post. But, never fear, I will upload the photos to Picasa, include a link in the relevant post to the related Picasa folder and you will be able to view them all at your leisure AND download any that strike your fancy.

You can also order photos from Picasa, but I'll let you figure that out.

Last, I will try again for consistency in posting. I'd like to aim for once a week, but we'll see how it goes.

Until next time.

Desert Colors and Storms

For you who love the desert and see the beauty, I just had to show you these.