The Venice Canals, Manhattan Beach and just pure joy!

When Carole was here recently we went to Marina del Rey and then I walked her around the Venice Canals. They are just so beautiful and fun. I always feel like I have left home and gone on a mini vacation. We also went to the Manhattan Beach where we found these crazy women exercising on these "kangaroo" things. However, I loved the little girl just dancing with pure joy when she saw the kangaroo things. Children are just the best at showing pure joy, aren't they?

Hey - check this out

Carole told me about these freebies that this lady tells you about. Go to her website freebies2deal.com.

Here is Hadley Jane and her family~

Had a great visit with the kids in Austin! I played several (about 40) games of Candyland (and never won.) Held Hadley a few times. Made caramel chocolate prezels - yum! Thanks Kristen for the lessons. We also made homemade marshmellows and hot chocolate on a stick and that was quite fun and tasty. Went bowling - enough said, except that we shouldn't have had Kristen bowling after giving birth 3 weeks earlier. Did some Wii bowling (much better results there). Met Cooper at his school for lunch one day. Kristen and I tried on the christening dress we bought in Brugges in 2004! Took some photos, but not going to show them. You will have to wait for the blessing day photos. But the dress is shown on the gorgeous quilt that Nan made. Also ate some yummy BBQ at Rudy's and just enjoyed the family. Thanks kids for putting me up and whipping me in cards and bowling. I feel so much better about myself now. What a cute family. By the way, Hadley is just adorable! I think her family is going to keep her.

Great- grandkids - wow!

Here we are with 3 of the many great-grandkids and there are more coming this summer! Wow! We just love them all! This is from left to right: Marley (Brittiany and Ryan's daughter), Autumn (Sean and Tina's daughter) and Caleb (Brit and Ryan's son.)

 

Let's give them the check

Here I am helping give the check to the Los Angeles Children's Hospital. The check is for $19,493.43 - this is the money we raised in the golf tournament held at our hotel.

 

This was my childhood Christmas~

I snagged this photo off of Marci's blog (sorry about that sisto) but it just brough back such a great memory for me. This was our Christmas morning for years. And as Marci stated we had the same breakfast every year - ham, eggs, hash browns, toast and sliced oranges with powdered sugar sprinkled on them. The paper was piled high and sometimes you would lose something as Dad would gather up the gift wrap to take out to the trash. Then we would go digging through the trash for it. Good times, good times! Thanks for the memory Marci!

Can you smell the Gingerbread?

We had a gingerbread "house" competition at work and here are just two - mine and the golf shop. I had to share the golf shop, it was too funny. I did the Marriott Express Train - notice Mr. Marriott is driving our engine? Who else would be driving?
Our golf shop did this in "honor" of Tiger Woods: