Darren's tattoos

I think my son has such awesome talent, I am amazed at how intricate his work is, and how beautiful.  You can tell what a beautiful soul he has, just by the art that he creates.  I'm so proud of him.

Path to Sally's house

It's been two weeks since we lost our sweet dog, Sally.  We still miss her so much.  Bill doesn't have the heart to take down her pen and remove her little house.  Today I took this picture of the path that has been traveled thousands of times during her 21 years of life.  Every day, she was taken for a walk, sometimes twice a day, fed, watered and on special occasions we would let her out of her pen to let her have a hot dog, or a bowl of chili that we cooked over the firepit.  She loved that.  She was NOT crazy about toasted marshmallows though.   We would take her out in the country and to the lake to let her run and play in the water, and dig up the ground.  She loved that too.  She had a good life, wish she was still with us, but we are so thankful that we had her so many years. When she died the ground was too frozen to bury her, but what we did was even better.  Through the years Bill's mom and dad, and us as well , would bring home rocks from Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, anywhere where we could steal a large rock, we did.  These were now just piled in the fence row, so we built her a mausoleum of these rocks that were gathered from around the entire U.S.  Then I wrote her name on one of the rocks, and her birth and death.  R.I.P. sweet, silly dog, we miss all of your many antics and I'm sure we always will.

Some projects for 2015

Yo ho ho...the making of the pirate window

Helping Sally and Roxie with the pirate window.  First, our mighty ghost pirate ship.

Roxie making the port holes, and our added ghost ship sails.

Every ship needs an ocean to sail on.

Treasure chest and "Bones", the dead but greedy pirate.

Some other pirate items made by our other team members.

Bones really loves sparkly things, mateys!

The view from outside the front window.

I really like this throw pillow, the pockets hold puppets.

This is a great antique desk with some treasures on top.

More pirate booty.

Some great pirate t-shires.

Some playtime activity buckets for kids, and treasure maps in a bottle.

Beautifiul sunset this evening

Birthday lunch with the girls

Thank you to my friends for taking me out to lunch today for my birthday, at Red Lobster, had a great time, then went shopping for a bit...we were just going to Lebanon, but the restaurant was closed, and then all of the little antique shops were closed too, bummer...had to head to Fairview Hgts...enjoyed my day, thanks again ladies. love you all bunches.

Movie day with mom

Mom took me to Sukura for lunch today for my birthday, it was SO good, as always. When they found out it was my birthday, they brought me a free dessert, kind of a fried ice cream with pound cake on the outside, and drizzled with chocolate...yum, Even though we told our server that we couldn't possibly eat dessert, we certainly cleaned that right up..lol.. We watched two movies, GONE GIRL, many of you had mentioned it, wow, what a thriller, the ending was weird though, but still we liked it. Then LEFT BEHIND, which many of you know is a movie about the rapture, and is the film version of the first book in the series of books from 1995, through the early 2000's. It was very good as well. I hope you all had a great day!

A trip to the swamp, my birthday present from Bill.

 We headed south and ended up at the Cache River Wetlands area, which is a natural swamp in southern Illinois and is part of the Shawnee National Forest area. Even though it is winter it was still just beautiful. To see this swamp area frozen, was very interesting, and the best part, no ticks, mosquitoes or snakes...which would be plentiful in hot weather. We spent most of the day hiking through the different areas, saw an eagle's nest, 1000 year old cypress trees, and Heron Pond, which had a 400 ft. boardwalk extending out into the swamp area. We got lots of exercise and sunshine, what a great day. We ended the day with supper at Bandanas Restaurant in Mt Vernon. The smokey bbq they serve there is to die for! Home now having some coffee and chocolate pie...I hope you all had a great day too! Here is one of my favorite pictures from today, the frozen swamp which is Heron Pond, aren't the cypress knees interesting? I never knew what those things were until today.

Much of the wetlands were still completely frozen.

Eagle's nest, but no eagles in sight.

Behind us are two 1000 year old cypress trees. Some people took our picture, which we appreciated. However, they were there first and were trying to use the timer on their camera and the poor guy hit the timer button and then tried to run and get in the picture with his friends and he fell right in the mud...he was a good sport though, and jumped right up and said "I'm all right!"..lol..

A closer view of these ancient trees

As you can see, they are quite large.

Cypress knees. which grow from existing cypress tree roots, it's not clear what they are for, the general opinion is that they help anchor the trees in the marshy environment.

More knees, they are really odd looking.

This was just a big old oak tree.

I hope this is just a "suggestion"..lol

Part of the Cache River

nRiver cane, which is the only cane native to North America. It was everywhere, it is a form of bamboo.

A macro view of moss on a tree

Still lots of color, even in the winter.

Heron Pond, frozen, but still a beautiful swamp area, even in winter.

An interesting group of knees with moss and other plants growing on it

All of the trees were extremely tall.

Me having fun with my fish-eye lens.

A close up of the frozen swamp water.

A grove of river cane.