Showing posts with label The Pittsburgh Clan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Pittsburgh Clan. Show all posts

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Gram

For Gram, Great-Gram, Mom, Ann.  She celebrated her 94th birthday a few days ago in her home with friends and family filling her house.  This morning, Gram quietly passed away in her own bed.

I wish I had known her better.  I'm so grateful for the times I got to sit next to her and hear stories from the past, a little bit about her life and her world.  She is dear to so many people...she will be dearly missed.  Please pray for her, for her kids and family, and for me and Dave.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Cabinet: a Love Letter

Awhile back, my mother-in-law Kathy asked if I could do something for her with this little corner of the kitchen:

Monday, May 13, 2013

A Cabinet Tale

I keep thinking to myself that "sometime soon" I'll catch up on the blog and post pics and updates on all we've been doing up here in the cold north.
It doesn't seem to have happened yet.
So while we're waiting for me to get it together, I thought I'd share my current project. "Someday", I'll share all the details, but for now I'll just say I'm so excited about this kitchen cabinet! (It's for my mother-in-law Kathy and grandmother-in-law Gram)

Monday, December 24, 2012

Merry Christmas, Y'all!

Hope it's beautiful, bright, happy, and full of chocolate Santas your kids can break apart with a meat cleaver. Filling your heart with joy and fuzziness.
Merry Christmas!

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Dave's Birthday, the Second Half

After I finished recurrent training in Lafayette, I took Friday and Saturday off and met up with Dave in New Orleans.

We immediately found the pizza.
Highly recommended on Yelp, and we thought it was pretty good, too.
We took a trip to the:
 Where I, of course, took a million pretty photos.
 This was my favorite tank:
And there were frogs:
And there were sea turtles (the same ones I look for on Turtle Watch):
And there were sharks:
(Sleeping in their "natural" Gulf of Mexico habitat)
And there were otters:
...
Those were supposed to be videos.
I apparently don't read user's manuals.
Buck and Emma, the two adorable otters above, were spinning, turning flips, rubbing their cute little paws on their cheeks and eyes like sleepy children, and generally making me squeal with delight.  Here's what they really look like:
 I so wish I had captured that video!  Sigh.

There were birds at the aquarium, too!
 This is Parakeet Point.
These kiddos had a blast with the parakeets.  On their heads.
 There were also a rescued red-tailed hawk, 
 and a barred owl.
 They were loose in the rafters (not in the parakeet section), and we only spotted them by chance.

On to other topics.

This is a Lion's Mane Jelly:
Apparently, these jellies don't swim.  They're housed in circular tanks with a gentle jet of water blowing along one edge, and they just ride the current.

 So they circle around and around in the tank aimlessly, looking like beautiful pink clouds.  That one in the lower right corner looks like it has Christmas lights on the "chase" setting running through its veins.

We stayed in a beautiful New Orleans B&B that David found.  It was huge!
The place was right at a stop on the streetcar line, but it rained all the time we were there...
...so we ended up driving everywhere and never took any streetcar of any name.
But we saw this cool van, though.
Which made David happy.
Happy birthday again, my dearest husband!
You make me happy!

Saturday, July 14, 2012

David's Birthday!

Dave's birthday this year was a full week long.  This is because my scheduling department scheduled my mandatory 3-day annual recurrent training to start ON David's birthday.  So first I treated him, and then he came down south and treated me for a couple of days.

So for the northern portion of Dave's birthday, we spent a little time in a secluded English country manor
for reals.  This is an English Country Estate.  Like, from England.
This guy was one of the founders of Goodyear, and one of the things he did with his millions was to transplant his favorite mansion from England to this little spot in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.
It is now an exclusive country club and inn.  On this Sunday, we dined alone in the sumptuous dining room with our Ukrainian server giving us her undivided attention...
 (She was training another server at the time and would loudly instruct her on how to deal with "them" as if we couldn't hear her around the corner.  She turned out to be really nice, but she was cracking us up through the meal)

After lunch, we took a walk around the property.
In the little gazebo,
at the end of the lawn,
the world smelled like sweet honeysuckle, and we saw some beautiful birds playing in the stream below.
 And some of these, too:
 Farther back lie the tennis courts.  Dave looked around,
 and found us a tennis ball.  We played a little hand-tennis (a very little cause I am not in good shape right now).  And then we went into Chagrin Falls.
But we forgot the camera, so this is one of the only phone photos we got.  It's a cute little town, though, and the diner we found had very good food.

When we returned, this is the room we had for the evening!
 Sigh.  I love the wood detailing and the beautiful fixtures.
Part II and Dave's presents coming soon!

Happy 33rd birthday, my love!
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