Here I am again. It took me several hours to get on here to blog again. Then I typed a bunch of stuff and went to upload a photo and well, everything left and went back to cyber space because my time had expired and my page was not longer accessible. This new google blogspot is certainly not as user friendly as the old blogspot was.

I said a bunch of stuff to Brooke in the last post and it was kind of humorous but since I am starting all over again, I have lost some of my wit that I had a little earlier.

I joined a program through Kaiser Permanente called 10,000 steps a day. So, I have been doing this for about one week now and other that just about killing myself trying to out do any and all projections and goals I set for myself I am doing pretty well with it. I think that I do about 5,000 steps a day without going out of my way to exercise and take a walk. So, that means that I have to supliment my day with about 5,000 steps either walking or doing another type of exercise. I didn't see knitting, spinning or quilting on the conversion table either. What's with that?

I think now that my password has been reset it will not be as difficult for me to log on and I will try to get those photos uploaded. In the meantime for those of you that know and love Lucy, I will upload a photo of her holding her nephew Ale in her bedroom in Costa Rica. She and family have just repainted her room and she is now getting organized. They are doing quite a bit of remodeling so Lucy is spending time at her Grandma Daisy's house. It is huge. I stayed there when I was visiting last time. Grandma Daisy had 10 children. Ok, I will try to sign on again tomorrow and upload photos of some of my projects.

Oh my gosh....I finally got signed on to the blog. The new site is very difficult to get around in and I will not even at this moment try to post something like a picture. I have tried about 30 times to get on this new blogger and finally with a great deal of patience tonight I was successful. I was reminded the other day by Maggie (my lovely daughter from Poland) that I haven't been blogging and well I thought it was time to try again. So, I am sitting here with my new little computer and it is a baby lap top that I got for my birthday. I like it because it is totally mine and I probably won't share it with anyone. Ouch those were strong words. Nah, it is just that the kids show up here and use my computer and it gets loaded up with things that I don't know how to use and what to do with them. Then they leave and here I am with a computer that is now in Spanish. Really it is pretty funny if you think about it. Lindita and Will are wanting me to learn how to speak Spanish so they left me with all the Spanish homepages and I can't figure out how to change it back. Time for Liza to come to help us. Oh yea, the knitting thing has kind of slowed down to a very very slow non moving happening. I just cannot knit these days with my shoulder injury. I'm going on a knitting cruise at the end of April with Lucy, Della and Lydia and hopefully I will be able to handle a pair of needles by then. I take pain meds daily and this Friday I will go to the ortho department and he said he had a three inch needle. I'm a bit afraid of it, but if it will help, then I will be able to start the stretches and exercises to make my shoulder better. I injured somehow and I don't really know how, but it was getting better until I was fighting with a big piece of firewood. The firewood won and my shoulder snapped. Ouch. It hurts so bad sometimes. I have learned to use ice on it and that really helps. It just numbs it so I can't feel anything.
Good news is that I am almost at my goal for weight watchers. Well I say almost because it is only 16 pounds more to go and I will be there, but 16 pounds that has been hanging around for most of my life so it is taking a little longer to come off. But, I am up to walking 5 miles on the weekends each day if the weather is nice. Then during the week I do about 2 miles a couple of times. I remember years ago when I used to enjoy going out for a walk, then going through years where I really had to push myself so this is nice to be back where I am enjoying the whole exercise thing.
I've been doing some quilting. I did a mystery weekend and ended up making a beautiful quilt. I am putting the boarders on and then I will be sending it off to be quilted. When it comes back I will post a picture of it because I am really proud of this one. It is queen size and will go in our guest bedroom.
Okay, I missed out on SP10. I never got any emails suggesting that I join so maybe they really didn't want me this time around. SP9 was a poor experience not for me in as far as what my pal sent to me, because she sent me some awesome things. I was trying to post about it and I couldn't get on this new blog spot so I did email her and thank her. She sent me a bunch of great quilting things that I really needed. So she was wonderful. The one I spoiled never even said thank you for everything. That was kind of the straw that broke the camels back. I've been told by Heatherly that the odd numbers are just that kind of odd and the even numbers are generally good. So, looks like I'll wait until 12 and then maybe I will be knitting again. But in the meantime as long as I can get onto this site I will blog to keep my kids up to date with our lives.
Okay everyone keep your fingers crossed that this will not disappear into cyber space.

Good afternoon. I had fully intended to blog much earlier but for some reason I was having difficulty getting here. I guess it has something to do with the fact that I am using the old blogging method and that is not acceptable any longer. Okay, hopefully I will be able to get where I need to.
Guess what everyone?? I know that you are totally in suspense. I just received the most awesome package from my secret pal. It was totally cool. My Kodak camera broke while we were on our trip to Hawaii and I purchased an Olympis and so I am going to take a picture of all of these goodies and share them with you. I think the coolest thing is that these are all things that I didn't have and yes the answer to the second question was yes, I needed them.

Hi all. We are back from our Hawaiian Cruise and it was very nice. I am so grateful that the six of us went together because we did so many fun things together. We hiked around and down, across and up the crater of a volocano in Hilo, we walked in the botanical gardens, shopped, snorkeled (bad day for that) one turtle, visited Pearl Harbor, we went on a local tour for Hawaiian food and that was outstanding. We went in a submarine and that was cool. Will went deep sea fishing. I walked the deck everyday for two miles unless we had gone out and walked like the volcano then I just took a hot shower and prayed I wouldn't get cramps in the middle of the night. We met some very interesting people. There were two ladies that had brought along their knitting, both knitting socks, I also brought mine, but did not have time to knit. I have so many pictures and so this week I am hopeful to go through and edit them so that I can post a couple. I got a new camera on the trip so I played quite a bit with it. We ate some wonderful foods on the cruise. Weight Watchers didn't exist on this trip because there was no way I would know how the food was prepared and what was in it. I tried to eat as healthy as possible, but I must admit that there were some deserts that put me way over the edge. So far my scale tells me I gained one pound, but on Thursday morning the truth will be known. :-) If I only gained a pound I will be dancing in the streets to celebrate. lol
My knitting will start back up in February. Lindita and Will are here until the end of January and we still have some things planned so I have just decided that it is best to wait since I am only able to do a few rows at a time and my tension will be all off.
Glad to be home. I still have my sea legs. Now I have to start thinking about the Sea Socks Cruise in April.

Hi everyone. It has been a whirlwind December with Lucy leaving and Lindita arriving and Christmas plans etc. etc. I have not knitted since Lucy left. What's with that? I think it has to do with the fact that I am really busy right now getting ready for the cruise to Hawaii etc.
My pal may want to disown me and I can totally understand that. This has been a very different Secret Pal exchange for me. My pal that I am spoiling has not communicated with me more that a couple of times. It is hard to put any effort into packages when it is a one way street. Okay, enough of that. I am thinking that my last pal that I spoiled was so much fun that there is possible no other quite like her.
Socks are on needles and they take me time. I have promised to show progress pictures and one of these days I might just do it. I have honestly lost interest and am sad to have to express that. Life for me is very busy. Lucy left for Costa Rica on the 19th and we do miss her terribly. My other daughter Lindita and her husband are here and we are enjoying great times together. Our dearest friends Dave and daughters Christen, Laura and Chelsea were with us for Christmas as well as my parents. I intend to knit on the cruise but don't know what types of communication I will have available. I will mail Lucy's last gift this week and mine as well.

Here I am back at my desk and back to work. It truly is so much more fun to be out playing and doing fun things although Lucy and I were messing around in Los Gatos shopping and then went to the outlet stores in Gilroy and closed them last night so we didn't get home until midnight. Of course I had my usual cramps all night long so didn't even spend much time in bed. We left here on Saturday and our first stop was Los Gatos where we got changed into our cloths for an annual Christmas Party that we go to in Watsonville. It was so much fun once again. It is a great group of people and we do the gift exchange. You never know what you are going to get and you don't know what you will end up with until the end because if you have something really nifty it will be taken away from you. Of course you will have the opportunity to get it back at a later date, but this is a great way to have fun with friends and no one knows who brought what. Then on Sunday we walked all over Los Gatos and went to my favorite shoe store and I did a little damage there. I love shoes. It is truly one of my weaknesses kind of like yarn. We went to the yarn store in Los Gatos and the name of that store is Yarndogs. It is a really cute little yarn store. There were about 7 or 8 ladies in the store knitting on projects. They had many of the same yarns that our LYS carries so we didn't buy any yarn, but we did buy a couple of patterns. The other yarn store was closed so we were not able to check it out. In Gilroy we hit a select few stores, but because I was returning a dress that I had purchased through the catalog at Coldwater Creek and ordering something else, it took a little longer than I thought. I was able to test my skills at patience and well, everything worked out fine but we didn't get out of there until 7:35. Fortunately we had already had our dinner so just had to stop for gas once and then another stop to kind of get out and walk around. I took my socks to knit, but we were on the go so much that we did not get any knitting done at all. :-( We will be hanging out here tonight so if I don't fall asleep, we will be knitting today so that is nice. I really love the schaffer yarn that I bought for socks. It is very nice. I know, I have promised pictures and I will try to post some, but no promises for a post today. Please be patient.

On the knitting front I am still working on my vest and hoodie sweater. It's been hard knitting the last week as we have been in Santa Barbara with my daughter Heather. Heather kept Lucy and I so busy that we were barely able to knit a couple of rows. We did go into a LYS in SB but like our store in Paradise better. We went to Ventura on Friday and shopped for formal dresses for our Hawaiian cruise in January. Saturday we shopped around downtown SB and went to a picnic for the employees of the Santa Barbara Bowl. Sunday we were off to Universal Studios and that really was a kick. We laughed until we were crying. Monday we went back to Ventura to pick up the dresses that we bought on Friday. They had to be altered a little so we made arrangements to pick them up Monday after Heather got off of work. Then Tuesday morning we headed back to Paradise. It was a beautiful drive. Thanksgiving was wonderful with family. We shared many enjoyable moments. This morning we got up at 3:45 to go to Chico to purchase a computer (lap top) for Lucy's sister at Circuit City. Ok, I have to tell you that if I don't have to go back there, I never will. The employees were nice enough but there was zip, nadda, no organization. Yes I know that they are not used to having the mob of people in their store at one time but you would have thought they would have given a little more thought to the check out counters. For about an hour they only had two checkers. That's right only two. They added two more stations about an hour later. But.....I was in the line for the laptops and it was moving so slow. I finally went up to the register and just kind of hung around to see why it was taking 30 minutes per customer to ring them up. Well, each customer was wanting tech support and explanations to the freebies etc.Then they had to get the freebies out of the back warehouse yada yada yada. They could have had a sales person talking to each of the people in line answering their questions etc. That would have eliminated some of the people in line right away. Like they wanted the freebies, so an employee would go get them (printer, router, spyware & case) only to find out that they had to pay for them up front and send the rebate in to get their money back. Some people were so mad (certainly not the Christmas Spirit) that they left everything they had gone and picked out right there and walked out the door. Ah well, we were in the line to pay for 4 hours and 15 minutes and we were about number 40 in the line. Crazy. I will go to the LYS later, but I totally do not enjoy line stuff. Too bad we didn't take our knitting with us. That would have been kind of cool.