Haircut

I decided back in January 2008, that I wanted to grow my hair out and donate it to Locks of Love. June 2009 it was finally long enough and I was thrilled to have it short again for summer. I enjoyed having it long but it will be awhile before I do that again.

Pictures can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=23674&id=1450361928&l=cb7f796582

John's 40th Birthday Party

In celebration of John's 40th, we threw a birthday fiesta. I was expecting between 60-75 people and end up with well over 100 people showing up. It was a little crazy but a lot of fun. Very grateful for all the help we got from my parents and my friend Marci and her husband Jeff. Never would have pulled it off with them.

We had a beautiful day so we had everything set up in the garage and down the driveway. At one point we had people eating on the grass and on the sidewalk. We also had yard games scattered around the yard.

Menu was of course fiesta themed. We did tacos and chicken fajitas. John decided that no party was complete without meatballs so we also had those. My mom also did fruit salad that went over very well as well. We had a small birthday cake but our main dessert was sugar cookies in the shape of donkies, sombreros and cactuses that I had made and Karen and I decorated.

Me and the birthday boy.

Petoskey

In the middle of August we took a quick 3 day, 2 night trip up to Petoskey to work some more on the family tree. We spent 2 days going through cemeteries looking for relatives and then the third day we went to the family history center up there. After spending several hours going through microfiche, we were more confused than we were when we started. It seems that no one knew there own last name or their wivess maiden names. Kuberski, Kuberskey, Kubersky, Koboski, Kobsokie...and that's that's just some of the variations of the same last name. It's a mess let me tell 'ya but we are getting there.

A few pictures:

This one was taken at Greenwood where we were trying to find one of the female relatives. We had a list that told us where she should of been but we never did locate her. Thinking it must be unmarked. John is consulting our binder in this pic.

We did a tiny bit of sightseeing at the end of day 2 when we went to a lakeside park. We met a very nice older couple from Ohio that we talked to for awhile. The gentelman very nicely agreed to take our picture, however apparently didn't understand the zoom concept. This is the first heavily cropped version of the picture:

Thankfully, we had my good camera so I was able to crop it enough that you can actually see our faces. :-)

Poor Bear

It all started with a small sore spot I found on Teddy on a Monday evening. John took Teddy to the vet the next day and this was the msg that I got:

What John was telling me, was that the spot was another dermoid cyst that had presented itself. A dermoid cyst is skin cells that didn't come to the surface in utero and thus the fur grows wherever they end up. Two years ago, Teddy had a really nasty one that was very infected, required two surgeries and a cone for about 3 weeks. This time the vet didn't think it was as bad but it still required surgery. Surgery took place on a Friday and while we were thrilled that this time the cyst was only pea sized, there was almost no infection and no drain was required, he still had to wear the dreaded cone for 10 days.

Poor boy...he was miserable. He kept his cone nice and clean though.

And after a few days, he was able to get in his favorite hammock, seen below, as well as sit in the window in the green room.

9 days later, I was able to convince John to take the cone off and Teddy immediately started cleaning himself...for hours.

Callie got too close and he cleaned her as well.

He now is completely clean and a much happier boy. Still a little bit of time needed for the incision to heal, but we should be good in a few days, as long as he doesn't mess with it too much.

Cute Pocket

Made this cute pocket for my brother's girlfriend's birthday. I used a template that I bought at the Mega Meet in Novi. It's made but a company called Darcie's and I was really impressed how easily this went together. I filled the pocket with some M&M's, gum, chocolate, Andes Mints and a gift card for DQ. I forgot to take a picture of the back of the pocket, but it has a cute little stand that allows it to stand all on it's own/.

Tile Choices

Trying to decide between a lighter and darker tile. We are very happy with the wood laminate but are having a hard time between the tiles. The tile will be in the kitchen, laundry room, 1/2 bath and the entry hall.

Option 1 (Click on picture to see bigger image):

Option 2 (Click on picture to see bigger image):

Same options, just next to stainless appliances (Option 1 is first):

Let us know your thoughts!

Enough already!!!

This was the view Saturday from our front door:



What you don't see in this picture is the driveway, the sidewalk, the street and the neighbors driveway, all covered by snow. This was taken at one of the more clear moments. Most of the day there was LOTS of blowing snow that really effected visibilities By Sunday morning, John and I shoveled out about a foot of snow from the top and bottom of the driveway. The middle and sidewalks probably only had 4-6 inches due to the blowing. We are definitely ready for the snow to be gone and spring to begin!

Azalea Tree

John gave me this beautiful Azalea tree for Valentine's Day. It started like this:

And currently is in full blom:

And a cute one of Callie sniffing at the flowers while I was taking the above pictures:

She was really more interested in the dirt but I thought these turned out cute. Probably wasn't the smartest thing to let her do though, as John warned me. Now she keeps trying to get on the table to sniff it some more...silly kitty!

Week in Review

Not much new in this Kuberski Household this week. We had a very nice Superbowl party at John's parents as they had the best TV. We had lots of snacks and munchies and then did tacos and meatballs for the main course. John's mom had to work but was able to join us for the second half of the game. And my parents and my brother and his girlfriend joined us for the first half. Was a very nice way to spend an evening. I took pictures but they are nothing spectactular and I haven't editted any of them yet.

I must say though that I'm VERY happy with my new 50mm lens that John gave me for Christmas. It is quickly becoming my go-to lens. I took some flower pictures for a friend at work and was so happy with the way they turned out. And I think this has to be in my top 5 favorite shots of Teddy Bear. He doesn't look at the camera too often and usually when he does he looks scared, so I was very happy with this one:



So that's about all! Weatherman is predicting 40 by the weekend and we are keeping our fingers crossed. Spring might be in the air...or at least my allergies thing it is. :-)

Random Things

Okay, so I've been a very bad blogger again. Seriously going to try harder to get at least one new post up a week.

A couple weeks ago, we celebrated Dad's Birthday with the annual pizza party.

Finished a four week cake decorating class this past Sunday. I took the class with our nieces Karen & Rochelle. This was the second level and followed the class that we took almost a year ago. We had a great instructor and really learned alot. Here is my final cake. Please excuse the line of bad basket weave. My rows didn't quite line up and this was supposed to be the back of the cake, however when I put the flowers on I forgot to rotate the cake. :-(

I've been busy doing some paper crafting. I've started the Unity Tour Book - Part 2. I'm working with 686 pictures so this has become quite the project. So far I have 8 pages pretty much done...and many more to go.

Some projects that I have finished:

Thank You Card for a February Swap:

Mother's Day Cards to send to the Troops:

Coupon Book:

Half open:


All the way open with six dividers for coupons:

And two of my favorite pictures from this month:

Teddy Bear Cleaning John's Hair

John Cooking Bacon for BLT's. He makes two piles - one for him(soft) and one for me(crispy).

Christmas Pictures

I'm busy uploading Christmas Photos to my facebook account and supposedly the link below will let anyone look at the pictures. So let's see if this works.

Christmas pictures from John's family are posted at the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9727&l=45280&id=1450361928

They are yellow because they were taken by the light of the Christmas tree and I like the effect it gives. Also taken with my new camera lens. I'm really happy with how they turned out.

Enjoy.

October Happenings

I was just looking through my pictures and realized how far behind I am on postings. So for this entry, I'll cover our busy October.

In early October we took a trip to the East side of the state to use up some gift certificates that we had that were close to expiring. We had a free dinner at the Rain Forest Cafe where we had a great dinner and saw this guy:

Then we headed to our hotel, on the other side of Detroit. Have a few detours due to construction and got a little lost even with our GPS. Saw some seedier areas of Detroit but also got to see this:

It's the old Tiger's stadium. Picture is a little blurry as I wasn't expecting it so it was a really quick picture while moving.

We had a free stay at the hotel as well, from a previous bad stay a year ago for a wedding we were attending. This time was much better and we enjoyed two free drinks in the lounge while we listened to a great local band that I can't remember the name of and then had free breakfast the next morning. We went to Ikea and didn't get anything except a ticket for an illegal left turn. A major downer to our weekend. Thankfully, the officer wrote it so that while we still had to pay the penalty it won't show up on our insurance. After that we headed to Jackson to a cemetary that had some grave sites that John wanted to photograph for the Genealogy he is working on. The cemetary was HUGE which we didn't expect so we weren't as successful as we had hoped but still managed to find a couple that he was looking for. It really was a nice weekend get-away overall.

The weekend after was my birthday. I had a carseat check in the morning and then in the afternoon I was able to open the present John had been teasing me with all week. He had the wrapped box sitting on the kitchen table all week. He kept telling me I could open it if I wanted, knowing full well how tempting that was for me but that I like to open things the day of, so I waited. And the wait was worth it. John gave me a new camera!!! And not just any camera, a Canon Rebel xSI dSLR!! I've been considering one of these for a long time but was having trouble making a final decision and spending the mone. I was thrilled to see this one, plus a memory card, an extra zoom lens (which is wonderful), a carry case and probably most important for clumsy me, an extended warranty.

I've had lots of fun learning how to use it and taking pictures of everything...

The cats:




The plants outside (practicing aperture here..note the blurred background :-)):

My sweetest day flowers from John:

The cookies I made:

And even the kitchen sink! Actually I was trying an online photography challenge on the speed of the shutter. This was on a higher speed where you can see individual drops but you also need a lot more light. John, of course, thought I was more than a little crazy with this one.


Then at the end of October my mom, sister and I took our annual trip to Frankenmuth. We had a great time and found some wonderful deals at Birch Run. This picture is us at dinner at the Bavarian Inn, enjoying an AMAZING chicken dinner.

And at some point during the month, I knitted my very first pair of socks:

Phew! I think that is everything for October. November update coming soon! :-)

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Ours went very well. John was very excited to break out his new hat, that he bought in Petoskey back in September. He saw this hat at a little store downtown Petoskey and immediately decided he had to have it. He wore it to work the day before Thanksgiving and the day of, and then to both of our holiday dinners.

Here he is at Lisa's house with the hat on, having dinner. He never sits down to eat...always stands in the kitchen, close to the food. As Mark said on Thursday, it's a tradition now. :-)



I was hoping to get more of an update done today but it just hasn't happen. Watch for more updates coming soon. John bought me a new camera back in October for my birthday and I've been having fun playing around with it so I have a whole bunch of fun pictures to share.

Memories of Warmer Days

Some fun pictures of a Whitecaps game where the San Diego Chicken was there. We had a great time and definitely go back again if the chicken was there.

John and I at the game:

The chicken playing follow the leader with little chicks:

Trying to distract the pitcher:

Helping the base runner:



And John delivered me a pretzel with a bite missing. Wonder how that happened??