Labor Day on Mingus

This Labor Day, Alan and Doc and I decided to go on a bike ride on Mingus Mountain. It's only about a half hour from our house, so we just packed a backpack with lunch and headed out.
There had been a fire there recently so there were some trees that hadn't lost their needles yet, but very few dead trees. It wasn't a bad fire and just burned the underbrush mostly.. so still a nice place to ride.

Doc found some mud puddles to run through, too.

After our ride, we didn't really want to go home yet, so we decided to explore an old forest road we'd never been on before.

We passed a really nice view of Jerome from the top of Mingus. You never see Jerome from this angle, so I was happy to get this picture. You can see the red hills of Sedona in the background.

The road started to get pretty bad... no wonder... it ended quite abruptly at a big dirt pile. Good thing though.. because there wasn't a road on the other side of the dirt pile.

There was also no place to turn around so Alan had to back the truck up a LONG ways. Doc and I decided to get out and walk awhile.

We passed this smiley face rock. I SOOOO wanted to bring it home, but it was just too heavy. Besides probably being illegal to take it out of the forest.

Alan let Doc run all the way back to the highway. He loved it..

Almost home and Doc knows it. He could probably smell our house from there.

Quilt Exchange

I have been involved in a couple of Mini Quilt Swaps. I signed up for them on the Quilting Gallery website here. The first one was a Springtime Quilt Exchange. I made this quilt and sent it off to Corry vanden Broek in the Netherlands. She put some pictures of it on her blog which I thought was very nice and it looks great in her house. You can see her blog here.

Then I joined the Summertime Mini Quilt Exchange. I finished it today and will send it off soon to a lady in Canada. I hope she likes it! I think it came out really cute and it was great fun to do. I've made lots of Mariner's Compass quilts but this one was a little different with all of the different layers in the circle. Here is a picture of it.

Michelle from Canada received my quilt and loves it. She put it on her blog. You can see it here.

I sure do like quilting!!

Landon Wedding

We made a trip to Washington last week for Landon and Tracy's wedding. We got there a week early so we could help them get some things done before the big occasion. We got there on Sunday afternoon and Landon picked us up in his VW bus. He's very proud of his bus and it's been a long time since I rode in one. I'd forgotten how loud they are when you're sitting in the back seat. But.. here we are riding to Landon's house.



The first project that was needed was building a patio in their back yard. The men started working on it the next morning early. They had to put down gravel, level it, then put down a layer of sand, level it, then set the block in a pattern that Tracy picked out. It took 3 days and was pretty hard work, but when it was done, it looked beautiful.

The project that Tracy had for me to do was make these cool pillows for her living room furniture. Tracy and Landon had recovered these sofas and did an excellent job. I'm working on a quilt for their living room using the same yellow/orange/red color theme. You can see it hanging over the banister behind the sofa. I'll post a picture of it when it's finished.



Tracy's Aunt Sue was at their house the whole week before we got there and was busy working on all sorts of things preparing for the wedding. She did all of the flower arranging, too.

Two nights before the wedding, the men went out to a bachelor party so us girls stayed home and had a party of our own. We had shots called Chocolate Cake which was delicious and drank lots of wine. Tracy said it was a wine tasting to decide which wines they wanted to serve at the reception, but I'm not sure our input was very helpful. We just wanted to laugh...
They had their rehersal dinner in their back yard. Tracy's mom, Linda, made a yummy vegetarian lasagna to feed all these people. I hardly did any cooking while I was there because Linda and Aunt Sue did most of it. I'm glad.. they're good cooks!

The morning of the wedding, after all of the odds and ends of preparation were completed, the girls went to a hotel to get themselves ready and this is what the guys did.... played POKER!

The wedding was at a park on the Colombia River. We just set up chairs and put some flowers and tulle along the edges of the rows. It was simple, but very nice. There were about 50 people there for the wedding.

Alan and Landon walked me down the isle. Aren't my men handsome...

Landon, watching Tracy walk down the isle.
Landon and Tracy during the ceremony. I'd say they were pretty happy....

Mr. and Mrs. Landon Beeson

After pictures at the park, everyone went back to Landon and Tracy's house for the reception.

Landon was very nice feeding Tracy the cake.. but you could tell he really wanted to smash it.

This is the Salmon they served. It is a real fish. They also had chicken and a couple of different kinds of salad. The reception went on until about 3am. I went to bed at 11pm.

Our plane was leaving at 2:30pm so all of the guys that hadn't left yet played a game of disc golf. Then Landon dropped us off at the airport.

You can see Landon's little orange bus driving away from the airport. It was such a fun week but Alan had to go to work the next day. We got home that night around 11pm.

It's been awhile...

It's been awhile since I've had a chance to post but I finally added pictures from our Zion trip but I put them in order from Day 1 to Day 6 so you will have to scroll down to read about each day.

I have been doing alot and have many pictures to post but I got caught up in Facebook doing a silly game called Farm Town. It's like Sim City but with a farm and you can play with other friends on Facebook. I'll get back to my blog soon.. I promise. :-)