I arrived home yesterday afternoon from my extended Thanksgiving holiday in Arkansas.

Although the primary reason I took the trip was to meet my new goddaughter (see pic to the left), I had fun with Dawn’s other kids too. Allie and I talked music while playing with the baby, Mac terrorized me, and although Krissy mostly ignored me (she is 15 you know!), she did give me a hug before I left.

On Saturday, Dawn and I visited her LNS where I spent way too much money adding to my stash, but considering I haven’t bought too much lately I thought that was OK.

We attempted to stitch on numerous occasions during my visit, but with a new baby, three kids on Thanksgiving break, and a husband underfoot for most of my visit we weren’t as successful on the stitching front as we have been in the past. I only got about ½ of the backstitching on “Cool Cats” finished but that was because I decided to (finally!) start “Tapestry Cat.” I then worked on TC for a few hours before deciding to start one of the charts I bought at the LNS (”No Frogging” by Stitchy Kitty) instead. I stitched the “No Frogging” fob over one on 28 count and (mostly) finished it, but have not downloaded the pictures of it yet.

That was my Thanksgiving holiday in a nutshell and I have to say that this year the two things I was most thankful for were/are 1.) that Megan is a healthy, happy baby and 2.) that I got to spoil her rotten for a week!

Yesterday Mr G and I visited the Living Desert State Park and Zoo in Carlsbad, New Mexico to see its collection of desert life (plant and animal) in the Southwest.

Since West Texas Town sits right in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert I was already familiar with much of the plant life I saw. However, I will admit there were lots of plants that I recognized but didn’t know the names of until I looked at the little ID plates. There were also a lot of names that I knew but didn’t know what the plant looked like so it was nice to finally be able to put the plants together with their names.

After we looked at all the plants we went through the zoo and saw the desert wildlife. In addition to a large variety of birds, we saw a javelina, a black bear named Maggie, a porcupine, some elk, mule deer, pronghorns, and bison, a pack of Mexican gray wolves, a pair of cougars (aka mountain lion), a bobcat, and a huge variety of snakes, lizards, and other desert reptiles.

Although it was a little chilly, Mr G and I had a very nice time at the Living Desert State Park and Zoo. In and around Carlsbad, New Mexico there are quite a few fun things to do and since it is only about a 3 hour drive from here it makes a nice day trip. I will definitely be going back.

(P.S. More pictures– along with a couple of short videos- from my trip to The Living Desert State Park and Zoo can be found at Flickr.)

A few weeks ago I went out for a drink one Saturday evening with a friend. After that drink I was going to go home, but on the way to my car I ran into a couple of other friends. As a result that one drink turned into quite a few drinks. After my third or fourth shot of Ouzo, one of those friends asked me where Mr G was.

As far as I knew Mr G was at home, so at 1:15am, in my infinite drunken wisdom, I decided to call him up and ask him if he wanted to join the party at the local watering hole. Luckily he was still up and although he didn’t come out to the bar that evening, the next day when I profusely apologized for drunk dialing him, he just smiled and said it was no big deal.

Fast forward to tonight (or early this morning): I was enjoying a quiet night at home watching a movie and stitching away when at 12:45am the phone rang. It was Mr G. Although he claimed he had just called to chat, the time of the call made me suspect it was his turn drunk dial me.

And sure enough, after chatting with him for forty-five minutes about everything from the weather to politics he finally confessed that he had had a “couple” of beers and I was indeed the recipient of a drunk dialing.

Well, I think I can say that my birthday is officially over.

Today I got the last birthday cards in the mail that I was expecting and the rest of the presents I bought myself arrived. (Can you believe it? I bought myself NO cross stitch stash for my birthday this year!) It’s been a good birthday if I do say so myself. If the rest of the year is half as enjoyable as the past two weeks have been, it will be a hell of a year.

Of course, one of the highlights of my birthday weekend was going to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with Him yesterday. (I have decided to drop the He-Who-Must-Not-Yet-Be-Named for something shorter… albeit much less creative.) I am not going to write a movie review, but I will say this: I liked and didn’t like the movie. As a stand-alone action movie with Harrison Ford it was fun. As an addition to the Indiana Jones franchise, it wasn’t really what I was hoping for and frankly I was a little disappointed.

However, after the movie yesterday He and I went shopping for bedding for my new bed. (Yes! He went shopping with me! Could He be a keeper?) As usual, I wanted something nice, but was feeling too cheap to pay the big bucks for what I wanted so I hit the sale rack. And I wasn’t disappointed either. There was a “bed in a bag” set that I liked, but I found a comforter/sham set that I was partial to as well.

The “bed in a bag” was a very pretty set with purple flowers on it, but when I showed it to Him and asked his opinion he did that man-stutter thing that means he didn’t want to disagree but he clearly didn’t have too high of an opinion of what was being presented to him. Lucky for Him, I agreed: The “bed in a bag” was kind of girly!

In the end, I decided on the comforter/sham set in a pattern called “Summer Rain” and bought some 350 count Pima cotton sheets in a bluish-green-gray to match.

He must not have minded that set too much: After all, he did help me make the bed when I got home!

And now… on to the stitching report!

This week I have been working on Margaret Sherry’s “Cool Cats” and managed to finish up Summer this evening. I don’t really have much to say regarding Summer because in typical Margaret Sherry fashion it is a fun and smooth stitch. I really like Summer’s sunglasses and her ice cream cone. The only thing that would make her more stereotypical summer would be if she were wearing flip flops!

Well, because of the Kreinik situation, Dawn and I weren’t able to finish “Harvest Witch” by my birthday. However, since they finally arrived tomorrow we will be heading back to our SAL… Of course, I am not sure how much I will get done since I am attending a wedding reception with He-Who-Must-Not-Yet-Be-Named (Boy that is getting to be a pain to spell out! I either need to name him or abbreviate him, huh?) tomorrow evening, but I am sure I can at least get a few stitches in.