The Yarn Stasher's Dilemma

Happy Birthday, Pia!

CARA: Damn it!  Another year gone by and I am STILL IN VIRGINIA.  This makes me sad.  Sorry I am missing your birthday, P.

KATIE:  YAY! YAY! YAY!  My sister is another year older!  I love a party! And I have a whole new year of opportunities to be mean to you, big sister!

PIA:  GOD YOU GUYS.  Look at me.  I am a saint, just look at the expression on my face.  I put up with you clowns all year long and would it be too much to ask you to celebrate my big day?

TONY:  Hey, why aren't I in this picture?

LAVS: Gotcha covered, P.  Homemade mac & cheese for dinner!  PS Pooh Bear, I think this was Christmas 2 days after you were born.  So you were in the house, just not ready to celebrate.

Oscars!

P, Katie & I are winding down from our Oscars viewing "party".  And when I say party, I mean lorca-ing in the living room and tearing open a bag of pretzels (did we remember to eat pretzels?)

Yay, The Artist won the big awards!  Do go see this movie if you ignored my recommend the first time, it's so sweet and funny and just a great movie.

I am SURE I spotted J-Lo with a nip slip when she was presenting, so that was fun.  We really wish Melissa McCarthy would quit "helping" design her award show gowns and turn to Octavia Spencer's team for help in looking fab.  I really love Cloons, but isn't it time for him to dump the lady wrestler?  I really don't love her.

Oh, and the cast of "Best in Show" doing the Wizard of Oz focus group?  Loved it.  Please Christopher Guest!  Get these folks back in front of the camera.  You've been lazy long enough.

I didn't manage to see War Horse or Extremely Loud, so those will have to wait for Redbox.  But it was a pretty good Oscar year.

Oh, and one last Lavs moment.  I thought the singer with the big afro who sang "What a Wonderful World" during the dead people montage was one of the dead people.  Until I realized she was actually there in the theater, alive and singing. 

Changes...

I looked like this the last time my last name was Sundstrom.  That's a lot of water under the bridge folks.  And boy, I wish my skin still looked like that (but evidently my hairdo choices were not good even in 1972.)

Anyhoo, I'm going back to the old family last name, and will soon officially be a Sundstrom again.  Dang, it's a hassle to change everything when you change your name.  But I don't plan to ever change it AGAIN.  So will go to the nursing home as a proud Swede.

LOVE

Seriously, this is one of my favorite pictures ever.  Cara & Katie at the lake.  Salt Water Sandals.  Strawberry Shortcake Swimsuit with diaper underneath.  Horrible color blocks orange and yellow swimsuit that originally belonged to Peggy.  Two scrap noodle haircuts (I think this was shortly after the incident where Cara cut Katie's hair to the scalp then had her wear a hood all day).  Brave Little Toaster Smiles.

Melting right now.  Turn back the clock 28 years!

Love This

We're watching "The Voice".  And every time Cee Lo shows up with his cat (whose name is "Purrfect" btw, and he has a Twitter account if you are into that sort of thing) I laugh.

Along with "Whheat Thins", this is currently my favorite thing.

I Heart Cloons

Katie and I went to see "The Descendants" tonight.  Oh I love George Clooney SO much.  And this movie was great.  Now I am torn between rooting for this or "The Artist" at the Oscars.

And I want to go to Hawaii really really bad.

It's A Hit!

Meg just sent me this pic of Hads.  She just got the Bitty Baby & Hadley matching Bieber shirts I sent for her.  Judging by the fact that her entire face is grinning, I think she likes her gift.

Ugh

WHY do they even bother putting the maple and the strawberry filled chocolates in the Russell Stover boxes?  Does anyone like  those?  (if so, you need to come over here, we have some candy that has a bite taken out that you can have).

I gave P & K little heart boxes of RS candy for Valentine's, and seriously?  After they ate the single caramels, even Lulu didn't want the rest.

The Greatest Gift of All

is coming home from a hard day's work to find your room cleaned and candy on your pillow.

Happy Valentine's Day P & K!

PS ditto Cara and Tony, without the cleaning or the candy

Happy Valentine's Day!

A wee bit early, but I might forget tomorrow :-)

These are the kind of cards I handed out to my classmates at Maywood Hills back in the early 60s.  The Valentine's Day party was my favorite, for some reason it was super exciting to receive a ton of cheesy cards just like this. 

Kiss a loved one today (tomorrow actually)

Bieber Fever 2012

I noticed that Little Miss Hadley has been wearing a Justin Bieber shirt in all the pictures her mom has taken of her the last few weeks.  Plus she told Katie & I that her nickname is now "Selena".

So when I found matching Biebs shirts for her and her Bitty Baby doll, well I had to get them.  Even if they make all of us adults recoil in horror.  She's going to love them.

My Calendar is Marked

for the Mad Men Season 5 Premiere on March 25th.  Cannot wait!  Thanks B Davis, for introducing me to Don Draper and the gang.

Damn It!

The Portland move is O-U-T.  Cara's boss-to-be wasn't able to make the personnel moves needed to free up a job for her there.

So, shall it be Denver? (love the city, love Colorado, good knitting weather.  However, the people she would be managing seemed a little iffy)  Or Austin? (well, it's TEXAS. Though if you must live in Texas, Austin seems like your best bet)  Or stay in Virginia til a NW job opening comes along?

Damn.  Portland was too perfect.

Our Favorite New Website

Katie and I were doing our favorite airport activity, READING STAR MAGAZINE.  Seriously, is there anything better than sitting at the airport reading a trashy tabloid?

Anyways, Star turned us on to our fave new website:

Suri's Burn Book

"Just because you don't have a Ferragamo handbag doesn't mean you can behave like a child. (I'm looking at you, Shiloh.)"

 Awesome.

Unravel Portland

See, we are already finding fun things to do in Portland!  Susan suggested we join her (and hopefully Pam and Tate -- we must train this girl in yarny ways) at the Rose City Yarn Crawl this year.

So my kind of weekend!  19 yarn stores to visit!  Pia & I (and maybe Katie, she's on the fence) are flying in on Friday night March 2nd and meeting up with the Seattle gang for a Sundstrom Gals weekend.  We're considering renting a house so we will have plenty of room to knit, eat, sleep, etc.

If anyone would care to join us for the weekend (you don't have to be a knitter, there's lots of stuff to do in Portland), let me know right away.  The more, the merrier (and the cheaper the cost for each of us on the house)  I'm hoping Cara & Tony might come too, as they are going to have to start looking for a house in the Portland area -- RIGHT?!

Cross Your Fingers and Toes!

Katie and I are back from our whirlwind weekend trip to Denver.  And glad to not have to sleep with each other, but to be ALONE in our own beds :-)

We had a grand time with Cara and Tony.  Those two clowns.  Still smoking (boo)  Still joined at the hip (yay)  We just missed the giant snowstorm that dumped over a foot of snow on Denver.  By the time we got there, the streets were plowed and all was pretty much back to normal.  You gotta love a city that tickets an 82 year old lady for not shoveling her sidewalks.

We did a bit of touristy stuff: walked up and down the 16th Street Mall.  Visited the Tattered Cover Bookstore. Spent a day at the casino (this WAS a trip with my gambling children) and made ourselves ill with a "free" meal at the casino buffet.  Bought a t-shirt at Rockmount Western Wear.  Found a good yarn store.  Bought Pia a Denver Starbucks cup (thanks for keeping the homefront safe and taking care of Lulu, Peeps!) Stopped in at REI (where our memberships were still good even though none of us had set foot in REI in years)

Monday morning, Cara interviewed for a management position in Denver, the actual reason for this trip.  We were all rooting for her, as we had all fallen totally in love with the Mile High City and were ready to move.  The interview went very well, as expected (who wouldn't want to have Car-parts as their boss?)

In fact, she was offered a job in PORTLAND, OREGON!!!!!!!!  BRING EM HOME 2.0 IS PRACTICALLY IN THE BAG FOLKS!  Color me over the moon.  My kids would all be in the same time zone!!!!!!!  She's just waiting to hear what kind of moving and payment package they will offer then we will know for sure.

I'm dying.  Dying for them to give her whatever she wants to get her on the west coast.  And Pooh Bear says this is the ONLY city he would drop everything and move to immediately so that's even better.  Fred and Irene in the house!   YAYYAYYAY!!!

Road Trip Update

Due to our lack of thought about what the weather might be doing in Denver (our layover spot for our trip to Austin), we aren't going to Texas after all :-(  Big snowstorm is due in with a foot of snow there.

Boo!  We may try to meet up with Cara in Denver on Sunday (hopefully the storm will have passed through by then) for a brief visit.  But it's not going to be 70 degrees there, I'm pretty sure.

Road Trip!

Bright and early tomorrow morning, Katie and I are heading off to warm (70!) Austin, Texas to meet up with Cara and Tony for the weekend.

Cara is a hot commodity in her company. As well she should be.  A smart young woman who knows everything there is to know about cars, and all of her employees love her to pieces.  In fact, when I was last in Virginia, the bosses switched everyone's territories around and Cara's people were threatening an uprising unless they got to keep her.

Anyways, she has been asked to interview for a job managing a region in Austin OR in Denver (fingers crossed for Denver!), so she's down there this week checking things out.  Pooh and us gals are meeting up with her tomorrow.

Here are some interesting things to see in Austin ("Keep Austin Weird"):

 Statue of Stevie Ray Vaughn.  We may have to go pay homage here as big Tony loves this guy.

"Liberal Mecca – Texas is a conservative state overall, but right smack in the middle, Austin, is a huge liberal center.  Whole Foods is headquartered there.  A huge local celebrity is Leslie, a homeless, mini-skirt wearing drag queen/transvestite, who tried to run for mayor.  Austin could shock the pants off small-town Texans"

Hook em Horns.  Austin is the Home of the University of Texas.  So burnt orange basically covers the town.

The world's largest urban bat colony is in Austin, evidently under this bridge.  Where do the homeless people go when the bats are in residence?

There's at least ONE good yarn store in Austin, Hill Country Weavers.  That's really all I need to know (well, I need thrift stores too)

The city celebrates "Eeyore's Birthday Party" every year in April.   I'd move there for this event alone.

We will get some pix (and yes, Pia, we will bring  you a souvenir, thanks for staying home and taking care of Lulu!) and I'll report on our Texas adventure.  BBQ here we come!