Just a quick update to show you how things are going with the snack bag purse. I’ve gotten the bottom and about 2/3 of the first row finished. At this point I’m out of snack wrappers and the project will be on hold for a bit. Notice how the chain seems to be made up of little squares? A snack size bag of chips will only produce about 4 or 5 of those squares. I may have to start hanging out at Subway and offering to take care of people’s trash for them… LOL!

This is my favorite rain themed song.

We’ve been getting more than our normal share of Monsoon rain this year. I think we’ve had 4 good downpours in the last 2 weeks. Normally when the Monsoons roll through we only get a few drops here while all the surrounding areas take the brunt of the storms. It’s been a nice change of pace.

This weekend we have had the added bonus of cooler temperatures so today Recliner Man and I did a little bit of work in the back yard. Cooler temps here just means that it didn’t break 100, so after a bit of work we just  sat and enjoyed the nice breeze. Of course all this cooler air and rain has dropped the pool temp a bit and it is just slightly below my comfort zone. I don’t think summer if going to give up that early so I’m sure I’ll be back in it in a few days.

I’ve been a real slacker on the birthday posts this year. I never got around to posting pictures for The Boy and this past Monday I let Princess Shannon’s big day go by without a post. It’s kind of funny that she didn’t call me up and ask where her embarrassing photos were. Hmmm…  Yesterday was my 53rd birthday. The Boy took me out for lunch and Recliner Man took me out for dinner. At the end of all that eating we swung by Krispy Kreme and picked up a free dozen doughnuts. I never knew that they give you free doughnuts on your birthday. Billie told me about it when I saw her the day before. Yay for Billie!

Another month almost gone and summer is winding down for some of my friends in other parts of the country. The kids here have been back to school for a few weeks already and that always makes me think back to my childhood in Connecticut. Back to school meant only a few more days of summer’s heat and the arrival of fall temperatures and the local agricultural fair. It is such a different world here. We are still in the grip of summer with 100+ temperatures. Our Monsoon season is in full swing and humidity is hanging heavy in the air. Last night large parts of the valley had heavy rains, including our little part of it. When you live in a desert, rain is a very big deal and I simply couldn’t make a blog post without mentioning it.

My good friend, Billie, invited me to join a monthly art group that she belongs to and last night we braved the flooded streets and tree toppling winds to get to it. It was the first time I’d played with art supplies in quite a while. I’ve had my nose stuck so deep into the genealogy notes that I’ve barely made time for anything else. But last night was the time to come up for fresh air and create something. Billie was in charge of planning the activity for the group. She select a technique with alcohol inks that I hadn’t done before and found quite enjoyable. The plan is simply to place a few drops of ink on the glossy card stock and then hit it with a little canned air. It seemed to me that the more you tried to control the ink flow, the more uncontrollable it became. I had to learn to let go and just wait and see what happened. The image above was one of my favorites. As soon as the first 3 colors spread I saw the little fairy trying to come out so I added a face and then the flower in the bottom corner.

I’ve started another craft project that I expect to be slow and take a long time to finish. I’ve decided to make a purse from old chip bags. It’s a variation of the chewing gum wrapper chains that so many of the kids use to make. I never learned how to do this when I was young so I had to start from scratch for this project. I’m making my pieces just a bit larger than a gum wrapper but otherwise it is the same deal. When my chains get long enough I’ll stitch them together to form the purse. One large bag of Fritos only gave me about a 9 inch section of chain so Recliner Man better not be planning a diet any time soon. He is our main chip snacker and I’m counting on him to do his fair share on this project.

If any of my local readers are looking for a new pet, I have a facebook friend with a couple of cute kittens looking for a home.

I was catching up with my feed reader a few minutes ago and when I got to Mom Wald’s place I discovered that she was participating in a Rooster Blog Party, sponsored by Bella Vista. I just couldn’t pass up an opportunity like this for showing you my fancy young fellow. I purchased him a few years ago when Recliner Man and I were visiting family in Wisconsin. He is one of my favorite things. I keep him  in the family room where I am sure to see, and enjoy, him every day.

I’m totally wrapped up in my latest obsession. I go from one obsession to another, don’t I? At least this time it isn’t a computer game!  I started an account on Ancestry.com and I’ve been spending lots of time working on my genealogy records. I’m like a kid in a candy store, downloading old census records.

Enjoy Mr. Rooster and I’ll try to think of something semi interesting to come back and post about later.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on my Family Tree photo site. I’ve been sprucing up the place and adding new photos from recently found relatives. All that housekeeping renewed my interest in solving some of the mysteries among the photos.

Like, who were these fine fellows? Most of the photos had no writing on them and I was left with notations on the album pages to serve as identifications, or simply clues. I couldn’t even be sure that all the photos were in their original spots.

I decided that the man on the right is the same as this one, Sylvester Selvin K. Or was it just Selvin K, or maybe simply Silvester. There are lots of mysteries to work on and this past week my older sister got the bug and decided to start searching for answers with me. I opened up an account on Ancestry.com and we started looking for old documents that can help us identify all the family branches. One of my sister’s best finds has been the Army enlistment record for ole’ Sylvester Selvin K / Selvin K / Silvester. We learned that his name is actually Silvester, and from an obituary that I found we confirmed that his middle initial is K and that his nickname was Sell. His enlistment record lets us know that he served from 1895 to 1898. This is cool stuff for us fruitcakes that like to dig into the family roots.

While I was up at 2am letting the cat out, battling scorpions to the death, and searching out strange thumping noises in the dark back yard, I got to thinking about good ole’ Sell. I wondered what life was like in the Army back then. What Fort Omaha looked like and what he must have looked like in uniform. I found some photos online of the fort but none of the 2nd Regiment, Company B, that he belonged to. I did find a picture from 1898 of a young fellow who was in the 22nd Regiment, Company B.

Funny little tie, isn’t it? Well, what the heck, it’s 2am and I’m wide awake so…….

Now I know what Silvester must have looked like in uniform, and you know what I do when insomnia gets a hold of me.

OK, you know the drill… where has the time gone… bad blogger… so busy… and all the other things we say when we’ve been neglecting our blogs. My favorite is this one: Life Happens. OK, now that all of that is out of the way, let’s move on to the pretty picture, shall we?

Last night we went out to a local Chinese restaurant for dinner. Driving there we commented on the windy picking up and the visible dust we could see in the distance. We get lots of small dust storms so we didn’t give it any more thought. A while later when we emerged from the restaurant we saw this glorious sunset.

Check out this wall of dust I saw one afternoon while out shopping. They happen often enough that I don’t usually think to grab a camera and when the really big ones show up you don’t want to get the camera out and expose it to all that gritty air.

So getting back the the lovely Chinese dinner..

Within a couple of minutes, rain had started falling off in the West Valley and all the colors were fading together. I usually miss these beautiful sunsets because I live in a tightly packed neighborhood surrounded by large houses and block wall fencing. Hmm… maybe that is a reason to eat out more often. I’ll have to run that one by Recliner Man and see what he has to say about it.

The following is a Public Service Announcement. Do not leave two clocks of the same species together in the dark for too long or this may happen:

I’m telling you, they are just like rabbits! Multiplying all over the place. Should I name the new one Junior or Blue Boy?

Final thoughts. For my friend in the north country, I hope the days are getting a bit easier for you.  And this one is to a frequent visitor to this site from Cheyenne: My thoughts and best wishes are with both of you.