There's something to be said for making a list then getting to mark things off the list that you complete. What a wonderful sense of accomplishment.

This entry is for a scrapbook page of the Grand Canyon that I'm working on. The incident happened 6 years ago, so I'm a little sketchy on the details.

The South Rim was very hot and crowded. One day we wanted to check out all the viewpoints along Hermit Road. During the summer cars are not permitted along this road, so you have to catch a bus from point to point. We set off early in the day for this little adventure and happily jumped on and off buses. Somewhere along the line we got a bus that took us back to the start instead of the next point, so we thought we’d just stay on the bus and repeat the loop then continue on to where we left off. Well, it turned out that the bus driver wasn’t going to let us stay on. We were kicked off and told to get in the end of the line of passengers who were now waiting to get on. This seemed to be Brian’s last straw in tolerating the South Rim, so he immediately said he wanted to leave the Grand Canyon. This was fine by me since I had had enough of all the crowds and noise. A few hours later, we were on the road. We decided that since we would be leaving early that it would be possible to swing by Houston, Texas for a ballgame. So the swing was a bit out of the way, but it was an adventure trying to get to Houston in time for the game. We were practically driving through the night, doing all kinds of silly stuff to try and stay awake in the car, but we made it!

It's raining. It has been raining for 3 days straight. Guess what they are predicting for tomorrow? More rain. I wish we could get just a small peek at the sun. When it is dark and gloomy out all day, it's a curse to have a window office. Well, not really, but I'm depressed from the lack of sun.

I try to think of positives for having so much rain. My grass, flowers, bushes, and trees are getting watered. What else is there?

When I was a child my brothers and I would go play out in the mud puddles after a good rain. I don't really remember it, but I've seen pictures of us slip sliding around in this grassy field that would accumulate water in certain areas. I wonder what it would be like to do that now? I would probably never dream getting wet and dirty like that. Sometimes I wish I could be a little more carefree...like I was when I was a child.

I have recently been meeting up with a bunch of scrappers monthly. It has been fun to make new friends and get more motivated to scrap. Since I have been at it a bit longer than the others I seem to have a more well defined style. I never realized it so much before, but it's kind of nice to be part of a group, just sharing and gabbing. All these women have children, so I've been listening intently on what their lives are like...play groups, crying in the middle of the night, c-sections, EVERYTHING. It has been nice to get out of the house and do my own thing without Brian.

Well, here we are at the end of May and it's still quite chilly outside. Granted there's no snow on the ground, but I'm still wearing sweaters and jackets. It wouldn't be so bad if our furnance was working. A cold house is not much fun. I bury myself under blankets in the evening to watch tv, I leave the oven door open a little longer than normal, I don't turn on the fan when taking a hot shower. It's all becoming routine. I guess Brian and I will have to snuggle a bit more until our new furnance is installed...or summer gets here!

I haven't written a "blog" in a while, so here goes.

Brian and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary this past weekend. It was awful. We had planned to go up to Mt. Washington Resort for the night. Sounded fun, but wasn't. It was raining all day on Saturday as we drove up. Not good. When we got to the hotel we immediately found out it was not the place to be. It was an old run-down hotel...not a fancy resort like their website claims. There was absolutely nothing to do there. The indoor pool and hot tub were being remodeled, so we were stuck in our crappy room where you could hear the rain falling from the roof into the puddle on the little roof in front of our window. We played cards and watched Star Wars on tv which had these disturbing commericals every 5 minutes. Dinner was good, as I always enjoy Brian's company. We thought about doing a hike on Sunday, but it was so wet and rainy that we skipped it and headed home. After the 2 hour drive back, we got into the house only to discover this really bad smell that we feared was gas. We immediately called the gas company who sent a guy out and determined that there was a crack in our broiler. It either needs to be fixed by a plumber or replaced entirely. Oh great. A nice big expense.

The highlight of the weekend was stopping at a scrapbook store in New Hampshire. There's nothing more motivating than getting new supplies. I have been working on our Grand Canyon pictures as they are in one of those awful magnetic albums. I don't have much documentation about the pictures, so I'm having to keep things simple. I am very fond of that trip across the country that we took, so it has been fun to look back.