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The newest
Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwater
August 1, 2009

Sunday, August 16, 2009 7:29 AM
My last day of freedom. Tomorrow I start back to school. I wonder how many kids we'll have in our classroom this year. And, I'll be glad to get our classroom fish back to school, too.

I heard the newlyweds are back, so I think I'll try calling and see how their trip went, when my daughter-in-law starts back to school, and what blend of coffee my son had made up for the wedding reception.

I still have so many things I want to do before going back to work. I need more time off, another three or four ... years, to accomplish it all! But isn't that always the way it is? LOL

Today the main thing I want to accomplish is getting the cat bead exchange beads all sorted and ready to mail. I still have a few to photograph, then I need to post the pictures on LE where the exchange is taking place. I think I need to make a couple more cats, too. I also have beads to finish making for two other exchanges, too.

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Wednesday, August 12, 2009 8:54 AM
Sorry about no update yesterday. I had to be at school before 7 yesterday to help with registration. A friend and I were supposed to volunteer for four hours and ended up being there about six before going to lunch, because no one else had signed up to help at the front desk. The whole registration thing is all volunteer and most of the people I saw working it were those who were already working at school that day. Office personnel, Maintenance/Bus Drivers, Administration. People who actually had to come in even though they weren't working were pretty scarce. Oh well, I earned my brownie points for being a "team player".

Now, on a more fun note, here are my first attempts at fusing in my microwave. these are all about one inch square with smaller pieces laid on top. I was trying to find the different fuse times for "tack", "fuse", and "fully fuse". All I seemed to get was fully fused.

1st attempt 3 min.	2nd attempt 2-1/2 min.	3rd attempt 2-1/4 min.

With the first one you can see some pitting occurred.
The second looks much better than the few pieces of shard that I put on did interesting things, but the milli I put on totally flattened out.
The third got fused twice. The first time it was really ugly, so I tried adding a piece of dicro. I still didn't get anything but fully fused.

Need more practice, practice, practice.

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Monday, August 10, 2009 8:02 AM
My days of freedom are quickly dwindling, I can feel the clock ticking. I got a little fusing kiln that works in the microwave and today I'm going to try it out. I got a tiny "kiln" through Sunshine Discount Crafts and it cam with everything a beginner needs to try a little fusing without having to get a ton of stuff. It's supposed to take 3-5 minutes in the microwave and then about half an hour cool down time. I'll let you know tomorrow if anything turned out. Here's a YouTube video showing one being used. Pearsons Glass - Fusing Glass With The Microwave Kiln. I've read comments saying that it isn't that great, but the ladies in our local stained glass shop do a lot of fusing and they love it for making test pieces or small amounts of jewelry. We'll see.

I also need to go to the store and go grocery shopping. Guess I should do that before it gets up to 100 degrees today.

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Sunday, August 9, 2009 9:31 AM
I've spent a good amount of time this morning downloading more photos and I thought I'd share some of the "views" we had on our trip.

On the drive up to Oregon, we saw some amazing cloud formations.

In the town of Toledo, Oregon, there is a metal sculptor who has benches and sculptures all over town. I love this horse sculpture.

Here's a view of the lighthouse, where the kids got married, from the beach below it. The beach is really interesting, it's ALL black rock cobbles and the beach is sort of steep. So as the waves come in and go out, there is this awesome rumbling, clattering noise as the cobbles roll against each other

This cute little guy kept following me on the beach, but wouldn't come close enough for a petting.

Jeff found a piece of seaweed that looked like a miniature palm tree.

On the first leg of our drive home, we stopped for lunch at a beach area park and campground and this little guy joined us for lunch.

He really liked the larger piece of bread.

A beautiful sunset on the first leg of the drive home.

In The Avenue of the Giants, we stopped to stretch our legs and take a few pictures. This is one of the "smaller" of the large trees.

We found a "dog tree", just take a closer look.

This is what I awoke to the first morning we were back. Grumpy on my pillow, Merlin sandwiched in between the two of us, and Elliott squeezed in between Jeff's legs.

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Saturday, August 8, 2009 8:10 AM
Two weeks today, since I updated. Too long.

A week ago today we, Jeff and I, acquired a daughter-in-law. Yippee!!!! She a wonderful person and so good for our #2 son and her parents are great people. We're very happy about the whole thing.

This is the location of the wedding, the Yaquina Head Lighthouse in Newport, Oregon, just one-half mile from where the newlyweds live. If you click on it, it will take you to some pictures of the wedding and a brief description of the event.

We left on Wednesday and took two days to drive the distance (750 miles) instead of going straight up which would have been at least 12 hours. It was hot driving through the Sacramento valley, around 104 degrees, but it was alright because we knew it would cool off as we got into Oregon ... WRONG! Oregon and Washington were having a royal heat wave and, as we drove up Interstate 5, we found it was hotter in Oregon than it was at home! Hovering around 109 degrees. Yikes! So it was really nice when we finally turned west and headed toward the overcast coast. The temperature there, daily, was around 70 degrees. Normally it's around 60 degrees, but to us, the 70's felt wonderfully cool.

We arrived Thursday afternoon and that same evening I was off to a bridal shower/dinner. But I didn't leave the guys in the lurch, I made sure they had taco fixings all ready for them before I left. I'm so good. LOL

Friday morning it was noticed that we had a flat tire. Completely flat. It turned out we had a cracked rim. we were able to find a place in town that could order rims for us and they would be in on Monday. That meant absolutely NO long distance trips until we got it fixed because we were using the spare tire.

On Friday, I helped with some of the food preparation and spent the whole morning cutting up melons. At one o'clock in the afternoon, the bride, the bride's maids, and the mothers all went together and got manicures and pedicures. That was a LOT of fun. Our cottage was within walking distance of the beach and when I got back from the pampering, I walked with Jeff on the beach. 5:30 was the wedding rehearsal and 6:30 was the wedding rehearsal dinner. The kids chose to go to pizza. It was funny and a lot of fun with 20 of us squeezed into a small pizza place! Much more relaxed that it would have been going to a fancy restaurant.

Saturday morning, 8:30, was the wedding. We were there at 8 and the photographer was already there taking pictures. She was attempting to get some good shots of the Groom and his brothers and they kept being goofy. Finally she said, "Okay guys, now here's one for Mom." Oh no! I KNEW that was the wrong thing for her to say! Sure enough ...

The wedding was, of course, wonderful. Followed then, by probably an hour of photos. The lighthouse was such a fabulous place for the wedding photos, so picturesque!

A friend of the new Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwater took care of all the catering and did a marvelous job. There was, however, enough food to feed over a hundred people and the wedding had a total of about 45 people in attendance. We STILL have food in the fridge that we ended up bring home with us. And that is after storing as much as we could in the kids' freezer for when they get home from their honeymoon.

Sunday we visited with a family friend, Loie, went to lunch with her and explored a little nearby town called Toledo. It's an old logging mill town. They happened to be holding their annual street antique street fair and antique car show, so there were lots of goodies to see.

We spent Monday exploring beaches and glassblowing places South of Newport and Tuesday we went North to the Air Museum in Tillamook. We even stopped by the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Which was interesting, but way too touristy with a huge gift shop full of junk.

Wednesday was "Pack up, clean up and get on the road" day. It was sort of hard to leave, but we were looking forward to getting home.

Coming home we took two days, but sort of wish we'd taken a third because we came home down the coast and there is just so much to see. We stopped at a couple of beaches along the way and drove through on part of the original 101 highway, through the redwood forest, the Avenue of the Giants. Tucked away there, we found a glassblowing shop called Spirit Art Glass, and met Michael. It turned out his last name is the same as my grandparents'. I'm sure if we look hard enough, we could find a family link. :-)
I think we ended up visiting Michael and his gallery for almost three wonderful hours.

Then it was really time to get back on the road and get home. Jeff and I got home about 11pm. Boy were we tired! The cats were so glad to see us and when I woke up yesterday morning, all three were snuggled in the bed with us. Grumpy was up on my pillow sleeping with with his head on my cheek. Awwww.

We spent yesterday putting away food and doing laundry. We were really hoping that the cottage we were going to stay in had a washer and dryer, but no such luck. But we had planned for that and had taken enough clothes, towels, etc. but that meant that there was a LOT to wash yesterday. Oh, it sure was nice being able to hang stuff out on the line to dry. In Newport, nothing quite dried out if it was left hanging to dry.

The garden did well while we were gone. Jeff put in a drip system and it kept everything alive. Out neighbor was supposed to pick any squash that was ready, but we think he forgot because we had about four crookneck squash that were the size of ducks!

Today is sort through the mail that was delivered last night and try and get back in the swing of being home.

I only have one week of freedom before I have to go back to work. Bleck.

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And now, back to the torch!

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