Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!

I apologize for the delay in sharing pictures from our recent cruise. Finally got around to uploading all the pictures and sent them off to print. Here's more...

Day Two: Roatan, Hondorus
Excursion: The Best Of Roatan
Port Picture:


The Bay Island of Roatan in the Carribean Sea is surrounded by various cays and smaller islands. It is a true paradise off the northern coast of Honduras, Central America.
Blue skies, wonderful turquois waters, and a warm sun will welcome you to Roatan, an island with various beaches, distinctive for their quietness, and crystal clear waters that will make you enjoy the sea as if you were in an enormous natural swimming pool.

Several ship wrecks remain just off shore. Here are a few interesting pictures we took while on our excursion:


The coral reef that surrounds the island is considered to be the second biggest in the world, and is a source of permanent attraction and entertainment for those who enjoy scuba-diving. The necessary training to join in an adventure in a marvelous underwater world, with all the appropriate safety and help. Those that do not want to participate in very deep diving can go snorkeling, which offers a view of marine life one will never forget. In this picture the light blue strip in the water is just part of the LARGE reef!!

Roatan Island is 33 miles long and 4 miles wide. A paved road crosses the island on 75% of its length. Just by riding in a car along the road can become a very relaxing experience, since the beautiful landscapes you an enjoy are truly impressive.

Punta Gorda
This is the community where the Garifuna ethnic group first settled. Their arrival to the island in 1797 is celebrated every year on November 12th, with an eye-catching festival. Tourists can appreciate the cultural inheritance of the Garifuna people in this place, in one of its most natural expressions. experience of contact with the Garifuna culture, attending shows offered by Yubu, where tourists can transport themselves to ancient times through native dances and the sounds of the Garifuna drums.

Matt and Ed, exhausted and hungry on their way back to the ship:

We are home from our NCL, Western Caribbean Miller Family Cruise vacation! We had a fabulous time! The ports of call: Roatan, Honduras; Belize & Costa Maya, Mexico! Our final destination was canceled because the ocean surges were too rough for tendering to the Bahamas (The Great Stirrup Cays)- so we were not able to do any snorkeling on this cruise. However, we enjoyed 3 other excursions which we will post more about later.

Meanwhile, for your viewing pleasure, here is a picture of Matt and me standing on the top edge of the Chacchoben Mayan Ruins - notice how we are gripping the ledge :)

Matt, as a kid, used to enjoy latchhooking. He hadn't done a latchhooking project in years and Julia's friend Connie brought him a kit that had been sitting in her closet for years, with one row partially finished. He finished the kit and the results are below. He's thinking of buying a bigger, more complicated kit to work on after the New Year.

Last night a fellow Twilight "Mom" and I participated in the Hot Topic New Moon Autograph event. We each paid $30 which bought us a New Moon special event t.shirt (Tricia is sporting hers in this picture-I'm saving mine for opening night), & 2 posters (one signed by the two vampires). Their signatures ended up being scribbles and totally illegible...hopefully one day I'll remember who the signatures were from!
Here we are standing in line for our turn to meet the New Moon actors.

We stood in line for approximately 2 hours. And, we were not the oldest in line, but almost! :)Here is just a portion of the line which wrapped around outside the mall entrance door.

Following the autograph event was a free evening Q&A in the outdoor amphitheater (and, it was chilly!) Q&A picture

The two actors were:
Edi Mue Gathegi: who plays vampire Laurent in Twilight and dies in New Moon
Jamie Campbell-Bower: Vampire Caius who is a new vampire not in Twilight but will appear for the first time in New Moon

This past weekend Matt and I went to see the movie "Where the Wild Things Are". I slightly remember the book when I was a little girl. So, I dragged Matt to it Friday evening. We both enjoyed the movie, not that it was worth paying full price, but we were inspired by the movie to create our very own living room fort!

OMG, As a child I remember creating forts out of bed sheets & dinning room chairs! LOL...good memories!

We didn't do a great job with it, but we had fun attempting to make a "roof" over our blow up mattress, LOL...yes, we went high tech and took the opportunity to inflate our camping mattress in the den. Check Matt out peeking through the door portal

At first glance, Penny and Sierra didn't want anything to do with the fort. Eventually they ended up on the mattress with us.

However, Nacho was ALL about getting comfortable under the fort "ceiling fan roof" (instead of moon roof- get it? LOL we left a gap to get air under the covers)

As the night progressed our "roof" started falling inward, so with a little help from Matt's foot we could keep the roof intact (at least until his leg got tired :) LOL

We highly recommend in your spare time, to create your very own sheet fort! If for nothing else but to enjoy the silliness and brighten your day with smiles and Laughs

This past weekend, at Tribble Mill Park, we brought two cameras with us our SLR film camera (& the digi- we already shared those pics with you on our last blog post). Today, we picked up our developed B&W pictures from Wolf. Here are some of our favorites...

Matt took this one of me on the swing set- he's pretty good behind the camera lense!


I really like this one of Bingo Patudo, he has soulful eyes:

Finally, the best (and, that's not saying much) from a series of timed pictures we attempted:

What a beautiful Saturday here in GA! Matt and I had to get ourselves out of the house & away from any crowds. So, we packed a picnic lunch, loaded Matt's hand held GPS with coordinates & headed outdoors to get fresh air in our lungs and miles on our tennis shoes.

There was a chill in the morning but as the progressed the sun warmed us up to the low 70's. Matt and Bingo at the start of the trail that lead us 3+ miles around the lake.

We were searching for three caches called "The good, The bad & The ugly".
Check out the moon in this picture!

Like I said - - It is a BEAUTIFUL day today!!

Here's Matt headed down for the first cache of the day:

Walking along the serene trails, we spotted a deer along the fence line...and a squirrel lacking any fear:

Happy Chihuahua's
Penny...
Bingo...

And, Matt graciously took a break from caching so we could take a group photo with our cameras timer:
One final pic of me with the dawgs...on our way back to the car:

The Goblins have rested & we remembered to move our clocks back too! Halloween was a fun time! We had a few friends over to help pass out candy to the neighborhood children. It was a cold and drizzly evening, so we set up shop in the garage. Unfortunately the lighting was poor so we did not get a great group picture. But, this is the closest we could get:

Our party costumes were Spider & Web (Connie & Gerald), The Cakestress/Bakestress(Crystal), Scary Witch (Tracey), Queen of Da'nile (Julia), Cross dressing Tu-tu wearing Chihuahua (Nacho) & Gauze Zombie (Matt)
My Posse' The Girls

Matt really got into his costume character


At the end of our evening, the Baketress made frosting shots for us - for one last sugar rush! Cheers!

Matt, showing off, attempted to eat his sugar shot in one gulp...
He was unscessful, but enjoyed trying

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween!!

A few weekends ago, at "Gold Rush Days" we picked up an adorable Halloween Tutu for Penny to wear on Halloween. Penny obviously did NOT appreciate the costume...but, she sat long enough for me to take one picture.

On the other hand (or paw), Nacho got very jealous that Penny got to wear the Tutu and he danced around barking until we let him try it on. Sometimes Tutu's aren't just for girls. Nacho LOVES to be the center of attention!

He LOVED it so much he didn't want us to remove the costume and just wanted to play fetch while wearing his tutu

It is just soooo obvious Nacho is a girlie boy:

At least the Tutu fits them both, so we can let both Penny (by force) and Nacho (our little cross dresser) take turns Halloween evening.

We are getting our "Spooky on" here with our decorations! Check out this rose vase. The spiders are taking over! Don't be Scared!!! :)


The skeleton is not real, I promise.

This weekend I co-hosted a retirement/birthday tea for a very dear friend of mine. Tea was held up in Maysville at the Burns-Telford Tea House. A tea house with plenty of character and delicious food. The group of attendees are all tea aficionados and enjoy a proper cuppa!

My plate of yummies...

Isn't this beautiful? Makes my mouth water

It's not even Halloween, but...the tree matched my hat & I couldn't resist the photo opp.

After the tea, full of cafiene, we got silly and snap happy! :) But, the photo shoot produced this cute picture.

While I was enjoying a relaxing day with friends, Matt ran "The Fast Pace 5K" in Cumming,GA! His time was 29 minutes, 7 seconds and he came in 71st place out of 140 runners! Yea Matt!! I am VERY proud of him!!!