Momof3gurlz

A day that ends in ‘Y’ is always a good reason 🙂.

Wishing you a very Happy Birthday Bonnie!

I second this and hope you all have a great cruise! Even if no one does a “Live”, I hope you’ll continue to update and share pictures here. I can’t speak for everyone, but I sure wish we were cruising with “y’all” on this one!

I’m with you Maryann. I still love to cook to entertain & for the holidays, but for just the two of us I’m a lazy cook. Simple, no fuss recipes. If I could find a small one like John mentioned that fits in a drawer, and could use a zip-lock bag, I might give it a try since I already have an oversized pot. I just have no interest in more kitchen equipment or gadgets.

I’m glad you have great accommodations in Madrid. Enjoy your time there and I look forward to a full trip summary once you return home.

Happy Anniversary Marietta & Charlie! This sounds like a great way to spend a rainy Saturday. How do you make the Kracken Alexander?

I’ve mentioned previously we are one of those families who goes to Disney regularly. We have timeshare on Disney property that allows us to bring our whole family to stay in a large family sized unit every other year, plus a stay or two for just the two of us each year. The girls also do Disney trips every year with their own families. We all have annual passes and they are expensive but worth it if you go more than once a year, which obviously we do.

Once I had the photos selected and uploaded to Shutterfly, actually creating the book was easy and enjoyable. Their site makes it very easy to resize and align pictures and has editing options for the photos. You can also choose from thousands of page background colors, enhancements such as banners, etc. and add text wherever you want. There’s an option for free-form creating or preset page layouts when you build the book. Give it a try! Also enjoyed your pictures of Universal. I agree the ride experiences can be frustrating there and at the Disney parks. Our trips there are always more about family time than parks & rides.

Good morning all. It’s been a busy week here and I’ve tried to read along at night but just haven’t found the time to comment at all. I have been down a rabbit hole with my photo book project. So many of the old photographs didn’t have date info printed on the back and we didn’t do a good job of documenting them. It took forever to figure some out and I had to do it by comparison to other photos, as in determining who’s hair was short/long/had bangs in what years. Once that was figured out, I was challenged with getting them all uploaded to Shutterfly, and remember I’m not the most tech savvy. The old photos, I simply took screenshots so they were on my phone along with a lot of more recent pics. We also have an external device for all our family photos since the beginning of digital pictures so those were on the laptop. I ended up downloading the Shutterfly app which really helped me streamline the process. So the book is done, today I just need to add background colors to each page and a small amount of text in a few areas. Hopefully I can start keeping up again!

I hope your cleanup is done or nearly done. It must’ve been even more difficult with Mike being away often.

Thank you again. I’d really like to improve my very limited photography (iPhone) skills before our Italy/Med cruise trip in September. A few months ago I enrolled in an online course that was suggested by a regular poster over in the Celebrity boards who takes beautiful pictures. I do think the course helped me with framing pictures and using different settings but my photos just don’t appear as vivid and sharp as I’d like. The good thing is I can sign in at any time to review any course modules and I’m looking forward to playing around with LightRoom.

Thanks Bob! Which one of these apps do you use? Or is there another one?

Bob, I loved your zoo photos. Is there an IPhone secret to getting such vivid colors?

Andy has been in Las Vegas since Saturday, he gets in late tonight. I spent the weekend walking down nostalgia lane. Our oldest turns 40 in May and there’s not a thing in the world she needs, but we’re going to make her a photo album (through Shutterfly) of her 40 years. So I’ve gone through boxes and boxes of old pictures gathering the first round of all her baby, school, sports and prom pictures. Now we have to narrow down the best ones to use. Lots of memories in those boxes!

Today started out nice but it’s turned cold and windy. I agree Maryann, there is always something to do inside - laundry, dusting, vacuuming, or maybe reading or catching up on CC, lol.

Have a great time! Is this a land trip, cruise or both?

Do you like ‘Stuffies’? I make a damn good one, if I say so myself. I add ground chorizo, a finely chopped red bell pepper and the stuffing is crushed Ritz cracker crumbs. The key is to very lightly spoon them into the quahog shell, don’t pack it in which makes them too dense.

Not until late September. We have our family Disney trip the third week of August and are taking the two oldest grandsons on a 3 night cruise out of PC on Independence the weekend prior. It’s their first cruise (Mom & Dad have zero interest), I’m not sure who’s more excited - them or us! As far as pool cleaners, at our previous house we had a Polaris which was fine but it had a little mesh bag that collected debris but if you left the bag out, squirrels would eat through it. This pool we have a Hayward. I know nothing about them, but my ‘pool boy’ says he loves it; does a great job cleaning and doesn’t get stuck in corners, stairs, etc.

We are good to go now! I hadn’t completed setting up the app but finally see your messages. Thanks to @FromSea2ShiningSea Helen for being our middle woman! We love MV and also Block Island. I took this picture of Block Island on our return flight from San Juan last November.

@dani negreanu I’m glad to hear your DH is feeling better and hope you can now reschedule your trip. By the way, I sent you a message on What’sApp ( Helen shared your number.) I’m not sure I sent it correctly. If Helen gave you my number, would you please message me when you can? @aussielozzie18 sorry you’ve come down with C19, hope you have a mild case. It looks like we’ll be going to Disney again the 1st weekend in January. All three girls successfully entered to run the marathon on January 7th. They’ve done half marathons before but this is the first full one so we want to be there to cheer them on. As OB posted (along with his foot pics), the weather has been freakishly hot these past two days. This was today on my way home from the grocery store around 1:30 pm.

@Ozark_Kid I too am sorry about your diagnosis. As others have said, take it all one day at a time. Your positive attitude will most definitely be a help to both yourself and your family. I’ll also say you’re fortunate to have two daughters who are OT’s as it’s important to have people who can advocate for you through Dr visits, treatments, etc. You and your beautiful family are in my thoughts.

Sunny, cool Easter Sunday here with temps in the low 50’s. We’re supposed to hit low 80’s later this week. We have the local kids & granddaughters coming today for dinner, and an egg hunt for the little ones. Ham will be on the table today at our house, along with mashed potatoes, carrot casserole and asparagus. I’ve mentioned before that Andy doesn’t cook (other than grilling) but he does make a fantastic carrot cake and that’ll be our dessert. Happy Easter to all here who celebrate, I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Perfect timing, thanks for posting. Andy’s headed to Vegas next weekend with a friend so he’s going to look into this.

@dani negreanu adding my prayers for you and your family 🙏.

This is just my speed for gambling.