Hi Stranger!

Hey there!  It's been too long.  The blogging tips I have read say that you should not point out to your readers that you haven't been blogging lately, because maybe they didn't notice.  But you noticed, right?  I hope you did.

The Spupspes took a trip to California for the main purpose of seeing family and I managed to take some pictures (see below), but I realized too late that I was not taking enough, and I was taking too many pics of animals and scenes and not enough of family.  I always forget to tell people to get together for a photo, and now I'm kicking myself.  It's one of the pitfalls of living life in the moment.

We enjoyed visiting my niece and nephew and meeting their new baby.  No pics of them here of course, but here's an artsy shot of Blueberry in their amazing back yard.

Did some olive oil tasting at a Corning, CA company, Lucero Olive Oil.  Corning is the olive capital of California, and it's a tiny town just a few miles from my hometown.  We are very proud. 

We visited my great aunt Mabel*.  She's 91.  I thought she was older than that but she says she's 91 and who am I to argue?  She is doing well, and it was a really nice visit.

 

We toured the bay area with my sister Lotus* and her boyfriend Pete*. 

We drove through Sausalito, which is such a sweet town in a neat location at the tip of the upper peninsula of the bay (I'm not sure I'm describing it's geography correctly - doing it from memory).  It was fun just driving through it and I hope to spend some more time there someday.  If/when we do, we'll bring our pets and get them some acupuncture:

Also took a quick trip through the Napa Valley up to Calistoga and visited Lotus' half sister (my quarter step sister) and her husband.  No pics of them, of course.  But here's one of Old Faithful Geyser.  It was going off every 5 minutes, rather than the typical 40 minutes, and some people think this means that a big earthquake will not be happening anytime soon.

This was a new one for me: Four-horned sheep.  They live near the geyser.  I thought I was hallucinating when I first saw them.  More info on the sheep here.

 

What else is happening...I'm spending pretty much all of my spare time making cloth books; orders are coming as fast as I can make them.  It's been a lot of fun and the customers have terrific ideas for books.  I would link to them here but I want to keep the blogs separate so as not to spill Hazel's identity.  Speaking of the other blog, I haven't posted anything since March, because I felt like I should focus on filling orders (I hate to keep people waiting), but I want to get back to it at some point soon, even if I only post once a week or so. 

Hope you all are enjoying summer!  Keep in touch!

*Names changed.