No day like today....

Mackenzie the Swimmer, Alyssa the Dancer!

Last weekend we had the opportunity to attend my niece Mackenzie's annual synchronized swimming water show, the weather was perfect and we had great seats!   Mackenzie has been a competing member of the Arizona Aqua Stars swim team since she was in elementary school, she toils in the pool with her teammates many hours a week during competiton season and has won many awards for her efforts, the annual watershow is our yearly opportunity to see her strut her stuff! I wish I was better at capturing the quick acrobatics and amazing synchronized movements her team executes in the pool check out some of the photo albums my cousin Dana( her mom) usually has posted in her blog sidebar albums to see what these gals can do!  I was able to get a couple cute pictures of Mackenzie on the day of the performance with Alyssa and her college Roomate Riley and Mackenzie's other little cousin Katie, and a good picture of Michael with Mackenzie too. The costumes these swimmers wear are amazing as well sparkly and shimmering truly amazing... a tribute to all the moms to pitch in to do all the beadwork( I am talking bout you Dana!)   

One of the things Alyssa had asked me to do for her over spring break was take some action photos of her dancing to attach to her 2009/2010 NAU dance team audition packet. I was happy to do it, but a bit nervous since photos capturing lots of movement have never been my specialty! I did have a location in mind though. The last few times I had been to down town Mesa I had taken note of very cool surfaces on the exterior walls of some of the historic downtown buildings, and cool paint colors as well!  We settled on a wall with a brick and plaster finish that looked cool behind the pictures and I got a few picture that weren't blurry yeah! I wish I hadn't clipped off her fingers in this leap photo, but it was the best leaping one we took so we went with it!  Here are a couple more of my favorites of my favorite dancer we took that day.

She's home.... and a backyard barbeque, and recipe!

Friday night, Alyssa came home from college at NAU for spring break week, Yeah! Other than Christmas this will be the first time we have had her home for this long since the beginning of the school year. we have plans to get manicures and pedicures and Alyssa was lucky enough to pick up a couple of shifts at Target over break as well. Other than that I think her primary plan is  to hang out with friends and work on her tan! Yesterday we had some fabulous Arizona weather, 80 degrees and sunny, perfect weather for  barbequing and being outside. We also had the pleasure of attending my niece Mackenzie's snychronized swimming water show,She swims or the Arizona Aqua Stars, I will post more on that tomorrow! In honor of ALyssa's return we had a nice little barbeque for dinner here was our menu: Marinated and barbequed steaks, corn on the cob, and Fire and Ice pickeled cucumbers and tomatoes. We also had some shrimp cocktail as an appetizer it was simply delish! I took a rare family photo minus myself of  course during our appetizer course on the patio, I am really going to attempt to snap lots of photos over the break, it is driving me crazy that I have absolutely no photos lately!  I will close with my recipe, actually my mom's recipe for Fire and Ice pickled  cucumbers and tomatoes. If you are looking for a good side dish this summer with a kick to it I would highly recommend it!

Fire and Ice Tomatoes and Cucumbers
6 medium tomatoes quartered
1 medium white onion slices thin
1 large  or 2 medium cucumbers sliced thin
3/4 cup cider vinegr
1/4 cup water
1 tblsp plus 2 tsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp celery salt
1 1/2 tsp  mustard seed
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
Combine vegetables in a bowl.
Combine remaining ingredients in a saucepan, bring to a boil and boil one minute. Pour over vegetables and mix, Cover and refrigerate 5-8 hours before serving.

I am back! and some super cool tape!

I guess it has been too long since my last blog post when things like this start happening!

• Family Members from out of state start calling to be sure I am ok since I never post to by blog any more
• When I have to consult my passworld file to log into Typepad!
• My husband even starts to comment on my lack of blogging

So what is the problem? why am I not blogging? Like any routine, once you break it becomes hard to get back into the habit of recording my thoughts and activities on a regular basis. I must also admit that while I am not blogging I am spending time on Facebook and Twitter largely because I can do it in extremely small bursts with albsolutely no preparation.... it is kinda like  "trial-sized" blogging 140 or 160 character entries and I am done, and I go on my merry way! While this type of social networking and connecting is fun, I have to admit i miss the more journal-like entries I have created for my blog over the past few years  and I am going to do my best to take some baby steps to get on the blog-bandwagon again! Wish me luck.

Thought I would close with a photo of this totally cute tape I ordered last week that came in the mail today! This purchase was the result of a twitter post from Stacy Julian about a cool tape company she had happened upon Tapeswell!  I would highly suggest checking them out. The two rolls of printed coordinating packing tape I got came packaged in the darling can next to it. I also ordered the roll of 15o fun mailing labels that coordinate with the tape! There is just something fun about sending envelopes and packages that look cute!  Hope I enabled a few of you, but this stuff is just too cute to pass up!