Scenic Route

Yeppers, Mongolia has a Mongolian Camel Polo Association--website and everything--and I have the pictures to prove it! Mongolian Dell & Parkas.  The old & the new. Such Personality! Peek-a-Boo! It was cold & windy Eye-watering wind and just Really cold As always, the best stuff happens  Behind the scenes:   Notice the hair on their humps blowing in the wind.  Did I mention the wind?  And the cold? I'd like to say it was a fun-filled day--but we only lasted about 45 minutes.  That wind and cold thing...We ended the outing with a picnic lunch--eaten in the car while watching the action from a distance.  My respect for camels has only grown.

After 15+ years of quilting, I finally made The Man a quilt of his very own.  To date, he has loved to nap on weekends with one of my very first quilts that features country cows (yes, well, a different era :).  He called it his magic quilt.  It was soft and adequate, but just wasn't long enough.  And it had country cows on it. After six months of searching for the right fabrics and right pattern, I settled on a cotton t from the Lucy's Crab Shack collection by Sweetwater that has all the beaches in America printed on it as the inspiration fabric.  Isn't it great?!  A hand of applause to Southern Fabrics who rushed me one more yard right before I left the US (the week before Christmas mind you) and didn't charge me a rush charge! I bought some more fabrics from the  collection and filled in with other beach fabrics and some solids. The pattern was from the Fall of 2010 Stitch magazine--a kit is shown: Somehow I got the top completed in ...

Yep, this was our 3rd visit to the island Koh Samui in Thailand.  Every so often we aim for a Mouth-Breathing-On-the-Beach experience somewhere close to Mongolia.  Somehow we always seem to forget that Mongolia is close to nothing.  Well, OK, Beijing and Seoul.  No beaches there. So, off we go.  Two overnight layovers and 3 planes later, we get to the beach.  It's the return trip with a midnight flight in the mix that makes us question our choice. But.  If getting rid of Randy's cough, my red eyes and turning into chubby, tanned and totally relaxed blobs was the goal; we scored big time! Not ours!  The question begs answering... Valentines Day--our 1st date 34 years ago! Randy made reservations for a sea side table at an  amazing  restaurant, the Page (can we talk about lemongrass sorbet?! Yum!) .  Which was attached to an equally amazing resort, The Library.  Check out the...

We just returned from our 5th trip to Thailand for some r&r--in a warm climate.  It was our 3rd trip to the island of Samui but we scheduled in a full day in Bangkok on the way, so that was something new! Bangkok is Huge.  Diverse.  Noisy.  Smelly--both good and bad.  The word teeming totally applies. This post will be all about Bangkok. We hit the public transit first thing as traffic is just too grinding to get anywhere in a timely manner.  We began and ended the day on the sky train with a canal taxi in the middle (who knew Bangkok has 3 big canals running through it?).  --and LOTS of walking. Did I mention the walking ?  See if you can find the common denominator in the following pics: ...like, Randy's back???  His daughters have lots and lots of memories of Randy Myer Walking Tours.  Where we only see the back of his head.  For hours. But we did see some sights! ...