Nothing like getting home from a nice vacation only to get back to work painting!! We now have the hallways done. What a job.. especially in the stairwell. I think this is the last time we will be painting there!! We'll move first! Now to get the house back to normal. We have things everywhere... 2 closets cleaned out to be painted & pictures waiting to be put back up. We still have the new baseboards to paint & put up but they shouldn't take too long to do. We have company coming on Tues. & Tom is leaving for a business meeting in Calgary Mon. - Wed. Needless to say I've insisted that things are done BEFORE he goes! And I can get pretty pushy when it comes to some things. Of course, I have another reason for wanting to get things done & cleaned up... I want to work on the 500 pictures I took while on our cruise!!

We got back from our Alaskan cruise about 11:30 last night. Christine & Brianna picked us up at the airport. A very late night for Brianna & she looked wiped, but I know she really wanted to be there. We had a wonderful time. The weather was unusually warm & sunny the entire week! Everywhere we went we heard "you picked a great day to come, it's not usually this warm nor sunny!" Last week's cruise had rain the entire week & it wasn't as warm. We had almost totally clear skies & weather in the mid to high 20's (celcius). The only cool weather where we needed sweaters or light jackets was at the Hubbard Glacier. What an awesome sight the glacier was... & we were fortunate enough to see a few "calvings"... where pieces of the glacier broke off. I got a few good shots of that too. Hard to imagine the size of the glacier. Looking at the cruise ship that was ahead of us it looked to be about 1/3 the height of the glacier.. & the ship was approximately a mile from it! For safety's sake, that's as close as the cruise ships are allowed to go to the glacier. Believe me, it doesn't look that far away. Anyway.. enough for now..back to working on my pictures so I can get some posted! lol

It's now 10:25 a.m. Only 21 hours until our plane takes off!! I'm not excited...noooo of course not. I can't wait to go!!! I'll have lots of pictures when I come back, but I promise not to post ALL of them... lol

Bye for now..

We've been busy painting again. The living room & dining room are now finished. All except putting everything away again, but it's going to have to wait until after our trip. The only picture that was put back up was my eagle, and the only reason it was put up is because it was easier to hang when the couch wasn't in the way lol!

Dining room before (from living room) Dining room after









Dining room after (looking in from the kitchen)









living room before











Living room after

Tonight we had our small group get-together, welcoming Pam & Hazen back for a visit. They moved out to BC last year & we were delighted when they called to say they would be in town again. Our pot luck dinner was delicious (thanks guys!!) & we did a lot of talking & catching up. Unfortunately I think I had the setting on my camera wrong, so some of the pictures didn't come out very well.




Me & Hazen (turn around Hazen)









Neil & Pam








Roy & Jane








Kathryn & Ron







Pam, Nancy & Tom








This is the only other picture I got of Hazen.

I finally have pictures of the newly remodeled &/or painted mud room, kitchen, small bathroom & top of the basement stairs.




Kitchen









Bathroom





















Mud room
















Top of basement & yes those are my pictures that you see throughout the house.