Tonight, my dear friend Sheree is having a fundraiser for Team in Training. We're training together for the half marathon. Sheree occasionally works at a yummy pizza place in Danville, CA. Tonight she is donating her tips (and the bartender is also) to the Leukemia/Lymphoma society. I will be out on the patio face-painting for donations for my own fundraising. Here's the fun... Sheree asked me to make her a t-shirt to wear tonight (it's all about the marketing, right?) and we each made a box to collect the money. I mean... how much fun is this? For my box, I didn't mean to make my title look like trees in a forest, but I had to "run" with it. So, I put a cartoon drawing with my school picture sticker on it, and now it looks like I'm running through the trees on a Saturday morning. Who knows how much money I'll make painting faces with this fancy of a box! Sheree's box is real cute and has a ribbon closure for easy money counting at the end of the night. Sheree's t-shirt has fuzzy lime green iron-on letters, and a pizza made entirely of felt. I sewed ribbons on the rolled up sleeves and tied them in the back. Really, I feel more alive since I've been working with crafts the last few days. I asked RC if I should change professions (not that I don't get to work with crafts in my current profession), and he said, "Yeah, you should be a mom!" Fair enough. I'll let you know how our fundraising goes.
Our dearest Anne Marie is 23 years old today. Happy, Happy Birthday! She's thriving in the California Central Valley, working her little tail off. She lives about 3 hours away from us, so visiting her is a cinch (which will be nice when she becomes Auntie Anne). The first photo is of Anne Marie with RC and his stylish sunglasses on their family trip to Italy 2 summers ago. They look like they're playing nice. The second is from this year when she came to stay with us and we had a Mardi Gras party! 
On our journey to fix up this house, one of the projects mandated by the insurance company was to fix the outdoor steps outside of our bedroom sliding doors. I wish I had a picture to show you how the steps looked. They definitely looked like a compilation of whatever could be found in the garage that afternoon. A large piece of concrete, some wood pieces, some smaller pieces of concrete blocks... We decided a small deck might add some interest to the back of the house, especially since the stamped concrete just ended when it got to that point. So, I'm just showing you what Richard Carey worked so hard on. The bottom picture shows the process along the way... all the measuring and levelling. Lots of patience! There are still some finishing elements left to do, but it's great for now!
