Swami, Back From The Dead. With a few pics!

I had a very busy, hectic and totally enjoyable visit from my oldest daughter for the past two and half weeks. It was wonderful and now I am all tuckered out, lol. We saw parades, fireworks, museums, sculpture gardens, two plays, painted two ceilings (I'm scared of ladders these days so daughter did the deed), tiled a backsplash, ate out a bunch of times, saw movies, etc. etc. etc. That's about six months worth of excitement for me!

This is The World's Cutest Grandson, all tuckered out after the 4th of July parade, and waiting for his mom to come and pick us up from the very, very distant place she had to go to park. For the actual parade we had front row seats as the invited guests of a home designer whose shop is right on the parade route.


Here is my lovely DD and grandson in a little park near Lake Minnetonka - one of the Twin City area's premier recreation lakes.


And here they are with one of my favorite exhibits at the Franconia Sculpture Garden, near Taylor's Falls. I love these ginormous statues! When they first went up about 5 years ago the mylar robes they are wearing were just brilliantly reflective! Dazzlingly reflective! Sadly, the shiny stuff has started to peel off the robes - but I still love the statues. So did DD and grandson.


This was grandson's favorite sculpture, he being a huge fan of pirates these days.


Here is grandson with some of the cast from Charlotte's Web - the first play we saw. The play was nicely done, if not spectacular, and he enjoyed it a lot.

We also saw When You Give A Mouse A Cookie at the Children's Theater in Minneapolis which was just a fantastic production! Non-stop, totally manic, physical comedy. I haven't laughed so hard in ages. Grandson was totally in love and wanted me to buy the DVD right away so he could watch it every day! He was so disappointed to learn that theatrical plays rarely are filmed for DVD.


He liked playing in my backyard too. This is a baby snapping turtle from the creek behind my house.

While they were here, my other DD and her BF gave him a Nintendo Game system of some kind (I'm not good with my game system names; a Game Cube? It has 3" discs you put into a cube to play the games.) It was his first gaming system and he had a great time learning to play Mario through a bunch of worlds. And Zelda. Ane some kind of frantic hedgehog creature. The BF is a master of all things video game related so he chose a nice selection of games that were fun without being graphically violent. One game came with bongo drums instead of a hand control! That was a very fun game since grandson loves to drum. Grandson was over the moon with video game excitement!


My DD was here for a combination pleasure and business trip. This is DD at her Trunk Show in White Bear Lake. (She is not responsible for the polkadot background, lol. It came with the room assigned to her by The Bead Gallery.) On her left are a bunch of magazines which feature her designs, and an upright display of photos from her life and the findings factory. In front of her are some of her findings. To her right are more findings as well as a few finished pieces showing how the findings work in a finshed piece. The stuff in the case behind her belongs to the Bead Gallery and is not related to her. The dragonfly necklace she is wearing is featured in a large color photograph in one of the magazines. (If you click the pic it gets bigger and you can see the actual necklace.)

Jewelry findings, in case you don't know, are the connectors and clasps and things that you use when building a finished piece of jewelry, as well as fancy pendants and stuff that can be used as a centerpiece of a finished project. So for the dragonfly necklace she designed and is wearing above, her company made the dragonfly, which is also the clasp, and a couple of connectors. She manufactures findings in sterling silver and gold vermeil - which is gold (usually 18 carat) plated over silver. This is her website

Generally she sells only to stores and professional jewelry makers, but at a trunk show she sells individual items to any customer of the store, as a promotion of her products. The website is still under contruction. She really wants to put in a shopping cart feature, but that hasn't happened yet.

Overall?
I had a wonderful 2 weeks!