Catching up

Oh my -- it feels like I've been out of the blog loop forever!  First there was our mini-vacation to Galena, Illinois.  Three days of relaxation, shopping, and doing as little as possible.  Here's a couple of pics from our time.  First, a vineyard where we did some wine tasting.  It overlooked a lovely valley:

This is one of the B&B's we stayed at.  We had a private hot tub -- in the cupula on the top of the house.  Really fun!

This was one wall of the dining room of another of the B&B's.  Most of the clocks kept the correct time!

Following our trip, we hosted several family members who took Amtrak all the way from Sacramento, CA to Chicago.  The kids had never been to Chicago before, and they really had a great time.  They visited Millenium Park and the "Bean":

And the Museum of Science and Industry has a lot of great interactive exhibits.  This is a screen with computer-generated butterflies that will land on you if you hold still:

And then I was at a class playing with watercolors for the past two days.  Here's an unfinished piece that I think I'm going to like.  I didn't get a picture of it with the leaves off, but we peeled them off, and the next step is to manipulate the paint so you get a nice composition.  Mine has really nice colors, but doesn't look like anything yet.  I'll post pics when I get it finished (we have another class in two weeks where we do "show and tell") and I'll tell more about the process.