Weekend fun, an Award and Bugs

Okay my Texas Christmas loving blogging buddies, Donna and Kari! I know you two love Christmas so you both would have loved the Christmas in July party we went to this weekend. My son works at a restaurant/bar in downtown Cincy and they were having a Christmas in July party on Friday night. The place was decorated for Christmas, I'm not sure why my photo of the Christmas tree is crooked, I can't figure out if it was the tree or me. LOL But Santa was there, that top left photo is Santa with my sister Gail. Santa was passing out presents and his helpers were passing out Christmas cookies. I'm pretty sure Santa was not drinking milk, unless milk comes in a bottle that looks like beer. :-) They gave away an IPhone, a snowboard and a Saks gift certificate. I didn't win any of them and I really wanted the IPhone but I think since my son works there I probably wasn't eligible anyway. The bottom right photo is of me and my niece Stephanie at the party. Isn't she so pretty? They also played Christmas music the whole night. Christmas in July is a great idea and I think everyone had a good time.
I also went out to eat with some old co workers on Thursday night. We went to the Olive Garden (yum, yum). I worked with these gals at my first Travel Agency and we have been friends ever since. It amazes me that we still get together a few times a year. Our agency went out of business in December of 2001 because of the after effects of 9/11 and Kim and Elmira went on to work in other businesses. I was the only one who stayed in travel. That's Kim in the front and Elmira in the back left and me in the right of the photo. But we all have a love of traveling so it's always fun to get together and catch up. I went out to eat on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night and my scales are showing it today. LOL
And my good blogging buddy Kat has given me this special award. Thank you so much Kat, I love this. I just cannot pick a few of you guys because all of you who visit me and whom I visit make me smile and laugh and make my day and you all leave me uplifting comments so I am passing this on to all of my blogging buddies. Now my blogroll is not updated (again," sigh") so if you are reading this, this award belongs to you, I mean it, take this award because you all deserve it. Here are the rules: SHARE THE LOVE!!! Share this award with all those blogs out there that you love. All the people who make you smile. All those that make you laugh. All those that make your day. All those that leave uplifting comments on your blog. **Link to this post with the award and ask your recipient to do the same** (Visit (Memoirs of a Mommy)for the story behind this award .
Okay now for the yucky part of this post. Let me explain something first. My sweetie and I are planning a project for our backyard in the Fall. Right now we have a two tier deck and a wooden fence that surrounds our pool, that's alot of wood and it is very old as in rotting old so it's all coming down. I'll share more as we get more into the project. Right now it looks like we going with pavers in place of the decks and add some kind of pond/fountain and the new fence is still being worked out. We need a fence around the pool but we didn't want to go with wood again. So we are in the process of getting estimates and going from there. Who knew fences could be so expensive? Anyway, back to these photos and how they relate to the project. There is a Magnolia tree that sits in between the two decks and as we were going around the backyard last night we realized the Magnolia tree would have to come down. There is no saving it, it has gown around the decks in an odd position and just would not look right with the new landscaping. It makes me sad because that little tree is so beautiful in the Spring. So anyway, we are looking at this little tree and I see these things on it that look like buds on the tree. So I of course got my camera thinking they were some kind of new buds growing and took a few shots. Some with the flash and some without. Well, I download it on my computer and realized these are not buds but bugs and they are all over the little tree. I'm not a fan of bugs. Does anyone know what these little guys are? If you click on the photos you can see they are some kind of bug. Now I can't go past the little tree without looking at all the bugs. Well, that's it for my ramblings today. Hope I didn't totally bore everyone to death. Now I am off to catch up on some blog reading. Have a great Monday!