Life is Good

First of all, thank you for all the kind comments you left. I had to chuckle at Dawn's comment because it is exactly what I had said to my husband. It was a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day." We used to read that book to our children and have always used those words in describing difficult days. The days since have been delightful.


I received a package in the mail from my aunt who is cleaning out cupboards in anticipation of moving. She found four china mugs that belonged to my grandmother. Since my grandmother had given me her china, she sent the mugs along to me. I remember my grandmother using these mugs as we enjoyed our wonderful visits. I can still see her rubbing the top of the handle with her thumb as we chatted. My grandmother LOVED her coffee from before sun up to well past sun down. She also ONLY drank her coffee out of a "real china" cup. A chunky mug would not do. Needless to say, I am thrilled to have them.


Notice the gold rubbed off the top of the handle?

Treasured!

DH and I drove to Las Vegas to see the desert in bloom and to catch "The Jersey Boys" again. The music is so fabulous. We happened to end up with tickets to their third year anniversary in Las Vegas so they had a special cake presentation after the show. That was exciting.


The birthday candles kept relighting.

The desert in bloom is always such a pretty sight. I really wanted to see some of the hot pink blooms from last years trip, but they were sadly not in bloom at this time. There were some bright pink ones, but the thorns on those were amazing.




The small town of Kelso is along the way and we stopped to eat our picnic lunch there. I can imagine the town in it's prime, but the train station, post office and jail are about all that is left. I am not sure that I would like to be locked up in this jail during the summer heat.




The train depot.

They did cover the bars as you can read here.

Still not too inviting.

I doubt that it is still in use.

Life has been busy with family fun things, but I have had a chance to get a little sewing in. My mom has a gal who helps her in the mornings and she loves an old apron that my mom has. The apron is really old and ratty looking after all of these years so I brought it home and made a pattern from it. Susie will now have a new one.



Nice and clean for the moment.

I finished another one of my PhD projects. I really like the way this one turned out and I am glad it is finally finished. Three down and only one more to go before the end of June.


Modern Siggy Swap blocks.

This panel quilt was made for the youngest grandson. It is suppose to have another two borders, but it was getting way too big for its purpose so I stopped after the road border was applied. I figured he could play with little cars on it too.

It is still pretty big.

Lastly, I haven't yet shown the latest of my Civil War blocks. The latest ones seem to be going together a bit easier. The measurements are a bit more accurate. I still need to do this weeks before the new one comes out tomorrow.



Blocks 16-19.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend ahead.   I'll be busy with a little canning as the first peaches are ready.  There is nothing that says summer more than a bite of a fresh peach.  YUM.



S-U-M-M-E-R

I apologize for no links and lack of spellcheck, but Blogger is not allowing me to use any part of the toolbar.  Is anyone else having the same problem?  Maybe it is just me.

Can This Day End Yet???

The day is going downhill in a hurry and I wish it was over.
Our neighborhood is very quiet and we seldom ever hear of any "events" going on. People don't lock doors and neighbors watch out for one another. We love it. Shortly before six this morning we noticed a sheriff car slowly going up the street. Interesting because it did not come back right away and there is no other outlet. Fast forward several hours when I went to run a few errands. This is what I found when I opened my car door.

Terrible me....I was furious with my DH because he had taken the car fishing for a few days with the grandchildren. For the life of me I could not imagine what he was searching for in the glove compartment and WHY would he leave everything out????? Then the lightbulb moment hit me. Yep....someone had entered the vehicle overnight. Bummer!!! Fortunately, we do not leave valuables in the car, but they managed to lift our phone chargers and our Garmin charger.


The "nice" sheriff arrived, took the report and told me that three other cars had also been burglarized last night. Lovely!!!

The day was already going to be bad because I had made an appointment to have our very old cat put down at 11:30. SIGH! It is time as he is rail thin, not eating and just not enjoying his life anymore. It was a difficult decision and I was not looking forward to the day.




After that....I will still have my errands to run - red eyes and all.

Odds and Ends

Summer is in the air in our neck of the woods and I am loving it.  The heat invigorates me.  It is a wonderful feeling.

We've had a wonderful week filled with grandchildren.  They were all out last week for Easter vacation so we always enjoy some of the extra time that we get to spend with them. 

J and B spent a couple of days with us midweek and we got to explore some fun places with them.



Boys will be boys and climb anything.



A visit to the alpaca farm.




Is this cute or what?




Next stop was to the fish hatchery.




These were waiting for any escaping fish.  There was heavy fencing above the tanks to keep these fishers away.




They were hoping the lake looks like this when we go fishing this summer.



We had to stop at the rose nursery so Grandma could replace two rose bushes.



A great time to visit the rose garden!!!




Can we take one of these home????




Sunstruck was the rose of choice for me.   I love this rose and now have three of them in the rose garden.



We wondered why the citrus were covered.  They are seedless mandarins and are covered to keep the bees out.  Interesting!



We had our eldest son's children for the weekend while their parents went to Santa Barbara to celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary.  To us, it seems like it was just yesterday.




We went out to breakfast after church.




Trying to pull the palm branch down.  It's harder than it looks!!!



They all love playing with the sewing machine.  They made a fabric postcard for their folks anniversary.  The teen embroidered his initial on his socks.

As a thank you for watching the children they brought us two of these lovely creatures to enjoy.

Needless to say there was not much sewing of my own going on,  I did manage to get some binding done on two of my quilts that were returned by Mary who did an amazing job on the quilting.  If you have never seen her work you have to check out her blog.  She has several special projects going on right now that will be published sometime next year and she has shown a few sneak peeks.  As well, she is such a delightful person.

From the Thread Head Quiltalong.



This one has been claimed by a granddaughter because of the cherries.




Look at the wonderful cherry quilting that Mary did on it.

 I had lunch with a high school friend yesterday and she gave me this fabulous bag.  She made it using her own hand dyed fabrics which are to die for.  She really knows the colors that I love.  I am still trying to convince her that she needs to start a blog.

Has anyone ever had their keyboard die?  My keyboard, I must admit, needed replacing because most of the letters were no longer visible on the keys.  However.....did it need to die?  DH brought home a fancy new ergonomic looking thing that I am having the most dreadful time adjusting to.  I know that eventually I may appreciate it, but I would love to have my flat old thing back again.  Can you tell that I am not big on change?

Lastly, Linda passed this traveling book onto me and I would love to pass it on to someone else to enjoy.  If you would like to read it, please let me know and I will mail it off to someone.   I will select a name next Tuesday - May 10th.