Relaxing

Jac went with me to pick up Donovan from school one day last week when she stayed home “sick”.

That girl knows how to make herself comfortable. Have iPad, will travel anywhere (but she’d prefer if I could arrange for wifi next time . . .)

Pumpkins!

I love Fall. 

And pumpkins.

And excuses to take pictures of pumpkins.  

We had a 2 hour window today -  

Leanne gets out of school early on Thursday’s - 

so we packed up these three

and headed to our local farm stand 

and feeding zoo (no petting allowed, dang it.)

Our rule for picking and purchasing pumpkins

is that you must be able to carry whichever pumpkin you select. 

Easy to explain, 

easy to enforce follow,

and Pop doesn’t wind up with a sore back 

from loading everyone’s treasures in the car. 

Win, win, win.

Pumpkins!

Good News

Lily’s biopsy results came back and . . . 

no cancer! Hooray!

 Pet me 

She has advanced irritable bowel disease 

 Using Alexa for a pillow

and will be on special $$ non-allergenic food and low-dose steroids for the rest of her - hopefully long - life.

 Yes, I was using that mat.

The food is already making a difference - Lily’s not gifting us with multiple piles of partially  digested food every night. In fact, as far as we can tell, she hasn’t thrown up once since the diet change. 

I’m so happy. She probably is too.

Irresistible

Couldn’t resist starting the fall Christmas cactus? palm frond? project.

It took longer to resize the pattern pieces and get them to fit on the paper than it did to make the first two blocks. 

I wanted to make 8” blocks - turns out there’s a reason all the published designs are 6”, since that’s what fits easily onto 8.5x11” paper. Finally got 7” pieces to (barely) fit and I’m a happy camper. 

Two blocks down, 33-ish to go. 

Birthday Boy

Happy birthday weekend to this guy - 

Marie and company took him to see the WWII exhibit 

at the Reagan Presidential Library on Saturday,

which was a hit with everyone, including Jac and Leanne.

I’d offered to let Jac stay home with me (quilting day! whoohoo!)

but she turned me down flat. 

I guess helicopters and horses

are more exciting than art projects and ice cream.

Tonight was dinner with the CA fam.

Good food,

good times,

good birthday.

7. 234

Seven hours and 234 miles.

Worth it when a favorite quilt store holds their annual ‘skinny bolt*’ sale.  Plus, this year they added their entire selection of batiks to the sale, making it absolutely irresistible.

These batiks are destined for this ⬇️ (not sure about the teal . . . may end up swapping that out, even tho I love it.) Dark brown is for the border, off-white is the background.

And these ⬇️ are destined for stash; the top two are for quilt backings - the blue is 3 yards at 108” wide and the flowered is 4 yards at 42” ($26 for 4 yards!!). 

Can’t wait to start cutting and sewing! 

 Auditioning fabrics in-store

* A “skinny bolt” = only a few yards left on the bolt = 35% off. All batiks were 35% off also. Sale fabrics, like the flowered cotton ⬆️, are 65% off. Whoo! One of my favorite sales of the year - you never know what you’re going to find!

 

So I can remember what I bought:

Blue 108, 3 yds (18.45). Dark brown batik, 2.33 yds (8.74/yd). Oyster batik, 3 yds (8.97). Black grunge, 1 yd (8.74). Batiks, .5 yd each (4.40). Blue dots, .75 yd (4.41). Dark blue sparkles, 1.75 yds (7.93).

Jumble

Jumble sounds better than ‘photo dump’ or ‘this and that’, right?

Jac is Queen of the new ride. 

She’s convinced Pop bought the convertible just for her.

Matt asked us to babysit tonight so he and Mary could enjoy an anniversary dinner. “Just be sure Donovan doesn’t fall asleep, so he’ll sleep tonight,” he says. A half hour later, I get ⬆️ pic. Daddy let them both fall asleep! 😂😂😂

 “I’m so peeing in your shoes when I get out of here.”

My poor Lily has been to the vet hospital twice since we got home from Hawaii. Once for an ultrasound, then for an endoscope exam. Blood work ruled out most major kitty diseases, so now we’re waiting on biopsy results. The hospital vet says she thinks, based on experience, that it’s the “c” word. Crossing my fingers and hoping like hell that she’s mistaken.