Extra Christmas Blessing

We are going to visit our daughter & her family & staying there while she & her hubby go on anniversary trip. I had checked a week or so ago for tickets & found some with Allegiant airline for $110 each way for each of us & thought that was a fair price. Last night late as we were heading to bed I thought I would see if the price had gone up any. To my surprise the price had gone down, way down or there was a special as the price was $25 each way. So we called our daughter to find out for sure the dates & etc & then ordered our tickets online. This morning the price is back up. So we feel that was a Christmas blessing to us from God.

Christmas Get Together

What family get together doesn't include eatting? The gift giving. A good time was had by all. We misssed one family but they were here in our minds & hearts

Christmas Fun

We decided to make ginger bread

houses using graham crackers.

Grandpa & Grandma put them together & the grand kids

decorated them.

"Twin" Cousins

Here are a couple of the new usual shots of the "twins", Peter & Andrew.

Thanksgiving

We had our family get together yesterday at the township hall in my folks home town. It was mostly us & three of our four kids & their families. Here are some of the grandkids playing on the table rack, it is a train, can you tell.

Finally

I finally have finished the counted cross stitch sampler I was working on. I had thought of finishing it to take to the 4H fair that was in July. I didn't get it done. I got hung up a bit with having to do the group of flowers on it. But finally I told myself I HAD to finish it & be done with it. So I did, only to have the fabric be too small to have the edges be completely covered by the frame. So it got put on hold again while I figured out what to do with it. I finally decided to put it in the frame & cover the edges with ribbon.

Playhouse

Here are some new pictures of the
playhouse. It now has it's door & windows in. With help from our son in laws it also has the roof on. We ran out of time to get the siding done before winter.

Kittens

Here is a picture of the four kittens that adopted us. It was hard to get a good picture as two of them are shy & stayed hiding in the back & two are more outgoing & were climbing out of the box. The two shy ones are black & a dark calico. The other two are black with white the one on the right about to get out of the box & an all orange one. I am not too good at telling gender but I think the orange one is a male & the other three are females. We are sort of thinking of keeping two but which two.

Night Gowns

I have been needing some new night gowns, so finally
I went through my stash of fabric. I found the fabric I had gotten
for 50¢ a yard with the idea that I would make curtains for the play house with it. I decided to just use some of it for night gowns. I have now 3 new night gowns, sure they are a bit bright but that is ok I am just sleeping in them.

"Stopping the Plow"

We had plans of things we were going to do today but in the middle of it all we had a change of plans or at least a side track for a bit. We were outside doing a cement foot print of our grandson William & I looked up to see a orange kitten go across the drive way. We were then off to catch it, though we don't want a kitten we sure don't want wild ones around either. We got him & were letting all the grandkids pet it when we saw another kitten. We got that one. Then there was another & while trying to get that one we found another. They were all rather hard to catch so seems like they have not had much attention. We now have four fairly young kittens. I was glad I had just gotten my cat carrier back from my sister. We put them in there. When I put food & water in with them the went at it like it had been a long time since they had eatten. We are not sure if they belong to the neighbors or some one dropped them off. Last night late we heard a cat fight outside by our front window. So now we wonder if momma cat was moving them over here & got in a fight with our cat or what was going on. So we will call a few neighbors to see they are missing babies. I will try to get a picture of them to post before we get them off to other homes.

Shirts & More Shirts

Our church has Olympians groups for the kids. I was asked if it would be possible to embroider the name of our church on shirts & then put the right patch for what ever group the kids were in. I of course said yes, who can say no to a church need? I asked my daugther to do the embriodery as she understands my machine better than I do. It took a bit of doing to get them all done, as the machine kept acting up. Then it was discovered the iron on patches did not stay on. So all of them had to be hand sewn on. That became my job, which was ok as I could watch TV at night & do the stitching. My fingers did get a bit sore though. Then we decided the little kids in the nursery should have shirts too so we did more shirts. Nursery ones are yellow with Happy Bee on them. I am the person in the nursery so I have a green shirt. The leaders of Olympians have blue shirts & the kids have red ones. We are sort of a mini rainbow when we all are together.

Patches

We have moved Patches on to another family. This van has been
sort of a family car. It started out with our oldest daughters, then
our youngest daughter need a car so it was given to them. Then
when they were able to get something else we got it. Then our
middle daughter didn't have anything to drive so we let her
borrow it. We got it back again but weren't needing it so decided
to let it have a new family. It was a bit sad to see Patches go. BTW
it is called Patches as the paint is peeling off & also a tree branch
fell on it & it has to have tape on it's windows to seal out the rain.

Cousins

This is a picture of cousins Peter & Andrew. Andrew was not a day old yet & Peter was a bit over 6 weeks.

Number 18 is here

Sorry I am so slow in posting this. Our 18th grand child arrived 8-9-09 at 10:30 pm. Andrew weighed in at 7 pounds & was 19 1/2 inches long. He looks like his sibblings & they LOVE him.

Play house

This is the insulation being put in place.

This is with two sides on.

Now a picture of the start to the roof. The roof is ready now for roofing but I don't have a picture of that.

Number 17 is Here

Our 17th grand child has been born. Peter was born on June 24th on his grandpa's birthday. Peter weighed in at 7 pounds 3 ounces smaller than was expected as Momma was BIG. He is 20 inches long, has light brown hair & dark blue eyes. We are very thankful God allowed him to be delivered ok, as the cord was around his neck twice & around one arm once. We feel blessed having so many grand children.

Travelers

Our oldest two grand children came to visit us for a week. The rest of their family will come in a week. We had to drive to Detroit to pick them up. We were just about to head out & their mom Amy called to let us know that they had been bumped so would come in three hours later. So we waited to head out. Here is a picture of them just after they got off the plane. By being willing to be bumped they each will get a free ticket that can be used next year when the come. It is going to be a fun week.

Two More Done :)

Sixteen years ago I made a baby quilt for our first grand baby. Well I have continued making them. These are pictures of number 17. The first ones were total secrets, well the momma to be knew I was making it but not what it was going to be. Now I have a hard time keeping secrets & have already given this one to momma to be for Peter when he arrives late June.




This is number 18 just finished last night. It is for Andrew, due mid August. It has been fun doing these quilts. Little did I know when I started 16 years ago that there would be this many of them to do, but I am glad to do them.

65th Anniversary

My folks had their 65th anniversary yesterday, May 8th. We four daughters had an open house for them today. We had large turn out. My older sister got balloons for each member of the family that are a result of my folks being married. There are 4 daughters, 4 son-in laws, 11 grand kids, 9 grand kids in-laws, & 21 great grand kids with three more due this summer. The family is growing & growing. Amazing what two in love cause. :)

Play House- A Start

Well the long talked
about play house
has as start. It will take awhile before it is done. Keep looking back for futher updates.

Special Gift

I took a break from stitching on the baby quilts to work on this project. I have had the pattern for a long time & was eager to see it worked up. But the main reason that I took the break was that we were going to fly to visit our daughter & her family in Arizona & I wanted to be able to have something to work on while flying & waiting in the airports. I didn't want to chance loosing the baby quilt squares so thought I'd do something else. As I worked on it I decided it would be a nice gift for our Pastor & his wife. I wasn't totally sure if they would really want it & didn't want to make them feel they had to have it if they didn't want it. So I gave them a choice & they seemed to think it odd I asked but I told them I didn't want to force them to take it if they didn't like it. Then I asked if they wanted it matted & framed or made into a pillow. They decided on a pillow. So while they were visiting their kids I got it made up & left it on their couch to find when they got home. They loved it.

"Helping" Grandma

We were making St Patrick cookies & it was a ball for all involved, even if it was a bit messy. I know it is a bit late to be posting about things that happened back in March but I have not been able to get to it before. As the saying goes "better late then never"

Family Visit/Vacation

We went to visit our daughter Amy & her family in Surprise, AZ. We have not been there before so it was great to get to see them all & their house & surroundings. Now we have a better picture in our minds when we talk to them on the phone or receive emails from them telling us of things going on in their area.

While we were there our grand daughter Marissa got baptized. It was great to be there to be part of that great event. She sure loves the Lord.

Amy & the kids sang a song during the service too. It was a real family kind of day.

One day we went to one of the mountains in the area. This is a picture of them in the back ground.

Here is some of what we saw. The one on the right gives you an idea of how big the catus grow there. That is us between these two.

We attended a free symphonic concert in the park.

This is their resident lizzard, he was on their back yard wall. All the yards there have walls around them. The funny thing is they were just talking about they didn't think they had any when Matt saw this guy while out watering the plants.

Checkers

This is my nearly finish newish project. We have been picking up games to put in the motor home. We found the big size checker pieces at Goodwill but it didn't have a price on the bag. When checking out we asked the price & one lady said there is a rug that goes with it. She went to look for the rug & get us a price on just the pieces. Well some one else check out at the other register & she had the rug. We offered her the pieces & she said no she just wanted the rug. She was paying $1.99 for just the rug & the lady came back & said it would be 99¢ for the pieces. So if we could have talked to the lady with the rug we could have worked out a deal with her. Oh well Goodwill got an extra 99¢ for their work. I have since found I had a piece of heavy fabric that could be used for the "board". I marked off squares & have now painted them. I had to do the painting in two steps as I ran out of paint. I just finished the last of the painting. You can see the tape is still on. Now we can play checkers if we want. I also thought this bigger size would be fun for the grandkids to use too when here.

Twin?

I thought maybe I should post pictures of both our black dogs so you could see how Betsy's size is compared to Abby's. It is hard to get the two of them to sit still long enough to get a good picture. I was trying to bribe them with a treat then they kept looking up at me & moving closer to me. But here is a picture that will at least give you an idea of her size. Soon she will be bigger than Abby. By the way Betsy is the one in front.

This lower pictures is Betsy's way to get our attention. She also rings a set of bells on the door when she wants or needs to go out.