Here Kitty, Kitty!

  Here's Woody getting acquainted with Esther's kitties.  He's holding Peaches.  That's Georgia in the basket and then in the last photo Peaches is looking at us and Georgia is getting a drink.  Woody is trying to get them matched up with their names!

Woody walked his four miles this morning fairly early to keep out of the rain.  He ran errands with a friend this morning who needed a ride.So he got a late start for our weekly grocery shopping.  While he was off running errands and grocery shopping I decided that it was a good time to wipe off the refrigerator shelves, etc....a good job done at least till the next spill!  I got started on a sewing project, but didn't get very far as Abigail needed a ride to go see if she could find some jeans.  So we headed off.  I am pleased to say that she did find two pair that fit her. She's happy too!

Our laptop got worked on and was ready to be picked up after lunch.  So I am back to using the laptop to write the blog.  Last night I posted a picture of the dwarf irises...but it wasn't the photo that I took yesterday of the iris...instead I scrolled back through photos that I had already used on the blog and found one of the dwarf iris...the only way that I can get a photo onto the blog using my iPad.  Woody was pretty happy to be able to print off his daily crossword puzzles once again!  So "our" computer geek has us back in business once again...he's trying hard to keep this one working...I still want this one to be used mainly for my sewing and photos from my current cameras and not much else so it will stick around for as long as possible.  I think that Woody may be thinking in the direction of getting a computer for himself...time will tell!

Spring is Popping Up!

Today Woody asked me to get my camera and come out to take a picture of some flowers.  Our dwarf  Iris are up and blooming...a promise of Spring being just around the corner!  I'm sure we will have lots of back and forth between cold and warm over the next weeks before Spring is officially here.  Today was one of those warmer days...pretty nice...cloudy for part of the day but the sun did peep out.

I had a usual last day of my school week.  Joseph made words with the alphabet for the first time...way to go, Joseph!!  Isaac was still into changing his money into different forms.  Today he was down to almost no change...just fives and ones in bills and a couple of quarters and a penny.  Well, after lunch, he came back over with his wallet and decided that he wanted to change one of those dollar bills into 100 pennies!  So he counted out 100 pennies, handed me a dollar and crammed all 100 pennies into his wallet...once again he has a heavy wallet!  He used the pennies from the school room so after he got out 100 pennies from the penny container, I decided that I would empty my wallet from most of the pennies and put them in the penny container for school.  We use the pennies for subtraction.  So now my wallet is a bit lighter than it was yesterday. Elijah and I had his long time today.  Joy joined us at Elijah's invitation.  They found out about bouancy using two little mandarin oranges...one peeled and one unpeeled.  They found out that the unpeeled one floated while the peeled one sank to the bottom.  Joy then wanted to add salt to the water to see if she could make the peeled one float...and with enough salt she did!  She had learned that in her science experiments that she has been doing in her science lessons this year as a 7th grader in her home schooling curriculum.  The other experiment that did was make a bubble solution that made unbreakable bubbles.  They had a great time.  Grammy did have to mop the floor after that experiment!

Woody took in the laptop this morning for the computer geek to work his magic on...once again.  The geek thinks that it is a problem with Google.  He is going to try to install a different search engine.  He thinks Google has done something in latest upgrade that makes it not compatible with our older laptop.  We will see!  Hopefully he won't have to have it long.  I need it to plan the quilting designs I will use on Joy's quilt...had hoped to do that planning this weekend.

Since it was nice out, Woody and I spent a little time getting to know the neighbor kittens so they will know us when we have to care for them when the neighbors are away on their juggling ministry trips.  Woody told Esther when he gave her the kitties that he would take care of them when Esther and her family are away.  They are very sweet kittens.  You can tell they are getting lots of love.

Woody walked four miles this afternoon.  He also did some raking today...taking advantage of the warmer temperatures.

Well, I'm off to the Olympics!

Happy Valentine's Day!

It has been pretty much a regular Wednesday.  We had school this morning.  Esther had her long time and she continued to work on her cross stitch picture.  It's growing, but a bit slower than Joy's quilt grew!  Cross stitch is a bit of a slow-go, but she is plugging along on it.  After lunch, Woody went on his walk and I headed off to work in the church library.  Donna and I got the ball rolling on the new book order.  We have had at least drizzly rain for most of the day and at times it has rained pretty hard.  Isaac has been coming over and using our wallets to exchange some of his change and ones for larger bills...and now my wallet is very heavy with change.  He's getting pretty good at counting money.  His wallet is now much lighter and he thinks that it is very funny that my wallet has gotten very heavy!  He likes those two practically new five dollar bills that I exchanged him for some of his ones and quarters.  Later this afternoon he came back and exchanged most of his pennies with me!

I made a new recipe for supper.  A chicken and avocado salad.  Woody ate his as a wrap and I just ate mine as a salad.  It was pretty good...for something a little different.  I changed the recipe around some and made it my own, but did stick with using chili powder as the spice and I rather liked that different flavor in a chicken salad...no mayo in this one.  I mashed some of the avocado to moisten the chicken and then cubed up the rest.  I also added some finely chopped celery that the recipe didn't call for.  Good for a change, but think that I like my regular chicken salad better!  Often tried and true is better than new!

I guess I am off to watch some more of of the Winter Olympics.

It Grew!

Here is Joy's sewing project that ended up growing into a throw-size quilt.  The square above was a lesson in paper piecing a log cabin quilt pattern.  By the time that she got through with it, she decided that she wanted to make a quilt that was the size of a throw.  Well...I knew that a quilt the size of a throw made up of this size square (you will see how small it is in the next pictures that I add tonight) would take forever so we decided to use some precut quilt squares that I had gotten at the last two Sew Super Saturdays in my door prize bags.  I got the purple ones two years ago and then the blue ones this year.  Joy loves blue so we started using the 5" blue squares to see how big that would get the quilt...then we decided that the purple 10" squares would work well to get it to the size that she wanted.  We took advantage of not having to cut out every square for this quilt...mainly we cut rectangular strips.  I will say that the precut squares are not entirely acurate...causing us a few problems...but we improvised where necessary!  She has pieced and pieced till the quilt top grew to the finished size.

Here she is piecing her quilt...putting the last long strip of squares on one side.  And, then the picture at the bottom is of the finished top.  She thought to stand up on the chair to be able to hold it up and still be able to see her pretty face!  She is very happy with her efforts so far.  Next I will show her how to sew the backing fabric together to make it one large rectangle to go on the back.  A quilt sandwich is in the near future. backing+batting+top=quilt sandwich Then it will be time to pin the layers together and I will get busy quilting it.  I told her that I would quilt most of it, but I do plan that she will do some of the quilting.  We will use my sewing machine as it is made for quilting...well, I guess my old machine = the one they are learning to sew on was also a quilting machine...but technology has made it much easier to quilt on the one that I use now for my sewing.  There is a wider space between the needle and the side of the machine for the quilt to go through...though it is still a bit rough to get a lot of fabric through.  A quilt the size of Joy's will be much easier to quilt than a bed-size quilt.  My machine also has a lot of built in quilting patterns that I can do using machine embroidery.  It will be fun to choose the ones that I am going to use...Joy can help with those design choices, too.

TA-DAH!!!!!!!!!

Our Tuesday school was on a bit different schedule as Joseph and Isaac needed to come together as they were going to a doctor appointment.  Then the others read the usual order and then it was time for Joy to sew, sew, sew!  Since she knew what she was doing, I sat in the guest room/kid's sewing room and worked on getting a book order ready for us to work on during our library time tomorrow.  I was right there to answer any questions that Joy might have, but kept our of her hair so she could be more on her own with her sewing...and, accomplished something that I needed to do...a bit of multitasking!  

Shortly after school was over, Woody and I headed out for an early Valentine treat...we headed to Dairy Queen for their featured Valentine Blizzard: Dipped Chocolate Strawberry with Ghiradelli.  Yum!  It was a backwards lunch for me...dessert and then some soup to warm me up!  

Woody left a few minutes ago to walk to the Prayer Room at church.  I am blogging early so I can head down to watch the Olympics.  Tonight goes back to skating--pairs, I think.  Skating is my favorite part of the Winter Olympics.

Cold Monday!

Seems like it has just stayed cold all day.  Brrrrrrrrr! I don't think that it ever got out of the 30's today.  Monday rolled around again the start of another school week...I still say that the days are just going by all too fast.  We followed our usual Monday schedule for school.  Abigail had her long time today and worked some more on her next quilted pencil holder mug cover.  I think that she will probably get it finished her next sewing session.  Isaac came in with news of another tooth lost...that makes six!  I continue to call him "the toothless wonder."  Some have grown back in but he still has lots of big gaps in his grin.  He decided that he would read to me downstairs like the big kids do.  We all sit in the glider love seat in the living room...it's comfy and holds two so a good place to read!  He said that he was going to leave his book downstairs so he could read there again tomorrow...like the big kids...I told him that I guess that made him a "big kid!"  I made chicken noodle soup after school was finished...so we ate lunch a little late. Yesterday I stewed a chicken so I had "liquid gold" (chicken broth) once again.  I froze eight cups in two cup portions and then used what was left over in our soup.  Later in the afternoon I deboned chicken thighs...froze most of them wrapped individually, but kept out several to cook for us.  I coated them with Panko crumbs and lots of spices and cooked them in the air fryer rather than the oven.  They came out crispy (perhaps not quite as crispy as when cooked in the oven) but quite good and the cooking time is less.  I did use a meat thermometer to check for when they were done.  It took a bit longer than the air fryer recipes said...but still faster than in the oven.

Woody went to Life Care this morning, had Bible study with Jeff, handed out more Valentines, visited with Eric, and then visited with several that asked him to come back when he gave them their Valentines on Saturday.  This afternoon we watched (I listened from the kitchen) some more of the Olympics.  That is where I will be heading when I publish this.  Woody has gone to The Furnace Room prayer meeting at church.  I'm sure that he will be joining me in watching Olympics when he gets home.  He has been nice and let me sit in "his" recliner when I am downstairs watching "his" TV.  It is nice to watch the Olympics on the new TV that Nathan and family gifted us with...nice to get the complete picture on the screen...our old one always cut off part of the screen since it wasn't an HD TV.  Well, off to do a little skiing...or luging...or whatever NBC chooses to share with us for the Olympics! Oh, almost forgot...Woody did go for a cold walk this afternoon.  He walked his usual four-miles.

Rainy Saturday

We have had rain, rain, rain...and then...some more rain today.  It has been too rainy to go out and check the rain gauge to see how much we have gotten!  There are huge puddles all over the yard...very soggy underfoot.

Woody made his weekly trip to the public library this morning and then a little later went to the Life Care Center to attempt to hand out Valentines to all the residents...112.  He asked the neighbor grandchildren to make Valentine cards for all 112 and they DID!  He got a lot handed out today and will attempt to deliver the rest when he goes on Monday.  He has five of the residents that he met today wanting him to come back to visit with them because they have no family in the area.

I have had a busy day...I did a lot of what I had planned to do yesterday and then added some more onto that.  I vacuumed and dusted our room.  And then I decided that I wanted to clean out the drawers in the nightstand.  I have thrown some stuff away and managed to consolidate the rest into two drawers leaving me with one drawer to put my cameras in...that gets them off the top of the nightstand...looks better and is probably better for them to not be out in the open gathering dust.

The internet is acting a bit crazy today...maybe due to the wet conditions?  So I won't make this very long in case I lose it all when I go to post it!  I'm off to watch the Olympics. Well, as of 7:09pm...it won't post.  I will come back in a while and attempt to post it again.  I'm just hoping that it has been saved!

Friday Summarized!

Friday is upon us again...as a matter of fact, it is close to being behind us...my how the days fly by.  I had big plans for today...not sure what happened to the plans, but I guess I did other things than what I had planned.  I started to say that it was a usual school day...but wait...today is my day off from school.  Isaac came over mid morning and stayed till lunch...he played and we even read another story out of his new reader.  Woody did our Friday grocery shopping at three stores: Aldis, WalMart, and Kroger.  Isaac was over here when he got home so Isaac helped me put the groceries away...he does my "low down jobs" = putting away the canned goods on the low shelves.  That really is a big help!  Woody went for his 4-mile walk after lunch.  Abigail came over to pick out fabric for her next mug pencil holder cover.  We had to dig through a lot of scraps before she found just what she wanted to use.  She got the pieces cut out and the fleece fused onto one of the pieces.  So she is set to start the sewing the next time that she comes over.  She's going to attempt this one with as little of my help as possible!  Elijah popped in to ask me to do something but I told him that his oldest sister had asked for my presence first!!!!  Not long after that Isaac and Joy showed up. They occupied their time in the school room using the Osmo interactive app for my iPad.  At some point I realized that we didn't have anything for supper...leftovers are all gone!  So I made one of our favorite pasta sauces. We ate just a bit later than usual since I got a rather late start.  I am attempting to blog early so I can go watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.