The Newest Addition...

On August 9th, we welcomed a new addition to our family...Eleanor Tillie Gwen Paez...our fifth grandchild!  

We were headed to Tennessee to welcome her into the world, but she made her entrance before we could get there.  She was born late morning and we arrived around 5 PM.

What a JOY to meet and hold her!!!

Here was Clark seeing her for the first time!!!  He was immediately enthralled with "Baby Sister"!!!

Big sister, Sera...

Andy has always had a way of calming a crying baby...I can't even calculate how many miles he put on our carpet when the kids were young...walking them to soothe them...and here he is doing it once more for a fussy Ellie!

One of the family traditions is that I give the grandbabies their first sponge bath at home!

We were able to stay a few days and spend some time with all 3 of the Tennessee grandkids.  I took Sera to the pool a couple of times and we had fun!

It was difficult to leave them when the time came to return home, but until the day that I can retire, we have to leave them and just plan for our next visit!

Loretta

January 2017...

Wow!  It's been WAY TOOOOOO LONG since my last blog post.  So I'm going to do a review of January in this post.  

Our daughter turned 30 in January, so we traveled to Tennessee to celebrate it with her.   

We got to spend a little time with our grandchildren, Sera and Clark.

Just a boy and his grandpa...

I don't know if I had mentioned it in a previous post, but our daughter is pregnant with her third child...due in August!!!   I have picked out the quilt I'm going to make based on her nursery theme.  HOWEVER...it is a paper-pieced pattern...and I don't know how to paper-piece...so I guess I've gotta learn over the next few weeks!  

When we travel to visit our children we take Ginger with us.  She loves to take trips with us and goes wild when we pull out the suitcases to start packing.  It's almost impossible to keep her OUT of the car at that point!  We throw her bed on the back seat  and she jumps right in and settles down.

On the quilting front, I started the black and white quilt that I call "Tuxedo"...but I'll post on that in the next post.  For now I'd like to tell you about some great customer service I received from Fiskars.  Several years ago I purchased one of their rotating mats for squaring up quilt blocks.  Over time it developed deep groves and lost its "self-healing" quality.  Someone on one of the Facebook quilting groups was talking about Fiskars lifetime warranty and that they had replaced a rotary cutter of hers.  

Since my mat was basically unusable anymore because of the deep groves that trapped the rotary blade when I would try to use it, I decided to go to their website and fill out a warranty for and email it to them...with pictures.

You can see the groves in the mat here...

Within 3 days they got back to me saying they had received my claim.  About 2 days later, I got an email saying my replacement mat was being mailed out and I received it about a week later!!!  How's that for customer service?  LOVE IT!!!

Loretta

Thanksgiving Update...

Quote for the Day:

"You’ll never be as lazy as whoever named the fireplace."

~author unknown

Our son, Paul, and his wife, Trinity, and sons, Andrew & Alex came in for the week of Thanksgiving!!!  We had a GREAT visit!  Lots of laughter, conversations, games played, food eaten, and general all-around FUN was had by all!!!

The boys think Grandpa is their own special playmate because he gets down on the floor and romps around with them!  They love to climb on his back and go for piggy-back rides!

Thank God we have a great chiropractor who can fix Grandpa up after this abuse!!!  LOL

Trinity is such a great cook and loves to do it, so she made most of our meals during the week and all of the desserts for Thanksgiving!   

Isn't she cute in my vintage apron???  If it hadn't have been for her...we may have all STARVED!  LOL  ;)

Andrew is 8 and is reading so well now!  He loves to pick up anything and read it...books, flyers, advertisements, etc!  Trinity says he especially loves to read directions or anything with "steps" to it, e.g. Step 1, Step 2, etc.  She says he reads the directions off of boxes to her when she is baking something.

Alex is 3 and does EVERYTHING Andrew does...even repeats everything he says after he says it!  

But...being 3 is hard work and he passed out shortly after we started watching "Finding Dory" on Thanksgiving evening...

Paul brought his new 357 Magnum with him and took me to do some target practice...

All in all...I think everybody had a fun week!  I know I did!!  :D  Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, too!

Loretta

Another Trip to Tennessee...

Quote for the Day:

"Never go on trips with anyone you do not love."

~Ernest Hemingway

In June we took ANOTHER trip back to Tennessee to our daughter's to celebrate our grandson, Clark's, 2nd birthday.  (Whew...4 trips in 5 months makes one exhausted!)  
 

Clark and Sera...

The party was held at a pavilion at the local park and it was HOTTER THAN HADES that day!  The kids were able cool off at the park's "Splash Pad"...

The next day we all took a jaunt up to the bridge where Erin and Dale got married in September.  There was a boat race that day so we got to watch it from the bridge for a few minutes.

Andy HATES having his picture taken, so he will do anything to keep from looking at the camera or smiling...

Loretta

Alex's New Quilt...

When the grandkids turn three years old I make them a twin-sized quilt for their "big" bed.  Since Alex is turning three this July, his mom asked that I make another "jar" quilt for his bed since he and Andrew now share a room and have bunk beds.  (I made this "bug jar" quilt for Andrew's third birthday.)

Instead of a strictly "bug" jars, I decided to do more of an "eye spy" type of quilt but put them in "jars".  Unfortunately, I don't have any up close pictures of the "jars", but there were things like tires, animals, umbrellas, candy, monkeys, fish, etc., ....and yes, bugs, too!  

The pieced back...(looks like there is an "orb" on the right side of the quilt because there was nothing on the quilt itself)...

The label...

I hate to mail quilts because I'm always afraid that they will get lost, so as much as possible, I hand-deliver them.  Since we won't be there for his birthday this year, we took it down with us when we went on vacation.

He immediately wanted to go down and put it on his bed!!!   I think he likes it!!!  

Here is a comparison of the two quilts side-by-side.  The brown "shelf" fabric, the black background, and the blue border were different but very similar since the fabric was purchased 5 years apart!

On the Home Front...

I love to garden, but have to used raised beds or do container gardening because of my back and knee.  Last years container garden was a bust and I only have one raised bed that I use to grow green beans in.  Toward the end of the summer last year I saw an ad for the Garden Tower2 and was extremely interested but decided to revisit the idea this year since the gardening season was over by that time last year.  I ordered one this Spring and it came a couple of days before we left on vacation.  This is what it looked like when I planted it before we left on vacation..some plants, some seeds...

And this is what it looked like 2.5 weeks later!!!  Everything is so green and lush and growing so well!!

Loretta