Kasey's 1st Easter Egg Hunt

We went to an Easter Egg Hunt, this was Kasey's first real hunt. It was neat and well organized, put on by a church here in town. This is what the field looked like before the kids got in there. This field was for the 0-3 year olds. Everyone watched while the kids gathered eggs, then they went to the next field so the next group of kids could pick them up. It was really nice.

Here's Kasey with his friend, Gracie. It seems that Kasey only has one friend in these posts and that is mostly TRUE! We don't really have many friends that have younger kids and since Kasey stays home with Daddy all the time, they don't get out much. (Next year, Kasey will go to a little pre-school for 2 year olds where he can practice his socialization skills.) We enjoy Gracie, she is fun to be around and Kasey likes her a lot!

Here we are about 2 minutes after the hunt started, you can see the field is totally cleared off of eggs. Kasey picked up about 15 eggs, and had fun opening them all up. I am going to have to teach Mark how to use the camera though, he had a tough time getting a good picture of us.

Hope everyone has a great Easter tomorrow.

Kelly

Nicky's Back from her Cruise

Nicky made it back from her cruise. She came over wearing shorts and flip flips. It was nice outside, but not THAT nice! They left out of Miami last week and went to Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. This is Nicky on the right and her friend, Meagan on the left.

Here's Nicky kissing a Sting Ray! They went out on the boat and ended up on a sand spot in the middle of the ocean that they could stand up on! There were lots of sting rays around.

Nicky was happy to see Kasey. She brought him a cute t-shirt with little crochet guys on the front of it. (Course, I am thinking, I can't wait to make that into a t-shirt quilt someday!!!).

Kelly

Flooding in Missouri

It rained here for the past 2 days, we probably had 5" of rain. Here's a picture of I-44, which is a major interstate that runs through Missouri. This is the Gasconade River. The water was 18" over the road. Traffic was diverted for 12 hours but semi's could go through. This was amazing because when you normally drive over the bridge, you could never imagine the water this high. They said the river had risen 35 feet. This is about 10 miles from our house. Thankfully, we didn't have any water damage or problems.

Nicky went on a trip this week for spring break with one of her friends. They went on a cruise to Jamaica and the friend's parents paid for it! It's nice to have friends like that. I will post her picture tomorrow. We are all excited to have her home and it will be fun to hear how the trip went.

Our washing machine is dying, it's a Kenmore front loader. After finding out what it will cost to fix it and the uncertainty of whether it will last much longer after that, we decided to go ahead and get a new one. I ordered a LG front loader from Home Depot this week, we should get it next week. All the reviews on the LG's were really good. I can't wait to get it, I think the neatest feature it has on it is the delay wash. So many times I put a load in before I go to bed and the clothes have to sit in the washer until the next morning. Now I can put them in there and set it to wash 12 hours later! How cool is that?

Kelly

Triple Treat Quilt Started & Elmo

I started a new quilt for our bed, it's called Triple Treat from the Happy Hour book by Atkinson Designs. It will be a King size and will look scrappy in browns, blues, blacks and burgundy.



Here's the picture of the quilt from the book. I just pulled out 32 different fabrics from my stash, after sewing them into sets of 3, I cut 15" blocks (above). That gives me a pretty big piece left over that I can't get a 15" block from. The pattern shows a couple of things you can do with the left overs, make a table runner or the quilt on the bottom right, called Second Hand Strips Quilt. I think that I may take what I have left over and make pillow shams. That would look really nice on the bed.

This is how big the left over strips are. And my final project of the night was making Kasey an Elmo pillowcase. He is really into Elmo so he was crazy about this fabric. I think his pillow is becoming his "safety blanket". When we get him up in the morning or from his nap, he has to haul his pillow downstairs with him. Then when he goes up for naps, he hauls it upstairs with him. Anywhere we go, he has to take it with him in the car! I didn't really expect him to become so addicted to these. But I am glad that he enjoys them.

Kelly

Community Garage Sale & Pancake Breakfast

Saturday we went to the Civic Center for their annual garage sale. I didn't buy anything real exciting, but it was fun to look around. There was a big crowd there. I compressed these pictures down but I think I went too far, they don't look that great.

Here's Kasey and Grace eating pancakes.

I did buy Kasey a pillowcase that had cows on it. It's really cute. Whoever made it did a really nice job on it, she surged all the edges. I was impressed. Kasey carried it all over the place.

Today we went to Sears and they had a few of their Craftsman toys on sale. We got Kasey an air compressor and jack hammer (that was all they had there). They make noises and light up. We got each one for $5.00. Normally they are $29.00! That was a real deal. We opened the air compressor, but I think we are going to save the jack hammer for his birthday in June.

Kelly

An Old Quilt from My Aunt Pauline

My Great Aunt Pauline made a quilt for me when I was little. The blocks are all applique pictures of me doing something, like praying, swinging, playing the piano. I had this quilt on my bed for years, we washed it and used it. Little did I realize how valuable this quilt would be to me as I got older and I wish now that I would have just displayed it instead of using it. The quilt ended up falling apart. So I took all the blocks off the quilt and tried to salvage them. I made this wall hanging with the ones that were in the best shape and that I liked the most. The block on the top right is me with my Great-Granddad Fred and I kissing at Christmas. The details in this block are amazing when I compare it to the actual picture that my mom made into a Christmas card that year. The lamp in the background was a brown lamp, there was a window in the background, the chair was orange, there was a coffee table next to the chair. The workmanship in this quilt was just amazing.

I plan to put the binding on it sometime and then Mark is going to make an oak frame for me to put it in so I can display it on the wall. Here are the rest of the blocks. You can see the bottom block is of me and Aunt Pauline planting in the garden.
This is a really good close up of one of the blocks. I think that the shirt my Granddad is wearing is even an actual piece of his shirt. I am not sure what I am going to do with the rest of the blocks. I need to repair some of them. The original quilt had the same size blocks in a yellow gingham check. She hand appliqued all of these and hand quilted it.

Thanks for posting comments! I enjoy reading them. Michelle is going to help me make some boxer shorts for Kasey! I think that will be fun.

Kelly

Meet the Croc Family

I have been looking at Crocs for a while and read about them on Cre8tive Quilter's Blog. Then I was at the hospital Monday and one of the ladies there was wearing a pair. I talked to her a while about them and she loves them. But she told me to be sure and get the real Crocs and not the knock offs. So when we were in Branson, they have a Croc Outlet Store at the Red Roof Mall. They get shoes from places going out of business or probably last year's models that didn't sell.

Here are the shoes we got. I got a brown pair (I really wanted black but they didn't have them in my size). Kasey got a little pair with black and yellow straps. Mark got the black pair on the right. He also got a KC (Kansas City Chiefs) charm to go in the shoe. When you buy those, you get 2 in a package, so Mark got one and Kasey got one. We thought that was really cute since Kasey could actually be KC.

Anyway, so far we LOVE these shoes. We don't think they look that cute, but they are comfy!

I also did a little research on the Sudoku fabric I bought in Branson and realized I had been spelling Sudoku wrong on my posts (Suduko is how I spelled it). So I went back and fixed them. Unfortunately, I didn't buy enough of this fabric for my Sudoku quilt, so I think I might piece it with some other fabric. I have seen people do that and it looks really good. Kasey was so cute, he carried this fabric around a lot today and just cuddled it.

When we were at McDonald's this morning before coming back home, Kasey kept throwing his pacifier down on the floor. So Mark decided to just tie it to his shoestring. He was so funny trying to get it off and then just decided he could put it in his mouth from there.

Kelly

Branson Trip

We took a couple days off to go to Branson. We stayed at the Grand Country Inn, which has an indoor water park. First we stopped in Ozark and ate at Lambert’s, a really unique restaurant where they throw rolls at you. They are the best rolls, we could eat those and nothing else! Kasey had his first taste of Fried Okra, he really liked it.

Then we checked into our room and went to the water park. Kasey was slow to warm up to it, but he did really good. He liked playing in the water. Here’s a picture of Mark and Kasey in the pool. We stayed about 3 hours. They had a lazy river running through it, here are a couple of pictures of that.

They are calling for a lot of snow here tonight, we drove the 4 wheel drive, just in case we have snow. Here's Kasey after a long day, he's really tired. I bought some Sudoko fabric at a quilt store here in Branson. I thought it would be really cute to use it for the backing in my Sudoko Quilt. Kasey carried the bolt to the front of the store and gave it to them to cut. He almost didn't let them put it in the sack. Then when we got out to the Jeep, he cried until I gave it to him. He wanted to lay down with it to sleep. It was really sweet. He probably thinks I'm going to make a pillow case out of for him!

This hotel only has Internet in the lobby, that seems really crazy to me. They should put wireless all over the hotel.

Kelly

Politics and Grandpa Bob's Reading Blogs

My Grandpa Bob said that he really didn't want to read my blog unless it has some politics on it. Well, politics is the last thing I want to write about, but I figured I better add something on here to make him wonder what this was about.

Here are some good blogs to read:

http://blog.hillaryclinton.com/ or maybe this one: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hqblog/

But I have a feeling he might like this one better:

https://www.johnmccain.com/Blog/

Sure will be nice when the elections are over.

Kelly

Sudoku Quilt and One-Two-Three!

This is my Sudoku quilt I finally finished in February. There are 9 blocks and 9 squares in each block and none of the colors repeat themselves in the rows going across or the rows going down. Those of you who are Sudoku lovers, you know how this works. I guess this will probably be another quilt for Kasey, or I might give it away to someone.
Kasey and I were taking self-portraits. I would hold the camera and tell him to look at it and we'd say one-two-three. He would yell THREE real loud. It took about 20 pictures before I got a pretty good one of us.

Kasey went to Grandma's tonight (my mom's) and Mark and I went out to eat! That was nice to have a little time to ourselves.



Kelly

75 Degrees, Swinging & Quilts

It was a wonderful day today! 75 degrees and lots of wind. We were outside almost all day, washing the car, cleaning up the yard a little, playing with Kasey and thinking about spring flowers. They are calling for snow on Monday, though!

Here's Kasey in his swing out on the back porch. Notice he has a pacifier in his mouth and one in his hand. Never want to get too far without a spare! :) Not sure that you can tell in this picture, but he has dirt all over his hands. He found a place to dig around in the dirt. He's all BOY!

Here's another quilt I made last fall. I need to get it quilted. I think I have about 6 I need to quilt. I need to post a picture of my quilt machine on here that Mark built for me. It's amazing! Maybe later this week.

This one I made for my niece at Christmas, she is 8 and her favorite colors were purple and lime green. I got the pattern out of the Happy Hour by Atkinson Designs.

Had a great weekend, now it's time to get ready for work tomorrow. Ah...

Kelly