Boring week, for the most part. Thursday was errand day. Nothing unusual there, except that I sent off the quilt top I made for my friends Lyn and Steve. I sent it to my quilter's so she could get it back to me by November 7th. That's so that I can take it and show it off at my next guild meeting.
I did find out this week that my niece, Candice, is getting married in May, 2004. She was 17 in that picture, so she's 20 now. A very mature young lady. She also bought a house this year. Her fiance, Jimmye, has two daughters from a previous marriage. I wish I could go home for a visit, especially so that I could meet Candice's new family and see her new house. She asked me to make her a Double Wedding Ring quilt for her wedding present, so I sent off for a pattern book and template set from John Flynn's quilting site. Apparently, there's a way to strip-piece the arcs, which would save OODLES of time, and would keep me from having to use templates for that part. I'm not much of a template fan, so any way I can cut down the time on this project I'm all for. Especially since I'd like to hand-quilt it. Yes, I'm crazy, but she's the most amazing girl I know, and she deserves it.
Yesterday the kids and I went to story time at the Endicott library. Adam was much more attentive to the story this time. Once the librarian had finished reading it, Adam prompted, "Now time for Winnie the Pooh!" Hee. I encouraged him to look around the library, and he finally settled on a Bugs Bunny movie, so we brought that home. No books this week. After story time was over, he went to play in the little park next door to the library with Kari and Asia. Kari is three months older than Adam, and her mother was in our childbirth classes two years ago. Asia is the principal's daughter, and she's (I think) 4. Adam had a grand time with the children, and learned to roll down the hill. Well, actually, he kind of scoots down on his belly, but it's a start! It took him awhile to decide to even go that far, and I don't want to push him to do more than he's comfortable, so I just let him do what felt right for him. Seemed to work out just fine.
Once park time (as a parent, everything is something "time"; dinner time, bed time, play time, story time, bath time, etc.) was over, we piled back into the truck and drove to Pullman. After a quick stop at the bank for cash, we went to McDonald's for lunch and more play. This time we were in luck - there were lots of kids there, including one who we knew from La Leche League. The boys didn't remember each other, but it was still fun to see a familiar face. After lunch, we went to Shopko. I was in luck - they had coats on sale, so I got Adam a 3-piece snowsuit (overalls, coat with hood, mittens). I also got Kayla some winter clothes, some Bob the Builder blocks for Adam to play with, and a bag of candy for Mike. Last stops were at Dairy Queen for shakes and the convenience store for milk.
Adam's verbal skills continue to delight and amuse me. While we were at McDonald's, the little girl sitting next to him noticed that they had the same type of cup. Adam looked at his, then held it up and pronounced, "Cheers!" Took me a minute to figure out what he was saying and translate, but once the little girl was clued in, she giggled, tapped glasses, and they both drank. It was hella cute. Later on, in between bites of McNuggets, Adam said, "Thank you, Mama, for a lovely day." *melt*
If you follow Mike's journal you know that we've been having a lot of problems lately with the QuiltIndex server. This was a problem, because we have a Mall Crawl coming up in less than two weeks. We seem to have found and fixed all of the problems now, although there was no single smoking gun. Lots of tiny problems here and there, mostly stupid coding mistakes on my part.
Been doing some reading lately. I'll update my reviews after this entry. Nothing academic, alas, but still some of the best-written fiction I've come across.
I launched a new business on the 15th of October. I'm selling my own quilt design patterns. Well, I'm selling, but so far no one's buying. I'm not yet very worried; I haven't done a major announcement anywhere, and have only provided a link to it from the homepage of QuiltIndex. We'll see how it goes. As new ventures go, it hasn't required too terribly much upfront in terms of investment (yet?). I'm waiting for inspiration to hit so I can design my next pattern - a block-of-the-month.
Mike's gone today, to return the web server back to our ISP colocation facilities. I drove out to Kennewick Friday to pick it up, with Kayla. The drive to and from Kennewick is very long and very boring, with absolutely no distinguishing features from one field to the next. I did notice one amusing thing - apparently the town of Connell (?) has a National Forest. So you're driving along on 395, seeing field after field, then you see the sign for the Connell National Forest. Trouble is, there is no forest. There's one lonely little pine tree about ten yards from the sign, but I swear - that's it. I got a little snicker out of that.
Quick mention - if you wonder what I've been working on quilt-wise, you should read my new quilt diary.
The kids are growing up so fast. Kayla's getting better at holding her head up when she's on her tummy, but it's still pretty wobbly if you set her upright. She's not far from rolling over from back to tummy, either. And Adam amazes me every single day. He's really learning lots about using his computer. He can now print, open and close windows, and perform a myriad of other functions. A couple of times we've come to his computer seeing a window open for Amazon, or Ebay Canada, or some such. Amazing. And apparently we've been saying that - "amazing" - a lot lately, because Adam now says, "I'm aMAzing. Adam's aMAzing!" We don't argue, of course.
