Baby shower

Sweet daughter and I went DSM for a baby shower for my sister's beautiful daughter. She is indeed beautiful as she was crowned Miss Teen Iowa several years back! Wow, what great genes, huh?!?








Here is my sweet niece's daugher who had emergency brain surgery just about 3 months ago, she is our witness that God is good.
With her is my nephew's pretty wife, she is also expecting a baby November 2nd! Wow, lots of babies popping up!







The shower was fun, one of the girls had a memory picture matching game that had correlating candy for prizes, very fun. The food was wonderful although my diet was busted by about.... oh I don't know... 10 points!

My brother's sweet daughter just arrived in town (look back to 2007 for wedding picture blog) and was able attend the baby shower with her very sweet pea of a boy, oh my lots of baby excitement in the room!

tennis anyone?

Sweet daughter is playing JV tennis this year! I am thrilled because I've been wanting her to play tennis for years and she is just now showing interest. She has an perfect serve, very rarely faults. She and her partner have been practicing outside of school practices, which makes me really proud. I am so happy to have her involved in a sport and having fun doing it, winning will follow and is not as important! I know Gramps is looking down and happy to see her play.

Enough of the dead turkey, now for some culture

Sweet daughter and I are talking about starting our own Jane Austen Book club for the summer. Would you like to join us? This is our first attempt at a book club so we are totally flexible on which book to start with. Also, we have a webcam so we can easily do virtual book club meetings via Skype. Let us know what you think. It is easy to leave comments but if you can't figure it out, just send us an e-mail. We are thinking just 1 book a month for summer. We can see how it goes for Fall. no problems, no pressure, please join us!

gobbler time

Dear husband hunted for two weekends, last weekend to help dear son for youth season and this weekend on and off between baseball games. He came up with a tom! Here are some pictures. I plan to buy a smoker which I think will come in handy for both game and tame food. (is that a term tame food, oh boy this makes me want to become a vegetarian... not really...wouldn't be right for a butcher's daughter) Anyway........ let me know if you own or have a suggestion for a good smoker. I love COMMENTS ON MY BLOG!

a little more Wrigley

need a disclaimer - if you are considering a new puppy and don't want one, please do not look any further. Wrigley is the cutest dog on a earth and soooooo good, you will surely go out to get a dog just like him after viewing this spot of my blog.

Wrigley had a big week. He started obedience class last Wednesday and he was neutered on Friday.

The class went pretty well. The thing I need to break him of is this really high pitch bark that he does when he is excited. They recommend squirting him with water, I tried it today and it worked but he sure looked sad that his mom would do that to him. hmmm... OK I need to watch more Cesar.

The neutering went pretty well. He was groggy on Friday but by Sunday he is back to his old self. He is my shadow and I love it!

he went to the ball diamonds on Saturday but it began to rain so he had to hang out in the truck. His stitches aren't suppose to get wet.

Oh, by the way... Freckles the cat is still around. Here she is in my sewing room, she didn't' realize Wrigley was in there too and just slept and purred all afternoon.

boy child quilt

Unfortunately I was able to get to my sewing room today. I say that because I thought I would be on the diamonds all day watching dear sons team play in the championships, unfortunately the boys weren't quite ready to play ball. They basically lost the game in errors and dear son struggled at the bat. I wonder if the past month is weighing heavy on his mind, loosing two grandparents in 5 days has got to be hard for a 14 year old to get a grasp on.
Anyway.......... the good thing is I was able to get some sewing time! Wow, it felt "sew" good!


This quilt is for niece Laura's little guy Rowan. You might remember this blog , I was in Door county when I found out Laura was expecting and happened to be working on a baby quilt. Well, I've decided that quilt doesn't quite fit Laura. I think this funky, retro, California style is more for her and little Rowan. I think this will be a surprise because I really doubt she has time to surf blog, however if you see this Laura you must be really good at multi-tasking!
I have 2 more baby quilts to get moving on for another niece and a niece-inlaw! It is wonderful to haev all of these new little babies in our family.

Movies

We've watched a few movies in the last 10 days. My favorite so far was Twilight. I am only about 1/2 way through the book but couldn't wait to see the movie. It was cast different than what I had imagined for characters, however I really enjoyed the movie. I could watch it again. I rate it A-.

On a family trip home from Colorado a few years ago we listed to Marley and Me on tape in the car. The book was good, sad ending, a little predictable but we enjoyed it. The same with the movie. I just love Jennifer A. and think she was great in it. I also LOVE yellow labs so it was cute to see the dogs. It was fun to see all of the antics that Marley pulled and it reminded me of my golden retriever Taylor, Annie our lab and Kodi our lab. All love-able but sometime naughty dogs. I give the movie a B.

The wedding crashers.......... Well, I didn't realize it was going to be raunchy and I started to watch it with dear son and ended up having him turn it off. It wasn't entertaining so I was OK with turning it off. Definitely not something I want my son to think is OK, they did not treat women with respect. I give it a D-.

cookies

This looks more like December than April!


Since we were stuck inside, I decided it would be a good day to make cookies. This doesn't go well with my whole plan to loose a few pounds but I thought it would be nice for dear son to have a special treat when he got back from Washington DC.

Hopefully I can talk my son, the DC traveler, for a special post interview once we get his pictures developed.

These chocolate cookies are so yummy, chewy and addicting! I will post the recipe when I have more time.

Daughter confirmation

My sweet daughter was confirmed on April 2nd. My beautiful sister-in-law, brother-in-law and father-in-law came out from Maqouketa.

Here is daughter and sister-in-law (Sponsor) with our priest.

There was a nice reception after the service. It was a week night so we stayed for a quick treat and a few pictures.

Clean up at Dad's

We cleaned out Dad's house, it was a lot of work and very sad. He lived there 30+ years so there was a lot of work. DH and I could only help part of the weekend because we got a call that my mother-in-law was not doing well and we had to leave in a hurry.

Here is my dear sister-in-law, beautiful niece, precious great-niece, my kids and me.




My sweet sister, sister-in-law and me, taking a quick break.

The guys filled this dumpster in a record time. The next day another dumpster half the size was filled.

We were lucky the weather held out, I think it was the best weekend in March.