Thursday, May 18, 2017

Really Random Thursday, 5/18/17

It's getting close to the end of the school year, so there are lots of activities.

Last Thursday, I went to Gabe's open house. He is in "transitional kindergarten," because he just missed the cut-off date for kindergarten. This boy loves to draw. So it was fascinating to see that they have spent a lot of the year learning about artists and doing related art projects.

Georgia O'Keefe:
Marc Chagall:
Eric Carle:
And of course, Leonardo da Vinci:
Charlotte has been playing club basketball--and has the most wonderful and positive coach, Dara Johnson.
Saturday, Levi had postseason baseball games. If his team lost the first game of the day, they were done for the season. If they won, they would go on to the championship game. I'm not sure we actually thought his team was going to play in the championship game, let alone WIN!!
There he is, first row, second one in on the left
One of Levi's coaches from last year, Marcy, came over and congratulated Levi, which was very cool.
Wearing the championship t-shirt.
Two silly girls who watched both of Levi's games, although "watching" mostly involved playing on the playground equipment nearby.
Sunday was Mother's Day. I received this beautiful bouquet from Mark.
And while I received a nice card and gift later in the day, this was the text I received from Aaron on Sunday morning.
Facebook didn't forget me either. At first I was confused--why was there this drawing of Vin Scully? And then Aaron reminded me that this is his Facebook avatar. Then it all made more sense.
Mark and I helped buy a basketball goal for Levi's birthday. The last two weeks have been spent preparing for putting it up. First Jason and Aaron had to cut a hole in the concrete.
Then Mark and Aaron had to mix the concrete, insert and level the bottom part of the pole, and let the concrete cure for 72 hours.
Finally on Tuesday it was time to get that pole up.


  Levi had the privilege of adding the net.
 I think he's pretty happy.
Mark referees/umpires three sports--football, basketball and girls' softball. While he's reffed football and basketball quite a few seasons, this was his first season as a softball umpire. His friend, Marvin Johnston, was the one who encouraged him to give it a go.

He's obviously done a really good job--at the end-of-the-year association dinner, he was awarded Rookie of the Year. I'm so proud of him. It just goes to show you that even at 65 years of age, it's never too late to learn something new.
Random pictures we've come across--I was probably about 10 in this one.
And Mark and I had probably been married about two years in this one.
I finished another rosette for my ongoing hexie quilt. This is number 10a--so I'm getting closer to completing it. Hopefully in 2017!
And a quilt I call "Put a Ring On It" (actually the Single Girl pattern by Denyse Schmidt) was in a Japanese publication. They sent me a copy, which arrived this week. When I texted Aaron and Christa that my quilt was in a Japanese publication, this was their response.
No clue what it says, but when I thanked Aaron for responding, this is what I got (he's on a roll....). Funny kid--at nearly 39, he still makes me laugh. A lot.


I've decided my summer project will be documenting all the quilts I've made to this point. I have a rough list already made, and I want to add pictures and details. I used to keep up with documentation while we all still used film cameras, and printed doubles of all the pictures we took. Then with digital photography, my quilt pictures are somewhere on my hard drive, and I've gotten pretty lax with documentation. Hopefully this will be the summer I update everything, and even label all the quilts without labels.

This morning, Ella and I had a snack date at the bookstore.

I hope you do something this weekend that makes you smile too.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Really Random Thursday, 5/11/17

Welcome to another episode of Really Random Thursday. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it is nearly the middle of May.

Last Friday, Mark had to umpire softball in the mountain community of Oakhurst, about an hour away from us, on the way to Yosemite National Park. After all the time he has spent working so hard to facilitate my parents' move to assisted living, we decided to spend the entire weekend there for a little R&R.

He dropped me off at the quilt shop in Oakhurst, where my friend, Jullie, picked me up and we spent a wonderful afternoon together.

She lives close to Bass Lake, where I attend the quilting retreat every year. I'm really familiar with that side of the lake. But on Friday, we drove around the other side of the lake--Jullie lived on that side of the lake for about five years.
We had planned to sew at her house, but when we got to her house, I admired the irises in her front yard.

She said friends of hers grow irises, and in fact, the last weekend of April each year they have an iris sale. So we drove to their house so I could admire their irises as well. Also, let me add here that the "portrait" mode on the iPhone 7 Plus is amazing. I love how it blurs the background of these pictures while keeping the flowers in sharp focus.




In one of those "isn't it a small world" things, Jullie stopped to fill up her car, and while I waited, I happened to notice the car in front of us was from Kansas, where Mark and I went to college and then spent the first five years of our marriage. As I was pondering where in Kansas this car might be from, I noticed the little dealer sticker:
Hillsboro?? That is the small town where Mark and I attended Tabor College and met each other! And when I say "small," I mean the population is less than 3,000 people! So I waited for the owners to come back to their car and introduced myself. Of course, it wasn't anyone I knew, but we knew people in common. Small world indeed.

Jullie and I drove back to Bass Lake and had an early dinner at Ducey's Lodge. After too many years of seeing hardly any water in the lake, it is wonderful to see it full again.
This was the view from our hotel room. The weekend was mostly overcast, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. We drove around in the foothills and just generally relaxed.
Saturday night, we knew our friend Marilyn was at her cabin in Bass Lake, and she joined us to dinner.
Our quilting group stayed at her cabin during the quilting retreat at the beginning of March. I left early because of the threat of heavy snow during the last night. Here is a comparison of that Sunday morning in March, and what it looks like at her place now.
Late Sunday afternoon, Mark and I drove to Tenaya Lodge, close to the park entrance for Yosemite, and had dinner.
And then it was back to Fresno Monday morning.

Yesterday was Christa's birthday. A couple of months ago, she mentioned that for some reason, she had no desire to go to Mt. Rushmore. So when I found this birthday card at Target, it was too good to pass up. Just in case you were wondering...
This week has involved post season baseball games for Levi, as well as school concerts. Charlotte and Levi are both in the orchestra at their grade school. Their orchestra teacher is amazing--they are playing high school level music!
It's hard to get good pictures in a school cafeteria, but Mark was able to focus on Charlotte.
Their last song was the Theme from Star Wars. As a fun little addition, they each taped glow sticks to their bows, and for the last four measures of the song, the lights were turned off. It was pretty cool.
My friend, Linda (the friend who convinced me to do my very first trunk show, and now lives in Seattle), was at the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild meeting last night. Members of the Bainbridge Island Modern Quilt Guild were also there, with their raffle quilt--and they had used my Delta Breeze pattern! It was such fun to see this version. If you look more closely, you can see that in the squares of the larger bear paw blocks, they did some improve piecing.
Ella is here this morning. She has taken to stuffing a backpack with items she might need when she is away from home. An odd assortment, but she seems to have all the bases covered.
I'm going to try to get some sewing done this weekend. What kind of plans do you have?