Due to some odd circumstances, I don't want to put this quilt on my quilting blog. But I still want a record of it.
It is a bee quilt, which means many people made a block (or two), sent them to me, and I put them together and quilted them. Sometimes I think other people did well in their fabric choices, but sometimes I'm not thrilled. It's the nature of the bee.
Today I finished the cleaning of the master bedroom! Just in time for summer vacation.
Since the furniture got moved around I can't quite do the same angles like I normally try to do. Instead, here are the before pictures:
And after. We'll also realize I did a few things (like make the bed) to make it look cleaner than normal. Usually there's some not-clean-not-dirty clothes around and a few things on the dresser.
Oh! I didn't get a good picture of the dresser! It is all clean and even has a few flowers on it right now. Well, you can imagine it nice and clean.
I'm going to take a (long? short?) break for the next little bit and try to catch up on some of my other to-do items. I might try to do the laundry room over the summer, but might not.
I have a box problem.
I like to keep an assortment of boxes in the basement, because it's always nice to have "just" the right one. Small, large, thin, cuboid. It means I have a lot of boxes though, and they take up a lot of room. I do think that I go through them relatively quickly though, so I'm not ready to stop my collection yet.
I do get rid of some boxes. I don't keep them all. However, they all get evaluated.
This morning Ben had an efoil lesson today. It was a bit hard to watch him because he was pretty far out on the water, but I got a few pictures and his instructor took a video.
In the afternoon, Isaac and I went with family to see Wicked. I don't remember it at all from the last time I saw it, but it was excellent. Isaac also throughly enjoyed it and laughed several times at the funny things.
Well, I was on-track with getting the to-do list under control before camping, but now it exploded a bit again. It isn't really surprising since camping does take a lot of time on either end, but it's still a bit annoying.
I'm also doing a really good job at growing these plants. I know some are thistles, but what are the others? Any chance they're something interesting?
I got Ben's photos from the weekend:
Yesterday I worked more on my puzzle. It was at a really weird stage where there were only three (out of about one hundred) pieces that wouldn't fit in, but I still only had a success rate of 20% in the afternoon. I worked on it a bit more with Isaac after dinner and we had better luck, so I should be able to finish it tomorrow. (Spoiler: I did)
Oh, it was a good weekend camping. Ben got in Saturday morning after being gone all week, so it was nice to have him back. The kids were significantly less excited to see him than I was expecting.
Joshua palled around with his friend all weekend. We saw him, but not nearly as much as last year. I don't know too much about what they did, but there was laser tag, playground, and scooters. At one point they went to the beach and talked. What did they talk about? Minecraft. Do they talk about anything besides Minecraft? Umm...sometimes?
We also picked up a friend for Isaac to spend Saturday with. She ended up leaving a little bit before supper, but it sounds like she had a great time and it was nice to see Isaac out and about with a friend. He played ball tag and laser tag with the other friends in our group throughout the weekend too.
The weather throughout the weekend was weird. Friday was hot. Saturday was cool. Sunday started out cool, warmed up nicely, and then rained. The rain left sooner than I was anticipating, so we ended up with a camp fire at night. Monday, which I thought would be dry and cool, was a very light rain and cold. People were packing up sooner than normal because it just wasn't all that nice out.
On the way to our last pie/ice cream of the weekend we stopped by the rock for the annual pictures. Apparently there are a lot of traditions associated with this trip.
I can't get away from the "mom mom mom" even when they're at school.
June bugs (probably) came out while we were sitting at the fire camping. First it was just An oddity. Look at this large beattle! But then within 10 minutes we are up to 9
Joshua decided to try this route today - it was a 5.10+ and 5.11-. (He rainbow climbed, which meant he used both routes. It tends to make climbing much easier.) However, those values are still really hard. Isaac has done a 5.10 before but that's his current max. Anyway, the nice thing about the rope is that I can actively belay. There were a few times I pulled Joshua up a few inches so that he could reach the next hand-hold...I think we both had fun with it.
This weekend Joshua asked me if he could play a computer math game, and we settled on multiplication 1-12. That made me wonder...why do we learn through 12 by heart? That's a weird number. Why not 10? Or 15?
My guess was clocks.
The internet was helpful! Well, mostly helpful. The first result helpfully reminded me that multiplication tables don't stop at 12 but go through infinity. It went on to say that there used to be 12 pence in a shilling in England, so to do any shopping you needed to know through your x12 well.
As I'm thinking about this, I realize I use my x12 fairly often. Sometimes converting between hours and days, sometimes between inches and feet. So I guess it's still important to have them memorized.
There was another box sighting in the morning.
Isaac finished his belay test at rock climbing today! Since Joshua was with us he helped with the official test this time.
Today we (Isaac, Joshua, and myself) helped out in nursery at church. I remember when I was required to help out in nursery and not loving it at all. I just wanted to get away from little kids for an hour but instead was with additional little kids. I told myself that I should help out (when my kids were older) to help give the moms a break. Up until this point, I had no desire to do so. But now Isaac is old enough to be an official helper and I thought it would be good to expose both kids to small children.
Both of them did a really good job. Isaac ended up by the kitchen area of the room and stayed there for almost the whole hour. Joshua floated around a little more, but played with the kids well. There were quite a few kids, but only one that had any trouble separating from their parent; it was a rather calm session overall.
You could tell the kids were thinking about it a fair amount, because they had assorted comments and questions over the next few hours.
This morning Isaac (and I) took a belay class. So now he can belay me!! He was weighed down with a ton of sandbags though...it looked pretty funny. I'll get a picture soon.
This evening we went over to a friend's house for dinner. The kids had a great time playing, especially on the trampoline, and the adults enjoyed talking.
I got stuff done today. I finished cleaning the baseboards and the closets in the bedroom. I was already half way done with the closets but still managed to take a lot out. It felt good. I also did a quick clean by my desk and it was needed.
Joshua and I went to Captain Sundae tonight. He had a gift certificate and we both had good ice creams. However, we didn't have a ton of things to talk about.
I promise, I didn't forget to remember Mom's death day. I will admit, it wasn't commemorated like normal though. It was the day after the eclipse, and the first day back to normal things after spring break and so I didn't have time to do it normally. It also took a while to get her flowers; I tried adding them to the grocery order and they didn't get in the order for some reason.
But I did eventually get the flowers, and they filled the kitchen with a beautiful aroma, reminding me of her.
There's also been a song stuck in my head, Untitled Hymn by Chris Rice. It probably helps that I've played it often this past month. It's the last verse that gets me though:
Ben sent flowers for our anniversary. Horizon was very interested in them.
We went to Red Rock for dinner. Just as we were about to leave Jamie and Ashlyn showed up! It is her birthday and they decided to come to the same place. Jamie was kind enough to take a few pictures.
I started rock climbing with a membership today. I'm quite bad - there's a VB+ that I just couldn't finish. Isaac kept trying to help me with it but I kept forgetting it or running into other problems. Luckily, it'll be there for the next few times and I can try it again. (I can usually get the V0s though, so I think this one is an especially hard one for me. It's in a rainbow shape and I have a really hard time going back down.)
Joshua and I joined some friends at his school for math night. It was a lot more fun than I was expecting: the hour and a half went by very quickly. (His friend had several good pictures, but this was the only one Joshua decided to smile for.)
