Getting Ready to Travel

Riverton, Utah     High 62 Low 47

Today is supposed to be a cool, wet day. We were woke up at about 5:30 this morning with lots of lightning and thunder, and the rain coming down hard.

We have been to visit Cindy's Mom several times. She is now in the rehab home. Each time we go to visit she seems to be doing a little better, but unfortunately, she still has a long way to go.

We have decided that we want to finally start doing some of our summer traveling. We will still stay fairly close to home (a two or three day drive) just in case anything happens with Cindy's Mom.

 I still have several Honey dos to finish before we can leave, but can see them getting closer to being complete.

I have been painting a fence between our grass and garden. The paint was in pretty bad shape but is looking a lot better now. I need about two more dry days and It should be finished. It is a metal fence with small pickets that take some time to get painted. It hasn't been painted  since we moved here 18 years ago, so it was probably due for a new paint job.

Yesterday I got a new thing to repair on the fifth wheel. Cindy went to open the slides so she could load things in it. One of the slides came out at the bottom but not the top. When I looked at it, the bracket that bolts the slide to the piston had bent and so the slide was trying to come out crocked. I had to take the bracket off and take it to my friend Ed to see if we could get it straightened. Then I thought we should weld some braces on it to keep it from bending again.When we got that finished, I brought the bracket back home and put it back on. When I tried taking the slide in and out it seemed to work OK, so I guess that's another job finished, even though I hadn't planned on it.

We think we would like to leave right after the first of June and probably head for Northeastern Washington for a little while and then go over to the Coast and and slowly move down to Oregon.

We still want to go to the outdoor quilt show in Sisters the second Saturday in July. From there we don't have any definite plans and will see how it goes.

Thanks for visiting.

Pine Wood Derby, Great Grand Babies, Quilt

Riverton, Utah          High 54 Low 42

It has been cold and raining for the last two days. With a high of 54, I have found that I turned into an Arizonian, I have been rather cold for the last while.

Taylor had a pine wood derby to attend with the Cub Scouts. His dad did most of the shaping and getting weights into the car. I stained and varnish it for him.

Taylor's car is the brown one is lane 3 in this photo.

His cars was the fastest in this race. We thought it did really well. He sure got excited .

There were probably 15 cars which raced each other and all the boys got to run their cars several times. Taylor got one of the ribbons. His car was third fasted on average which wasn't too bad.

Taylor getting his award.

The track from the finish.

The one on the right of this photo (lane 1) was named the snail. It was the fastest in the races.

We went to see the two Great Grand Sons and this time we got lots of pictures. The older one is 6 months old and the younger one is two weeks old.

Ryler is 6 months old.

Jasper is 2 weeks old.

Seeing kids this young sure reminds us how old we are getting, but it was nice to be able to see them

Jasper's Mom with Ryler.

Great Grand Ma with the two babies.

Penny had to check things out.

I have been busy getting the finished quilts quilted. The one called Labyrinth took me a while to finish, with all that has been going on. It took me almost 3 weeks to quilt. When we bought the kit, it came in shades of purple and blue. We saw one in grays and black and I think the look came out better, but they were quilted with an over-all pattern and I did various size pebbles on the different sections, which I liked better.

Of coarse, Penny had to check it out.

Cindy's Mom is back to the rehab facility and seems to be doing a lot better this time, but we are holding off traveling to see how she does.

Thanks for visiting.

Mom Update and Quilt Show

Riverton, Utah            High 79 Low 53

The weather lately has been nice, cloudy a few times, but mostly sunny.

Cindy's Mom is still in the hospital but seems to be doing better and may get to go to the assisted care place tomorrow. When we have been there she seems to sleep a lot and is still not eating much. Linda seems encouraged by the progress, but I still think it will be a long time before she gets to go home.

We went to the large Salt Lake City Quilt Show. It was held a week earlier than last year. When we got there we found out that they had a very different layout than in the past and it took us a little while to get used to what they had done in order for us to see all the quilts.

Some of the quilts are very ornate while others are simpler. There was one section that had teen age quilters on display. they seemed to be well made.

Cindy got a lot of pictures and I have put some of them on this post. This year it was hard for me to pick out my favorite.

 The eagles are embroidered with the exception of the center panel.

 Cindy thought this one would make nice use of scraps.

The flowers are all three dimensional.

I liked the quilting on this one.

This was made from 1 inch strips.

These two won some of the ribbons.

There was a whole section based on US National Parks and another section with famous women as the theme. There also was a section of small quilts made to look like Van Gogh paintings.

A whole wall of Van Gogh.

I don't know which National Park this is supposed to be.

I just liked these two.

As always there were a lot of vendors at the show, but we managed to only buy me a new pair of scissors.

Saturday after we went to see Cindy's Mom, there was an estate sale I had found that had Fabric. The sale started on Thursday and we didn't have much hope there would be much left, but wow were we wrong. The man running the sale told us his mother had the whole basement full of fabric (she probably had more fabric than Cindy) and there was still a lot left. He was selling the fabric by the tote full for $20.00 with a nice tote and lid. We probably had between 40 and 50 pounds of fabric in the tote, which figured out to be about 17 cent a yard if we figured the lighter weight. Score one for us, besides can you ever really have too much fabric? I really think this lady did.

Thanks for visiting.

Plans on Hold

Riverton, Utah         High 56 Low 41

The weather here turned to be rainy and cold. It is supposed to warm up later in the week.

We had planned on leaving for the west coast, probably to the Redwoods again and then up the Oregon and Washington coast. We still hope to make it to Sisters, Oregon for the large outdoor quilt show but aren't sure now.

The large quilt show in Salt Lake City starts tomorrow and we hope to go to it on Friday.

Cindy's Mom was admitted to the hospital as I mentioned in my last post. She finally got released and went to the Rehab Center, for about three hours. She was having trouble breathing and her oxygen level got down to the high forty's even with oxygen.

Linda called the paramedics and she went back to the hospital in an ambulance. We went to see her yesterday and she wasn't doing very well, not eating, and drinking very little. They thought she may have pneumonia but the tests weren't in so nobody was sure.

Cindy's Mom is 89 and not in the greatest of health at best.

Cindy called Linda today and she still isn't doing very well so we are going to spend some time with her in the hospital tomorrow. 

In the meanwhile I have quilted 3 baby quilts and a queen size quilt and am working on what, for me, is a very difficult quilt to quilt. It is taking a lot of time to get the look I want. When it is finished I will put a picture on the blog.

Cindy has finished two more quilts since we have been home so I still feel like I am way behind.

I did get the fifth wheel back and the bill came in at just under $300.00. At least it is ready to go when we are finally able to leave.

Penny has been feeling neglected while we have been so busy and have to leave her home so much.  She is a very clingy little dog and seems to like being with her people. She still sleeps under the covers next to me most nights. She does a lot better in Yuma and while we are traveling.

Thanks for visiting.