Kind Hearted Lady Lives Here

I love folklore and train folklore is right up there for me. My Grandfather, whom I don't really remember, worked for the B&O in the Toledo yards. (Toledo currently has the 5th largest train yard in the country, down from the third largest in pre-interstate days. Just thought you'd want to know.) And oddly, the annual hobo convention is still held in Britt, Iowa~~and Britt is my maiden name. (Do-dee-do-do, do-de-do-do~~that's me singing the Twilight Zone theme music.)

Anywho, my Dad had HO model trains, and now our son DD has O scale trains. We thought FTD would be the train guy, but it turns out to be DD. I'm making him a quilt based on hobo signs that were left as messages in the jungles all across the country. I found a book in the Greybull, Wyoming Big Horn Quilt Shop by Debra G. Henninger for inspiration. On a quilt shop hop last fall, I found fabric that reminds me of old man shirts, so I bought several fat quarters, raided my stash, and viola, quilt makins'. (By the by, to use this book, you need a pretty good knowledge of quilty stuff. I changed several blocks, so as to not have to make itty, bitty triangles, or to make some of the blocks more closely resemble the actual signs. A couple of the blocks are repeated, which makes me think the editorial staff nodded off at some point. Must not hae been quilters.)

Nearly everyone's favorite sign is a kitty cat. If this was scrawled near your house it meant, "Kind hearted lady lives here." That Kind Lady would be likely to give you a sandwich and water or milk, maybe an old, worn out shirt, and always a kind word. Did those Kind Ladies have sons and brothers who were riding the rails? Boyfriends looking for a new life and job? Classmates searching for adventure? Goofballs just hangin' with their peeps? Who knows.

But I do know lots of Kind Hearted Ladies. Those of you who live nearby, turn your computer off now. I don't want you to peek at your valentine gift from me.



















The rest of you, send me your favorite colors and your address...... or your Kind Hearted Lady's favorite colors. . . .

Twenty Years Ago Today... Feb. 7...

. . . I still hadn't quite decided if I should once again broach the subject of trying to adopt a child or not with DH. It was snowy and all. . . we seemed content. Maybe I'd wait until school was out in the summer to think about trying again.



Twenty years ago today, unbeknownst to us, our first son was born.











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But last week, I worked on more blocks for kid #2. (There's part of the surprise ending, if you hadn't figured this out already....)

I've got lots more Hobo Quilt blocks done, but Blogspot is just not being very nice about uploading pics, so here's just three more.

Twenty Years Ago Today...

... I was sitting in my barely-heated-over-the-weekend classroom, thinking there had to be more to life than going to work on the weekend just to grade papers, pretty much because I didn't have anything better to do.

DH and I had tried for seven years to get pregnant. All the the testing showed it was me. Nothing worked properly. Damn. We finally decided to look into adopting~~my Mom had been watching the news, when one of the stations showed weekly stories about kids waiting to be adopted through our county agency. The summer before this day, 20 years ago, we started taking that step. Before the ink was dry on our license to foster/adopt, two little brothers came to live with us. Then their birth mom showed up and the court let her try parenting again. (Within 3 weeks, it all went to hell, and they were assigned to yet another home. The rules have changed somewhat to avoid this situation, thank goodness.) DH was spent after this episode and resigned himself to a life with just he and me and his daughter. We'd be a tiny little family of three. I tried to wrap my head around this and was succeeding pretty well, until that day, 20 years ago.

I told myself that pretty soon, I'd talk to him about maybe sorta kinda looking into trying it again.

Maybe.

The Call From the Wild

It's the call I wait for all year--my supervisor's voice on the phone saying, "It's rehire time, are you available?"

Awesome. Back to Parkadise in mid-May, home in early October. Sweet. Really, really sweet.

The Non-Storm

After a week of hype, the storm was only scary stormy here for about an hour. We got 4 nice fluffy inches of snow on Tuesday, and then Tuesday night when the 'dry slot' got here around 1 a.m. the winds came with it. It roared so oddly that I opened a window to listen. I thought there was truck stuck out front or something. The wind blew straight out of the north, pelting sleet on our bedroom windows, where there in normally no moisture. But after that, we ended up with a couple more inches of nice snow and that was it. Just to the north of us, they got more ice--schools are still closed up there today, and there was fatal car accident this morning. But here, all is well. No major loss of power, and the roads are in pretty good shape. It's cold though~~we aren't used to those 7 degree mornings. I can't begin to imagine how my friends in ND, WY, and MT deal with the minus 30s that they've been experiencing.

We did have a classic DD moment during all this. When the low pressure front moved in on Tuesday night, DD went freaky on us~~really, really weirdly cranky and just plain mean. After he finally crashed, I looked at the tv and there was the meteorologist saying that the low pressure front had just arrived. DD and FTD both have sixth-sense type reactions to various weather fronts. This one was a doozy.

And on the upside, I started DD's hobo signs quilt. The blocks are only 6 inches (5.5 finished size) so it will take 110 plus the sashing to make a double size quilt. There are 55 blocks in the book. So I'm making doubles of each. Yesterday, I made exact doubles, but as time goes on I might mix them up some.

The blocks are designed three different ways: paper piecing for some, regular piecing for others, and applique for the rest. The artist took the hobo signs and put a more 'quilty' spin on them. Since DD has autism and is a boy, he's more interested in the signs looking like signs. So I changed a couple so far to look more 'realistic.' Actually, it was easier--the ones I changed had lots of nasty little triangles. I try really hard not to do nasty little triangles. They hate me. I hate them. (Yeah, I hear ya~~practice practice practice.) And did I mention that I don't know how to paper-piece stuff yet? So I'm actually enjoying looking at new ways to do the blocks.

Here's the first batch. One of these days, I'll label them, but until blogspot stops messing with the hyperlinking dealie, I'll just add the blocks. You figure them out. :)

Snow Days~~edited with new pics

After a week of hype, it's finally snowing here. Three or four inches last night, no biggie, and more tonight. We're right on the border of snow/freezing rain. Everyone prefers snow over freezing rain, so we'll see how the night goes.

I did get to back to the sewing machine. I'm cranking out a smaller quilt for a special young lady, using fussy cut Debbie Mumm fabric and one of my favorite things, chunks of stuff. For the chunk part I made strips 3 inches wide, then chunked 'em up in various widths. Then I randomly sew them back into strips. I used five fabrics for the chunks. It went together quickly, and since I'd like to give it to her next Saturday, I decided to machine quilt it myself. After surfing the web for a long time, I decided to use masking tape to make stripes. Originally, I was just going to put one line down one side of each piece of tape. But instead, I put a line down each side, using a 1/4 inch space between tape and stitches. Since the quilt is busy and 'horizontal' I put the strips on diagonally, creating diamonds. I also went high and outside on the thread--it's blue for the rivers and streams around here. Weird choice, but there it is. I also made binding last night, but didn't get to it today~~too busy breaking up fights since the boys were both home today. And of course, there was snow to shovel. And here's the finished quilt, complete with binding and the whole works.
This is a sneak peak about who gets this quilt. If anybody spills the beans before Saturday. . . .

Here are the updated photos: (I'd label them but blogspot has something weird going on with hyperlinking anything I type in between the pics.)

The top pic is the quilt with the tape for quilting lines.
The next one is the finished binding and the whole works!
And the bottom one is a sneak peak at who the quilt will be going to---don't tell her!

FTD's Quilt, Done!

Tomorrow I'll post all the details, using my usual rapier-sharp wit, but for now, FTD's quilt is ready for the quilter! Pine cone borders to polish it off!

FTD's Quilt, Almost Done!

Woot! I got all the blocks on FTD's quilt put together. It took me longer to straighten them all out than to sew them together, which probably means I didn't spend enough time cutting neatly the first time,* then watching my seams more carefully as I sewed. Oh well, it's not like these are going to quilt shows or anything.

It's a little more Christmas-y than I envisioned, but using the traditional red center, for the hearth of the log cabin, and green logs, welllll..... what did I expect?

I've got pine bough and pine cone fabrics to add sashings around it. That should go fairly quickly~~at least as quickly as I can shoving that much material around. I did see a video of a quilt/sewing table a gal made using stryofoam and heavy duty vinyl sheets. . . hmmmmm. . .

The hues of the darkest of the three darks actually has a lot of black in it, so those are much more pronounced than the others, but that just adds another dimension to it.

All in all, so far I'm really pleased. And FTD said, "Cool." High praise indeed!

* I need that Vagabond Sizzix--it will probably be the first thing I order after I go back to work and get the traveling expenses paid off. I'll order mine from ihaveanotion.blogspot.com!

My One and Probably Only Valentine Crafty Thing

I've been reading the CraftyBlogggingMoms posts (I read a dozen or so) they're all busy making Valentine's Day stuff. I'm not much of a romantic, so it doesn't really float my boat, but here's my contribution. Yippee. It's corduroy and nice and soft. And I do love the colors actually~~for a change from my earth tone stuff.

And did I ever mention how much I love our living room? Here's one reason why:

The room is five sided which makes decorating a real puzzle. We've tried several different things. And since the Man Cave isn't done, DH uses this room for the office, hence the pile of crap on the table there to the right. But here's where I am even as I type:

I have everything I need to make cushions for the window seats. Everything but the courage. My current excuse for not finishing them is that I'm using the foam to fill in the gap on FTD's bed. We bought him a log bed last year (I think I wrote about that last March) and got him a double size frame. He still has a perfectly good twin size mattress, so I'm using that. Turns out the foam for the window seats perfectly fills the gap. So after I rob a bank and get enough dough for a new mattress for him, I'll get right to work on those cushions. Yep. Uh huh. I will.

Another Day, Another Party

When DH and I designed our house, we knew we wanted space for parties. We sort of gave up having cozy little spots, but the design has worked out wonderfully otherwise.

Today's party was a social outing for the kids in FTDs class at school. All of the students have special needs, ranging from multiple issues to deafness to Down Syndrome to autism. We planned this as the Cabin Fever party. We had hoped to go out back and get a good ol' roaring fire going and roast hot dogs and marshmallows and have cocoa, but since it didn't go above 15 degrees today we just stayed inside and had sloppy joes and cocoa and ice cream sundaes. The kids played with the Wii and xbox and the grown ups had a chance to just hang out together, not worrying about what other people think of our kids. We don't get many opportunities like that.

FTD thought maybe 5 people were coming~~his teacher, 3 kids, and a parent. So when 18 folks showed up.... complete with walkers, wheel chairs, canes, what ever, it was quite a crowd! And they stayed over an hour and a half later that we thought. FTD doesn't usually do parties--too much unpredictable commotion. But he lasted nearly through to the end. We had plenty of food and a really nice afternoon.

And now I'm pooped.

Tomorrow we're helping a kid in FTD's Scout troop with his Eagle Court of Awards Ceremony, so that will pretty much shoot the day for us. I was hoping to get back to the sewing machine, but since I had to clean yesterday and this morning, and will have to again tomorrow morning, . . . well hells bells. Maybe Monday.

Two Boys, Two Docs

Our trip to the U-M hospitals yesterday with DD went well. The on-site tests went well, and the do at home one, which includes xrays on 2 different days, should be a snap. And oh, yeah, there's something wrong with the poor kid. What we do to 'fix' it remains to be seen, and will of course, involve several more trips to U-M. But now we know the enemy.

Today, I took FTD to the dentist, for a root canal, which in his case involves "IV sedation." Nice try, but they couldn't goof him up enough for the procedure. So Plan B is to pull the tooth along with his wisdom teeth. Yippee. Are we having fun yet?

And superMom that I be, I managed to get all this done during ice storms. We drove up to A2 the night before, which turned out be be a really good call, and today school was canceled all over the place, so we slid to the dentist's office and home again. And now all of my boys are here, my headache should disappear when I find some tylenol, and then its back to the crafty corner and FTD's quilt. That will be nice. Really, really nice.

Some of my Great Peeps!

My, my, my. I've been hard at work on FTD's quilt, then worked on something else for a while, and then just happened to check FB before getting back to work on FTD's quilt. All of a sudden, right there at the top of the screen were these darlings! Four of my great nieces and nephews, wearing 4 of the 11 pairs of jammie bottoms I made for Christmas gifts. What a bunch of great kids. The boys got skulls and crossbones, the girls got elephants and modern swirls. Wow, this either means they fit, or at least they're pretty dang close to fitting. Hmm, maybe Mommy and Daddy need matching jammies, too. . . ..

One Block, Soon to Join Its Friends

This is a single block from FTD's Log Cabin Quilt. I went traditional on this one and used the red center, symbolizing the hearth of the home. I used two different centers and when I was sewing the blocks together I took no heed of where they ended up. Most Log Cabin quilts are square, but this one will be rectangular, so I broke out my colored pencils (oh, I so love colored pencils) to figure out what to do with the top and bottom rows. I'll be done with it pretty soon--today if the good Lord's willin' and the creek don't rise.

This just in (about an hour later). FTD and I spread the 'finished so far' quilt on his bed and both decided it needs another row of blocks on each side. Oh, well, what's another 16 blocks anywho. They sew up in a jif, and I have plenty of material~~I think. . . :)

Vote for Me and FTD!

Okay, so I'll try to put the links for the contest here. The winner gets a $50 gift certificate to the Fat Quarter Shop, which is a huge deal! So vote here at the Quilting Gallery.

I'm trying to upload their avatar to my bloglist, but that ain't a-happenin' yet. Gotta be in less of a rush than I am now, I guess. Can't wait to get to camp!

Off and Running, er Sliding, er Skiing er.. . .

I'm heading out to Girl Scout Camp Libbey today with the Green Hats! Woo hoo! And we got 5 or 6 inches of nice, ski-able snow. I'm taking so much junk for 2 days that I look like a bag lady, loading all the crap up. I'm also in charge of breakfast for Friday, so I made a meatloaf, yep meatloaf for then. I'm curious to see if this new recipe passes muster with some great cooks.

I feel so guilty for leaving the family behind that I've been working like crazy getting ready. Most exciting news is that I got all 48 squares for FTD's quilt finished. I showed him a couple of ways we can sew them together and he likes the Barn Raising the best. Yea! I'll sew those together next week. Then it's off to the quilt shop, yet again. I might look for a shop with a faster turn-around. I dropped off my Glowing Pine Tree quilt in early November and haven't heard a word from the shop. I'm even going to bind that one myself, so what's taking so long?

So anywho, I'm also entering a quilt contest through another blog. I'm new to this contesting stuff, but I'll give it a try. Each week they select a theme and we send in pics. This week is snowmen, so here's what I'm sending:


I call this one FTD's Snowman, because he helped pick out the colors. I was hoping I could get him to help with the sewing, since it's 90% squares, but that was a no go. I don't think I still have the designer's name. I'm starting a file of some sort to keep track of designers and stuff. Yeah, right, it's on my to-do list. Right up there with "win a Nobel Prize." So anywho, I'll try to post the links to vote for FTD's Snowman. I'll put it in another post, in case I screw it up, which is likely.

Quilting! Yea!

I try really, really hard not to have too many crafty things going at one time. So I told myself I couldn't start FTD's quilt until the Christmas stuff is put away. Well, most of it is put away.... so I started his log cabin quilt today. It took me several tries to find the colors and sizes I like. I've no idea how long this will take. It's a little tedious doing the same block over and over. I might have to do some pillows or something to break up the monotony.

I've got several projects for my peeps lined up, too. Table decorations for DH's Rotary Club's auction/dinner/dance in February; Green Hat roster and teaching a couple of other girls to use excel; and helping to type up the Green Hat Pocket Songbook should keep me out of trouble while I wait to hear about when I'll start back to work. And next week is "Take the Boys to Doctors Week." That will be a tough one.

And I'm going to camp this week! Woo hoo! The Green Hats are renting one of the Lodges at Libbey for a couple of days this week. Scrabble, Scattergories, snow, singing, and not much else. Sweet. (Oh, yeah, and no laundry or squabbling boys!)

The 12th Day of Christmas, my Son came to me.

Nineteen years ago, on the 12th day of Christmas--January 6th--we finalized the adoption of our older son, FTD the special delivery. He came to us in the dark, early evening, during one of those snow showers that makes you glad you're inside. We heard about him 24 hours earlier. He was supposed to show up right after school. I was teaching fourth grade at St. Richard Elementary in Swanton at the time. My class had scheduled a press conference, of all things, to announce the opening of their community recycling center. I had to be there that day, to tie up loose ends, get my lesson plans in order, and explain to the kids why I'd be gone for a while.

We didn't have anything for babies in the house. CSB (the local child welfare organization) staff made it clear that there would be no healthy white babies coming through their doors. We said fine, we'll be very happy with a couple of rowdy little pre-school aged boys. So we had two twin beds, dressers, all sorts of stuff ready for toddlers. When our caseworker said the child was 4 days old, did we want him or not, all I could think was, "What's wrong?" She said, nothing and since he's healthy the hospital wants him out a.s.a.p. .

Holy cow. I've always maintained that you can never find a ranger when you want one, and I couldn't find mine. He was closing gates in the sloppy snow. When he got home, BadAmy came over, too. She was just 21, and needed more cash for college. Talk about a weird evening, college tuition and diaper pails all in the same conversation.

We decided to give it a go.

I got to school early the next morning and was greeted by a co-worker. She said, "Why are you here so early?" "I'm expecting." "That's fantastic!! When?" "Today at 3." Dead silence.

Baby didn't arrive at 3. We waited. We paced. We looked out the window at the storm. Our house was on a road with no other homes, and for city folks, it always seemed to be so far away from civilization. And yes, it is dark out here. All sorts of horrible scenarios raced through my head. The hospital changed its policy. The birth mother took the baby and ran. The agency found someone else. . . . the list went on and on. Finally, out the window, I saw two sets of headlights, slowly creeping down the road. Our caseworker came with the baby's caseworker to be sure they could find our house. The baby had spent the entire day at CSB, where there are lots of kids, but not too many 4 day-old, 6.5 oz. babies. He so enamored the staff that they didn't want him to leave. But he had to come home. He had a borrowed onesie, 2 bottles of formula, couple of diapers, and a quilt. That was it.




During that day, my sister had rounded up the troops and by the time we got home, there were bottles (I had no idea how to use 'em), diapers, clothes, car seats, high chairs, etc. etc.. (Baby crapanalia, I calls it.) We didn't have a bassinet, but like so many babies before him, he fit nicely into a dresser drawer.

The next three weeks held few memories for me. It's like a dream now. We did run into some issues later, given that he was our foster son, in a program called "legal risk adoption." We nearly ran that risk, but just under a year later, on Epiphany, he was ours. What joy.


Yep, the gifts of the 12th day of Christmas are the best.

YooperVille Goes Back Into the Boxes

I love Christmas~~the lights, the meaning, the cookies, the trees, the snow, the lights, the parties, rummaging through the boxes of stuff from our parents, the lights~~all that stuff makes me happy. So putting away all the stuff makes me not so happy.

I took the tree down on New Year's Day. We always get a live tree and this year's was a doozie. (See my post from 12/xx) It took up so very much of the family room that I decided to take it down earlier than usual. I haven't put the boxes away just yet, since I was birding all day on Jan. 2 and exhausted on Jan. 3 (not to mention DH is sick with bronchitis and very gloomy). We had a bit o' warmth, so the goofy inflatable train and penguin made it as far as the front porch from the front yard. The lights down the driveway stay up all winter, so the school bus can see where our yard is. It really is dark at frickin' 6:30 a.m. when the boys have to get on the bus. I used a lot, and I do mean a lot, of fresh greens all over the house this year. I'm slowing getting those taken down.


But the stuff I hate to pack up and put away the most is my YooperVille Village. Most folks put up nice Victorian villages. Uh uh, not me baby. If I could find shacks with tar paper on 'em, I'd use 'em. As it is, I use Lemax stuff and then change the names on the buildings to suit my own funky taste.

So here's a little tour. I had to cram the stuff differently this year--more stuff and less table. And thanks to blogspot's crappy picture handling stuff, this tour jumps from the UP to here to there and back again. Don't get whiplash trying to follow this.


It started so innocently~~four little fishing shanties from Lemax. I got them on sale at The Andersons on an impulse buy. Dang you Lemax! Now I own dozens of buildings, hundreds of trees, and I plot out ways to use the stuff all year! I'm possessed! I'm obsessed!




I found this addition this year--when I swore I wouldn't buy any more buildings. I had to give it a proper name of course~~there really is a Yooper Tourist Trap! And it's a riot.



Odd things happened in YooperVille this year. One morning I came out and nascar had taken over every building. Then there was the Giant Squid invasion. I'd move it, it came back. I gave up.

A certain someone had to add some other stuff. Hmm, would that be a kid who has lots of O gauge model stuff maybe?

On the back side of YooperVille is West Whereever, Wyotnana. These buildings will be properly named Bucks 4-T next year.
Here in Whitehouse, my friends the Rhoades are the suppliers of the Big D Family tree each year.BadAmy arrived on the scene this year, too. So much for me not buying any new buildings. She wishes she had a house sitting on a mountain.



Molly and Joe, Montana's bestest fishin' huntin' guides, do have a place. Okay, their cabin isn't quite this big, but they do have the biggest hearts. And that's DH's Old Yellow Bus--just like the one he drove in '64. Great stories, those. Ask him to regale you sometime.

Here's a bird's eye view of half of YooperVille, minus the Giant Squid.

But the best part about YooperVille is that we answer the age old question:
Does the Bear poop in the woods?Apparently not if there's an outhouse around.

Birding and Beavers

I must be sort of a grown-up or something. I was turned loose on my own to count birds on the Grand Rapids-Waterville, aka Oak Openings, Christmas Bird Count. My skills pale when it comes to my friends~~I'm lucky to know so many awesome birders. Compared to my non-birding friends, I'm pretty darn good. But whoa, when some of the best birders in the country are leading counts around here, I feel like a complete ninny. But this year, I got to put my skills to the test.

I opted to stay in the park this year, because two friends, Laurie and daughter Annie, decided they'd like to spend some time birding with me. This wonderful family has "followed" us around the country as I work. Vince, the dad, and Matt, the son, have been closely involved with FTD's Scout Troop. Vince and Laurie are both Really, Really Smart People, being professors of pharmacy stuff. Both of the kids are also Really, Really Smart and Talented. And the whole gang is rib-tickling funny. Anywho, they visited us when I worked at Acadia, and then totally surprised me in the middle of a program at YNP. Annie wants me to get a job in Hawaii next, figuring they'll come visit us there. I haven't got a handle on the logistics for that one, sorry Annie.

Laurie and Annie said they could meet me on Birding Day around 10 a.m., so I took the time between sun up and then to scope out the new beavers at Evergreen Lake in the Park. For years, one of our naturalists sort of joked about bringing beavers home with him from his camp in Michigan. We were never sure if he'd really do it or not. He swears he didn't do it, but the beaver are here and taking up residence. They were first sighted about 3 years ago--a road kill actually--then on Swan Creek just outside of the park. They've worked their way to Evergreen Lake, and have found a nice quiet spot to build.


I'll have to do some research, but I'm guessing beavers haven't lodged in this area for close to 100 years. Awesome. And the rest of the good news is that they're in an area where they won't bother anyone else's property.


Meanwhile back to the birdies. . . . .

We three birded from 10 to about 3, finding darn few birds, although many of the ones we did see were "lifers" for Laurie and Annie. Bluebirds in winter~~always a crowd pleaser~~cedar waxwings~~lots of 'em~~Golden Crowned Kinglets, and lots of the usual suspects. We walked a section of the Wabash Cannonball Trail in the park and were treated with red-headed woodpeckers, but missed the pileated by moments. One of the most noticeable things on this count were the low numbers, not only in species but also in individuals. Our section was no different. But driving back, we hit pay dirt. I was driving on the Parkway, when whoosh, a "flying cinder block" by Laurie's description, zoomed past, being chased by a nuthatch and a really ornery blue jay. This was Annie's first encounter with an owl in flight. It landed and took quite a squawking-to from the jay. (The first pic is for you, Loopy.)



Then the Barred Owl did us the favor of turning around and winking in the ever-so-brief sunbeam.

This event pretty much cements my title of World's Laziest Birder. They come to me.

Sa-weet.

Crafting with the Stars!

Okay, this is so goofy and so fun I just had to try it. Blogger Tam from SewDangCute is putting on the 2nd Annual Crafting with the Stars contest. I just sit around the house and twiddle my thumbs all day, so I decided to play along. Uh huh. Since I didn't take pictures of all 11 pairs of jammie bottoms I made for the Great-Bunch (the great nieces and nephews), entering the ho-ho-ho felty banner I made for wonderful SILs and nieces. There's also one that says Shalom and another that says badamy for you-know-who.

I didn't look at the other crafty stuff, cuz I'd never enter anything of mine, especially something so dang simple and easy and for me~~FUN.

Owling with the Lil' Ripper

If you want to have a magical night, take a seven year old owling.

Last week, Tuesday, the Lil' Ripper (my great-nephew) spent the day and night with us. We first went to the Toledo Zoo for the Lights Before Christmas, where my younger son, DD, was running his trains with the Swanton Area Railroad and Model Club (or something like that). DD is "in charge" of the display each Tuesday. He takes his responsibility seriously--in his own DD way, of course. Any who, all four of us and the little guy all went over. The highlight there was the octopus, which was actually moving~~and moving a lot! Big hit with kids of all ages.

When we got home, we were all bundled up and I asked Lil' Ripper if he wanted to go owling. Now mind you, he kept telling me over and over how tired he was while we were driving home. But he re-energized as soon as we hit the driveway (my guys all three crashed).

Some time ago, I had told LR how to walk silently in the woods, so we did. But somehow, with him in the lead, it morphed to "walk like a penguin--they're very quiet you know, Anna." I had a hard time being quiet since laughing out loud was what I did after he told me that. But dutiful grand-auntie that I am, I walked like a penguin.

I took him over to the scout trail across the street. For a kid who wants a night light when he sleeps, he was completely fearless walking in the woods in the nearly pitch black. I had my headlamp on as we started, but on the way back he told me to turn it off--it might scare the animals. Huh? and Wow! He also told me we had to stop every now and then and be sure to look back for animals, too. What a hoot.

After walking in a few dozen yards, I told him I'm try to call for owls. Have I ever mentioned that my calls suck? Try as I will, I never seem to get it right. But to a 7 year old with a high, squeaky voice it mattered not. I told him he should try it with me. We went for Barred Owl, as it's the easiest for a kid to remember. And what a joy to stand in the silent woods with darling kid and calling for owls~~and to savor the companionable silence in-between. Not a thing stirred or called back to us, but the fun is in the trying.

It really was cold, and I really was tired, even if Lil' Ripper wasn't, so we walked home. The Christmas lights were still on at home, and they gently lit our way. Of course, for a bedtime story it was Owl Moon by Jan Yolen, followed by North County Night by Daniel San Souci. Being a too-cool 7 year old means being too cool to snuggle for books very often, but that night we did. It might be the last for he and I, but if it was, it was the best.

Birding Time Again!

While most folks think of a nice relaxing Christmas break, lots of crazies are gearing up the the annual Christmas Bird Counts. Here's the deal.

Over 100 years ago, somebody said, "Let's see how many birds there are in the world." And thus began the Audubon Society's Annual Bird Count Census. It's organized now, as opposed to folks just running around the countyside yelling out, "Six creepers!" and stuff like that. We now have Count Circles--areas that are deemed to be birdily important or just plain fun (like the Rudolph Ohio Count--get it--Christmas count????) NW Ohio has several very important count circles. The North Coast, aka northern Ohio along Lake Erie, is a Big Time Birding Area. The Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge is there, along with Magee Marsh State Wildlife Refuge, East Harbor State Park, Maumee Bay State Park, and the Crane Creek area. We, of the Oak Openings, are west of the Lake, having been left behind by the ancient Lakes Whittelsey and Warren. And though it sounds like there is lots of land left on the lake, don't be fooled. Most of the marshland/wetland is gone. Conservation, as usual, was too little too late. But I digress.

Back to count circles. A point is picked and a circle with a diameter of 15 miles is drawn on the map around that point. Ta-daa, a count circle. Teams of birders go out on a given day, from mid-December to early January, and count all the birds they can find. We count species and number of individual birds--it's a census.


NW Ohio has several count circles: the Toledo, the Islands, the Refuge, blah blah blah, and the Big One: The Grand Rapids/Waterville Count. The other name for this one is the Oak Openings Count. Birders spend their holidays scoping out where the good stuff is, and I ain't talking candy canes here. Maybe Sandhill Cranes, though. With or without this rotten head cold, I'll head out with my fellow birders for a day full of chickadees, titmices, hawks, and who-knows-what else on Sunday.

Kidding aside for a moment, this is an incredibly important chunk of research. Because of the longevity of the counts, we can use this citizen science for important longitudinal studies, not only of a given species, but of trends. For example, the trend toward having more boreal species in more southernly locales was among the first research-based evidence of global climate change.

Now back to the funny stuff. Oh, wait, I'm all out of funny stuff--the head cold does that. Anywho, there are birders all over the place scoping out what may or may not be here, and any rarities that turn up a week before or after Count day are tallied, so it all counts.

But here's where I need your help. Yes you! Fill your bird feeders, and if you live inside the Oaks Count circle, check your feeder on Sunday to see what and how many of the whats are there. Email or text me, so we can add your numbers to our tally. It really is important.

And if you don't live in my count circle, contact your local Audubon Society to see if there are still counts going on in your neck of the woods. Really, get out there and get birding.

Ho, Ho, Ho,More Quilting Time~~ I wish!

After getting 11 pairs of jammie bottoms made and delivered for some of my grand-nieces and nephews, and 6 little felt ho-ho-ho oh-oh-oh banners for the grown-up girls done, I can now think about the next project.

Hmmmmm, the Badlands quilt needs a backing, quilting, and binding. IOW, the hard part. I'll shelve that for a while. Then there's FTD's Log Cabin quilt. I can't think of my self as a quilter yet, since I haven't done some of the basics--like a log cabin quilt. That is a repetitive process, and I think I could multi-task that one with other stuff. DD will get a quilt with hobo signs on it. I found a wonderful book at the Greybull WY quilt shop last fall which I'll use for his. Lesee, also on the list, the YNP postcard quilt, which will take a bit more creativity than I can muster at the moment, and several "quilt-by-number" things (as my cutie SIL calls them) that are easy, but take a chunk of time with no interruptions. So which will it be? Or I could win a give-away and add to the stash! Ya-hoo--now there's an idea with merit!

So here's my plan. Enter a quilt stash give-away contest. Lots of bloggers do this somehow--you know, the bloggers that actually make some dough off their blogs. That sounds like work to me. I guess I need to post a pic here from another blog. (Now I'll probably get tagged or something weird.) Then I write a "Queen for a Day" story about why I need more stash.
Well duh. Doesn't everybody need more stash? (Actually, I don't. I'm trying to live leaner--for our space considerations, financial considerations, and well, just for living leaner. But a girl's gotta quilt! Need more material--need stuff for the quilt-by-numbers projects, for the postcard project, and DD's hobo quilt. So, okay, here's a shout out for freebies!)

Oh wait, what a ditz! I'm supposed to write about what happened on our Christmas Eve. Wait, I did that--remember the 11 pairs of jammies and 6 felt banners? Now I remember what I did on Christmas Eve. I had promised myself 2.5 months ago that I wouldn't be at the machine on Christmas Ever--or worse, Christmas Day. Well, my bad. At least I was done on Christmas Eve. And wrapping is a snap around here, since I've been using cloth bags for like um, 20 years or so. Soooooo much beautiful Christmas material, and so few walls for any more quilts. So I make bags of all sizes for wrapping. Sew the bottom and sides, fold down a hem on the top, done. No lining, no finishing seams, no even bothering to change thread color. Cripes, the kids just yank the bags off anyways, so why worry about the details. The family thinks I should make them and sell them, but even with on-sale material, the cost/price/hassle ratio just isn't there. Then it would be work, not fun. See a theme here? So anywho, a nice big, new chunk o' fat quarters would just about round out my stash. Just about. . . . . :)

Holiday Home Tour

We had a nice turnout for the 3rd Annual Whitehouse Community Library Holiday Home Tour last Sunday. Numbers were a little bit down, I think, from past years. In part, it was due to the weather. We finally got some snow and of course it started right at 1 pm when the tour started and by 2 it was really coming down. At our house, we took turns shoveling the front steps.

We not only got the house decorated nicely, but it forced us to get several much needed fix-it/do it projects done. Since we didn't exactly finish the house 15 years ago when we finally moved in, we're now faced with repairs and finishing all at the same time. Among the 'do it' jobs were painting all the closet doors (only one left to do--the pocket door on the pantry), putting up a hand rail on the basement stairs, and trimming the bathtubs. Tom got them all up, now they all need to be painted. I hid several of the ickier looking trims with old woolen Pendelton coats. Yep, buffalo plaid was my decorating scheme. Among the repair jobs was to rebuild the bottom two basement steps. When we had the new floor with hot water heat added, the steps ended up being the wrong height. He made a new set and they look terrific and work terrifically.

And now that the Tour is over, and the house is clean and decorated, I actually got to spend some time sewing up jammie bottoms for the great nieces/nephews. 5 pairs down, 6 to go. I stumbled upon the world's easiest, one piece pattern so I can do one pair in less than an hour. Since the kids will all outgrown these jammies in a month or two, I really whipped through them--no pinked or finished seams, etc., etc.. If only I had some elastic here. Oh well, guess I'll have to make another trip to the fabric shop. After all, I used up my first coupon, and have one that's only good for the weekend. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Things I Wasn't Planning

I'm a list maker. When I make a list the item at the top is always: Make List. Then I get the satisfaction of crossing at least one thing off my list when I'm done.

My list for today included: Make List. Make meatloaf for supper. Email Home Tour map to print shop. Go to Library~~pick up wreaths and take to Invite!. Get check and gift certificates for Home Tour. Go to Print shop and pick up maps. Because of the Tour, I have time-specific things for Friday and Saturday, making today's list pretty important to get through.

Here's the abridged list: Re-decorate the Tree. See rest of list.

At 5 a.m. this morning, DD came into our room and said, "Mom, a bunch of your old special ornaments got broken. The tree fell down. Oh, and there's water all over the carpet." Had his list stopped at 'tree fell down', I'd have gone back to sleep. But DH and I both shot out of bed at the one about the water.

Damn.

For me decorating the tree is a process. We always get a live tree from our friends~~Rhoades Christmas Tree Farm in Whitehouse. FTD's Scout troop helps out cutting and lugging trees for the customers and in return the owner makes a generous donation to the troop. DH and FTD have spent Sunday mornings in December over there for the past 4 or 5 years. This year, FTD didn't sign up for a shift working, but we did go pick out our tree. Much to my surprise and delight, both boys actively helped out picking just the right one. We have criteria: can't be a pokey tree. Can't be any taller than DH can reach. Must be fat, but not too fat to fit in the family room. Since our home is on the Whitehouse Library Home Tour this year, I gave the boys the option of putting a ginormous tree in the living room~~a good 12 footer, or a regular one where we always do. I was sure they'd go for ginormous. Again to my surprise, they want it where it's always supposed to be. How sweet.

We slayed the tree and brought it home last Sunday. It went up easily and this year we didn't prune much off the bottom, since there won't be many presents under it. And the boys got an actual chuckle when I told them that they both asked for stuff like video games, which take up no room at all. They both laughed and got my point. (Verra verra unusual that.)

We let the tree stretch out it's branches for a day or two and then put on the lights. Then the pretty little angel on top. Then the snowmen garland, then the red bead garland, and then the ornaments, all of which is done over a couple of days.

This year I decided to do something super special, partly for the home tour, but mostly because the boys would get it~~I got the ornaments from my Mom and Dad's out. I showed them the Woolworth and Shiny Brite boxes and told them which were Dad's special ornaments and which were Mom's. The boys haven't had a knock-down-drag-out fight in the house for a long time, and I figured the ornaments would be safe this year. So much for best laid plans of mice and men.

I don't have time to grieve over the loss of a dozen or so glass bulbs. There will be time for that when I pack the boxes away in January. But grieve I will. For a part of my childhood that's gone, for the ever present grief of missing parents and especially the boys' grandparents, and partly for my life now which never, ever goes as planned.