Before and After

Kyleigh and Janice came by for dinner last night and I was able to get a couple of pictures of Kyleigh. The first one shows what she looked like after a hard day at preschool. This is the "before" picture.

We decided to give her a bath before going out to dinner so below is the "after" picture. You can see the scrapes from Wednesday's encounter with the swing below her left eye and on her upper lip.

I also finished the Lickle Ted free cover kit from the World of Cross Stitching #163 last night. I decided to do my own thing with the back stitching on this one, but I think it looks okay. I did copy the location and direction of the stitches, but didn't always use the 1/2 length stitches called for on the chart.

Injury Report

I had two appointments today. The first was with my primary care physician and was just a followup after the surgery. It went very quickly since everything is going well, but I do need to get some blood tests done in the next week or two.

The second appointment was for my first out patient physical therapy visit. I have the same physical therapist that I had last time. She was pleased with my progress today. My extension is at -5 (should be 0, but was -15 on Friday) and the bending was 100 (was 80 on Friday), both after she stretched me. I did ride the bike as a warm up, but I can't do the full cycle of the pedals this time. My next appointment is on Friday and I'll be going twice a week for the next few weeks. I also got the okay to start taking short walks (five to ten minutes) around the neighborhood using the walker and to switch to the cane when walking around the house.

The injury report mentioned in the title was attached to her signout page when Janice picked up Kyleigh this afternoon. Kyleigh has been running back and forth in front of the swings the past couple of days and was ignoring the teachers when they told her not to, so naturally, she was hit by a swing today and now has a scrape on her face, a red, puffy cheek and she bit her tongue. (How's that for a run-on sentence!) The good news is that it happened just before lunch and she's stayed away from the area around the swings ever since, so it looks like she learned her lesson.

The only stitching I did today was to take out most of the backstitching I did last night on Tatty Teddy. The backstitching is the kind that doesn't begin/end at a corner of a stitch but may be only 1/2 stitch long. I decided that I didn't like the effect, so I'll modify it to use mostly full length stitches.

A Couple of Firsts

Today was Kyleigh's first day of preschool and here she is all ready to go!

While Janice signed her in, she took off to explore which made it very easy for Janice to leave her. We called to check on her once and they said she was doing fine, but they'd had to close all the doors to the classroom she's in, because she kept wandering into the other classrooms (we'd expected this). She was outside on the playground when Janice picked her up and didn't want to leave. When asked if she'd had fun, she said "Yeeaahh!"

Tonight was also the first Angels game of the season and Janice, Kyleigh, Chad, Bob and a friend of Chad's went. This is the first home opener that I've missed in several years, but I did watch it on TV and it was a really good game.

Because she's now two, Kyleigh gets her own seat this year. Janice said that everyone thought she was really cute and were amazed at how much she's grown and changed over the winter. The outfit was a birthday present from some friends. She and Janice left early because Janice wasn't feeling very well. On the way home, Kyleigh told Janice that it was nigh nigh time and said "I tired". Of course she was; she'd had a very busy day!

On the stitching front, I kitted up three projects that I hoped to finish this week: another bookmark, a free cover kit of Tatty Teddy and a charity square (Happy Hairstyles #24). I started the bookmark (twice) and didn't like the color I chose either time and also it didn't seem to flow for me, so I trashed what I'd done (twice) and started the Tatty Teddy instead.

Finally!

I started Angel of Joy back on February 9th, but had to put it down for a while to meet a deadline on another group. Then I got bored with it and decided to stitch the bookmarks. But, feeling guilty that it was taking so long, I finally did some concentrated stitching and put the final stitches into it tonight.

This is another calendar page from the 2008 Cross Stitch Calendar, this time from July 21st and the chart was provided by Bonnie of WOCS. It will go into a quilt for a resident of the Century Care Center in Florida.

Happy Easter

He is risen! He is risen, indeed!

David borrowed the wheelchair again and I met Janice, Kyleigh and Angela at the church for the Easter service. The Easter service is held outdoors in the parking lot and as we sing the first song a decorated cross rises from behind the stage. Kyleigh was quite impressed and kept saying "look, grandma; look, nonni". As per usual though, she didn't want to sit still so she and Angela did some wandering and discovered that the nursery was open, so Kyleigh was quite happy to stay there for the rest of the service.

After the service, we went to the Easter egg hunt on the preschool playground. Kyleigh immediately let go of Angela's hand, ducked under the caution tape and headed for... No, not the eggs scattered on the ground. She ignored them and headed straight for the playground equipment. She did get her share of eggs though at the appropriate time and also spent some time playing on the playground. We were going to visit the petting zoo also, but Janice wasn't sure she could handle the wheelchair on the uneven ground and grass so we went home instead. Kyleigh rode on my lap the whole way while she investigated the contents of the eggs, but somehow lost a shoe while crossing the street.

Easter dinner was at Janice's, but Angela did all the cooking (except the eggs and the dessert). All of the family in the area attended and I think everyone had a great time. There was playdough, bouncy balls, bubbles, and coloring eggs to keep the "kids" busy as well as a lunch of ham, deviled eggs, broccoli casserole, asparagus, salad and rolls, as well as angel food cake with strawberries and blueberries for desert.

There was also an earthquake. It was originally gauged at 6.9 in Mexicali, but was later upgraded to 7.2. It was a long roller and you could see the TV and pictures swaying.

I have some pictures, but David needs to fix my uploading program so I'll try to add them later.

Another bookmark

Today was a very lazy day, but I did manage to finish another blackwork bookmark. This time I chose to do #7 in DMC 4200. Again, this is a free chart from Dunmani Designs. There's one more bookmark in this series that I'd like to do also.

A Couple of "Lasts"

Today started with a late breakfast at Joe's Burger, a little "hole in the wall" place that serves decent food at decent prices. Then we went to the bank and the grocery store where I babysat the car while David did the shopping.

This afternoon was the last visit by the home physical therapist; I start outpatient physical therapy on Wednesday. We've finally managed to get the pain under control and this knee is much stronger at this point than the right knee was, but I don't have the flexibility/range of motion that the right knee had.

Today was also Kyleigh's last day with Sandy; she starts preschool on Monday.

Since baseball season has started and David's been working nights, Janice and Kyleigh have been coming over to babysit grandma and get dinner. Tonight we went to Lucille's Rib Shack and then came back to the house to play for awhile. Kyleigh is learning to "sew" using sewing cards. She's very good at feeding the lace through the hole, but when you tell her to pull, she pulls the wrong direction. She also really enjoys the new Nick Jr TV show, Team Ummi Zummi so I've taped a few shows for her to watch while she's here. She's really good at the Ummi Shake.

I'm getting bored with Angel of Joy so I've been finding other things to stitch instead. Tonight it was another bookmark, but I'm going to really try and get it finished over the weekend.

An Oops and a Finish

First, the oops! Thursday is street sweeping day and all vehicles have to be off the street when the street sweeper comes by. We have two vehicles parked on the street 24/7, but we live on a corner so when he hears the sweeper, David drives the van around the block and parks it back in its same spot, then moves the motorhome around the corner until after the sweeper has done its thing on the other street.

Today, he moved the van and then went to move the motorhome and all of a sudden I hear our neighbor yelling "David, David, you forgot to disconnect the electric cord". Yep, he'd driven around the corner with the cord still plugged into the RV. Fortunately, the only damage was to the cord itself.

We also had several power outages today. I was here at the house for the first two, but for the third I was at the Denny's just around the corner. Each one lasted less than five minutes and I don't know what caused them or how widespread they were.

Now for the finish, which I actually finished last night. One of the ladies in one of the groups I belong to is posting a freebie every Friday. The first one she posted was a blackwork bookmark from Dunmani Designs. Instead of black on white, I used a DMC Variations (4030). I haven't decided what I'm going to do with it yet though.