Spooky

I finished stitching Spooky (Lizzie Kate's Boo Club) this afternoon and started stitching Treats. I'm using the DMC conversion on 28-count Natural Light jobelan.

Unfortunately, I've misplaced one of the tiny black buttons. It flipped out of my hand and landed on our black floor and so far is blending in really well. I'm going to "steal" a button from the last flip it until I can get to the store to replace it. Of course, by the time I'm done, I suspect I'll be replacing more than one.

The crib recall was not fun

Kyleigh's crib was recalled earlier this year because the slats could break and the child's head could get stuck. Janice had to disassemble the crib and send back all the hardware so Kyleigh's been sleeping in her Pack and Play. Janice received a voucher good at Babies R Us only on Thursday, so today we went to find Kyleigh a new crib. Three hours and two stores later, we finally had one ordered and paid for. So, in about 2-3 weeks, Kyleigh should have a new crib.

Of course, a couple of the sales people we dealt with wanted to know why we just didn't buy her a toddler bed. When I asked one of them how old a child should be before making that transition, she said two years old. Since Kyleigh's not quite 15 months, she's still a little young. I guess my granddaughter has the opposite problem I do -- I look younger than my age and she looks older.

After that, we were all three tired and hungry so we went to the Cheesecake Factory. It was the first time I'd been to one since Denver back in the mid-1990's. The food was really good, but it was also very expensive. They did bring Kyleigh her own plate of two kinds of bread and banana slices. We ate on the patio and Kyleigh made several birds very happy when she realized they'd eat the bread she dropped!

Kyleigh got "carded"

We went to the Angels/Dodgers game this evening, we being Bob, Janice, myself, Kyleigh and her favorite "uncle" (Uncle Dub). Kyleigh walked through the turnstile (actually under the turnstyle) in front of her mom and the ticket taker asked Janice for her ticket. Janice said she didn't have one because she was too young and the lady wanted to know how old she was. When Janice said Kyleigh was almost fifteen months old, the lady told her to make sure she bought her a ticket once she turned two, which won't happen til next season.

Kyleigh also rode the escalator up to the stands all by herself (well, she does hold someone's hand) and pretty much can get on/off with a minimum of help.

Bob almost got Kyleigh in trouble during the game, because she was playing with my ticket and when I saw her put it in her mouth. I started to scold her, but just in time noticed that Bob had his ticket in his mouth and she was just imitating him. They played "take the ticket out, put the ticket in, etc" for quite a long time.

I took this afternoon off to take care of some personal stuff. One of the things I had wanted to do was get the fabric for Boo Club (Lizzie Kate's 2009 Halloween Double Flips). So it was off to Needlepoints Ltd to choose some fabric. I didn't like the fabric on the model since it seemed too dark to me and was 32 count linen. I ended up with 28-count natural light jobelan.


Of course, I couldn't just buy fabric so I also bought two Mill Hill bead kits -- Popcorn and Hot Stuff and since they were having a Lizzie Kate Trunk Show, I ended up with set of Double Flips - Living with Charm and ABC Lessons and the called for floss. I think I already have the fabric for these.

Fun at the Park

Janice sent me these pictures that were taken by Chad's mother yesterday. They went to lunch at Claim Jumper first. The waitress attached a removable placemat to the table for Kyleigh and brought her a complimentary baby plate with applesauce, mandarin oranges and turkey and two cheeses.

Doesn't she look like she's concentrating hard trying to decide what she wants to eat?

At the park they had fun playing on the slide. She went down the slide with Mama and also by herself. Of course, the most fun part was getting tickled at the bottom.

Pictures from Easter

On Easter, after the church service, which is held in the parking lot, there are two Easter egg hunts, one for kids in 1st grade and up and one for kindegarten and younger. We took Kyleigh to the second one. In this picture, she's waiting for the hunt to begin.


Wow, look at all those pretty things!

Can I get another one?

This one matches my dress!

Kyleigh picked up about 10 eggs, two at a time. When she had one for each hand, we'd assist her in putting them in her basket. Each time she picked one up, she'd shake it to see if it made noise.
She had even more fun with them when she got home. After her nap, Janice emptied the goodies and took her for another egg hunt on their lawn. She had a great time getting tangled in the basket, taking the eggs out and rolling them on the floor.

Finally got the pictures

I went to see Janice and Kyleigh after work today. I was right, it was really busy and I needed a pint size hug. Kyleigh has learned to give good hugs and lots of them. She's also climbing on everything and she loves opening and closing doors! I stayed and had Chinese food for dinner with Janice and Chad after Kyleigh went to bed.

While I was gone, David finally downloaded the pictures from my camera. There weren't a whole lot of really good ones, but I should be able to find a few to share. This picture is also from her first birthday party. The ride on toy is one we got at a friend's garage sale--he gave it to me because it was in such bad shape. It was filthy and in pretty poor shape, but David had a lot of fun to put it back into workable condition. He made the handles on the back. The one shown is just one of several different sizes. Kyleigh'd had the train for a while, but this was the first time we'd actually seen her play with it.

I stitched some more on the puppy with the leash. It's now about 1/3 done and is a lot of fun to stitch.

They want how much?

I went online and called to check prices at the Grand Californian for Mother's Day weekend since Janice and Chad are staying there courtesy of the Disney Vacation Club and even with my annual passholder discount the total price was $880 for two nights. I can't believe anyone would pay $383 a night to stay there--I guess there must be some other discount I don't know about! Needless to say, we won't be staying there this weekend.

I woke up kind of woozy, queasy and sweaty, but since I had a meeting scheduled, I did go into work (an hour late). Fortunately, I started to feel better, because I ended up having a second meeting scheduled for later in the afternoon. And there were several messages and quite a few emails waiting for my attention when I got back to my office at 4:45, plus the meetings provided some additional tasks. I'll definitely be busy tomorrow.

I started a new square for Q4OC. This is a dog square for the Stitcher's Challenge. It's a tan cocker spaniel type dog holding a leash in his mouth. This is the second square I've started for this, but it's going much better than the first one that I started last night. The first one was a white/ecru/tan dog in top hat and tie, but I didn't like the way the backstitching I'd done looked and I made a couple of mistakes I couldn't find. I'll cut the unused portion off and use it for a bookmark.

Here's another picture of Kyleigh's birthday party, courtesy of the same friend who gave me the cake one. She's definitely not a baby anymore!

Happy Dance - K Garden Fairy

It's not the best picture; the bird and flower are a lot more vibrant than shown. I made three changes, one was a mistake and the other two were on purpose. The mistake was stitching an "x" instead of a french knot for the bird's eye. I also left off the border and modified the girl's face, because it looked too wierd to me.

A Kyleigh Day

Although I didn't have any plans for today, that changed about 7:50 this morning when the phone rang. Janice wanted to know if I wanted to "do something". The something she had in mind was shopping.

She and Kyleigh met David and I for breakfast at a little "hole in the wall" place we like. Although Kyleigh had already eaten, that didn't stop her from helping me eat my scrambled eggs, bacon and pancake. She also half climbed across the table to reach the eggs and hashbrowns grandpa was holding out to her. We did have to caution him to not put quite so much on the fork though.

Our first stop was South Coast Plaza where we checked out all of the children's stores, but only bought a small Hello Kitty Doll that rattled. Next we went to Staples where Janice bought some manila envelopes for an archery tournament she's working on and then to Jo Ann's where she bought a birth sampler to cross stitch for her nephew who's due in June and I got a couple of small ornament kits, some pink Aida and some fat 1/4's in red and green for backing some Christmas ornaments I'm finishing for WOCS.

While we were there, a lady overheard us talking about needing Christmas fabric and told us about a local quilt shop that had some on sale. We did check out the quilt shop, but first we had lunch at Panda Express and then went to Babies R Us to pick up some diapers. Kyleigh fell asleep on the way from Babies R Us to the quilt shop and managed to sleep through going into the shop. The fabric that was on sale wasn't exactly what I was looking for, so I didn't buy any. From there we went to Penney's (the one place I wanted to go) where I picked up a couple of bras and a pair of jeans while Kyleigh finished her nap.

Our last stop was at Wendy's to pick up lunch for grandpa. Of course, Kyleigh had to help make the square hamburger round so it fit in the bun. She's such a cutie!

While we were shopping, Grandpa was checking out garage sales and came home with some Lego Quatro blocks which are four times the size of duplo for little guess who and a Department 56 North Pole Gum Drop Factory for me.

After Janice and Kyleigh left, I took a nap and then stitched some more on the K Garden Fairy.

Friday

It's Friday again! I can't believe another week is gone. And, it's May 1st and another month is gone too. This year is going too fast! Life, work, health, etc have been conspiring to keep me from blogging. I do have a bunch of pictures to post once I get them off my camera, but here's one a friend sent me from Kyleigh's first birthday doing what every one year old has to do at her party!

It's taken almost a week, but Kyleigh seems to have fully recovered from her bout with the stomach flu. She was feeling so bad that she just wanted to cuddle which she rarely does. She still needs to gain back a couple of pounds--Janice says she thinks she should put her back in the 12 months size for a couple of weeks.

I haven't stitched in about a week, but haven't done much else either. I pulled out the K Garden Fairy tonight that I've been stitching for Q4OC and ripped out the lower part of the K because I was using the wrong color. I'm almost 3/4 done, so hopefully I'll have a finish this weekend.

Q4OC also posted the newest SAL--mismatched ABC's and I've have access to A LOT of alphabets, so I'm hoping to stitch a bunch of letters.