Oranges

A big thankyou goes out to our navel orange tree this year. It went above and beyond to provide us with the best oranges!  Ken and I picked it clean and ended up with about 6 grocery sacks full and that was after we thought oh there are only a few left on there! ha!  They hide!  They were so good this year, very juicey and sweet. We usually start picking right around christmas so good heavens we've been  picking for 3 months and still had so many left.   We seemed to have a ton of them this year. We shared many, our company that came to the family reunion enjoyed getting to pick their own citrus to take home.  I think it was a great "orange" kind of year.  So now the tree can rest and be busy making all those little oranges on there into another wonderful crop!  The refrigerator is full so they should keep quite a while!  I love having mature trees out in the yard and being able to run pick a few every day to eat for lunch at work.  

Twister Class

Another great Twister class at Etc. yesterday!  Louise and I teach this and we've had alot of fun and seen a whole lot of twister quilts come out of our classes! I'll show you what we had and towards the end everyone was talking about their next one! 

Look at this one all in brights!

 Karens came out so pretty, lots of wonderful comments on hers out of this layer cake, she was trying to decide on her borders at the end.

 Look at these blues with the tiny twister!

 We had our first "eye spy" one, it was so fun to see, I can't wait to wee all these come back, I hope they bring them to show us!

 The new French General line... I can't believe how many got their tops done!

 Loved this one, it would sure go nice in my house....Betsy would have none of that! :-)

 This one out of Ruby....It was fun to have a couple new quilters in class!  I think they enjoyed their time at ETC and will be back!

 Here is a new sample that Louise finished up in another kind of setting.

 And Carol did hers that way with 2 different sides.  She may set them this way or put a sashing in between. Twister makes such fun quilts!  We have all four sizes for sale at ETC.  The teeny tiny one is my favorite! Sick huh!  You start with 2 1/2 inch squares and they end up about 1 inch!

The Best News in the World!

I got the best phone call at work yesterday.  Jeremy's deployment was cancelled!  YEA!  Long story but his bags were packed and due to deploy to the middle east and now HE'S NOT GOING!  You cannot imagine how good that feels.  Jamie will not be alone, He will be here to enjoy Noah learning to walk and talk and enjoy his first birthday! They were so prepped with everything ready and done!  So put those gas masks and flak vests back in the attic!  I keep pinching myself and texting him to make sure it's for real and they aren't changing their mind!  Isn't it amazing!!!!!

(this photo was from his 2nd deployment to the middle east....Mr. pilot flying his Az flag in the back of his C17!.....I look back at the different photo's he has sent from his 2 deployments and I'm still amazed he's really not going!)

Beyond Basics Class....Charming Pinwheels

These gals have been with me for the last 3 weeks making their pinwheel quilts at ETC.,and they are turning out so cute!  Shari decided to add the lady bugs and it's just darling!

 We were down to the flowers and learning how to do the scalloped border the last class...

 Pauline's is for her Grandson, she going to add frogs to that inner border and the outside will be green to match them...  It was a great class to learn pinwheels, adding a pieced border to a quilt and then doing a scalloped border with the bias binding...

 Here is Julie's, we've sure had fun with her tales of Ireland and how she's ever going to get all these projects back home.  She's taken a few suitcases of them home already when they go to visit.

 Our other Julie is doing this cute gray print for the flowers and then the peachy colored centers out of the minkie...

 She brought in her quilt from our last class to show us after it was quilted, Merry Go Round, it's so much fun to see success!

 And here is Tammy's, her bubble gum pink flowers and border print really make this darling!  I hope to see them all finished soon.  I start up with another group doing this quilt in another week, it'll be the same 3 week series, after that.....it's watermelon time!  More on that later!

Family Reunion

Here are the last of the photo's from our Family Reunion 2012

Marcy and Vince hosted us at their home on Sunday night and had a lovely meal for all to enjoy.  Several families had left but the rest of us enjoyed the time together.  

 Here are L-R, Jerry, Burk, Marilyn, Dave and Carol my Aunt and Uncle  from Kansas

 Sharon and my Mom...

 And these 4 siblings together, Butch from Kansas, Marilyn, Carol from Kansas and my Dad.

We had a quick bite to eat on monday night yet at Joe's BBQ as all were heading home on Tuesday.  The snow storms thru Arizona kept a few behind longer than expected but by now we've heard one by one from a text that all families have arrived home safely.  We can all savor the sweet memories and fun of spending time together now!

Family Reunion

Our Sunday was enjoyed by all, even in the cold rain!  We finally got our first winter storm of the season overnight so our lunch planned for the patio by the lake at Macayo's ended up inside.  But you can see we didn't really mind!  Here are Jen, Alissa and Alan...

We met there after joining my folks at their church service.....2 full pews full!
Margarita's!  Jen tried a jalapeno one...brave girl!

Mom and Marcy...

sometimes it's so fun to catch everyone smiling and having fun!

Judy and I...

Ken and my Dad...

 A little bit of rain, a little bit of hail, a bunch of snow!  It kept Judy here another couple days and more checks with the weather channel from Benson to see if the families journeying to the south should continue in the snow flurries. At least some of our Texas families made it home before it hit there so hard! Crazy spring weather!

Sammy the Shark

Meet our new friend....Sammy the Shark.  He's come to live in our pool and seems very happy there!  

Our pool has gotten some TLC this month with new filter parts and today new skimmer baskets and now this guy with his big grin and shades....I guess he's ready for the Arizona sun! 

New bag tops for Sew and Go Again

We got hew hinge clasps at ETC this week to make our kits for our night Sew and Go Again class on wed.  We got some new colors that we haven't had so it'll be fun. It's so fun when things like this come in, it's like Christmas, getting to open them all up and "see what we got"!  These come from China and sometimes seem to be on the "slow boat" so we never know when they'll come and what colors we'll really get !  Then we get to go out in the store and see what kind of fun fabrics to put with each one.....ahhhhh!Wed. night class will be fun!

60th Anniversary Party

Here are a few candid photo's from the 60th Anniversary party that we held during the family reunion to honor my parents.  What a year for them, both turned 80 and celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary!

Here are the pretty flowers for the table, we left them in the church for the next day for all to enjoy and the lilies waited to get to my parents home the next day to open up!

And of course the glad's waited too, we tried to "force" them to open but they had their own agenda!

My Mom wanted a table of memorabilia set up at the party, family photo, memory books etc.  The quilt is the one I made them for their 50th.  The flowers there were sent by their flower girl from their wedding!  My cousin Barb....wish she could have come but the flowers were such a nice touch.

Everyone enjoyed some visiting and before we knew it the room was filled with people!  We had close to 120 attend the party.

These ladies from the church kept the chicken sandwich's coming...

Mom and Marcy...

And more ladies from the church cutting the 3 big cakes...

Here are the bride and groom!

Sharon and Jerry... they stayed at our home and it was such fun to get acquainted with Jerry....love that Texas accent!

And Rachael wanted in the photo too!

There was a slide show playing thru the party, Mike did a wonderful job on it.  Lots of fun photo's of their early married life thru Great Grandchildren! Everyone enjoyed it so much.  My sister has been scanning photo's for a month to get this ready.

Alissa and Alan...

Mom and Dad with Pastor John...

Amy and Ethan...yum chocolate cake!  What a fun party!

Pastor John had a nice prayer and words to say about my parents...

It was so nice to see so many people come to celebrate my parents!

And then the little ones had a blast!  The church has a beautiful courtyard outside and Bode and Cailyn are here enjoying sort of "doing nothing" as little ones do!

Here is Ken and his sister Karen who was here from Boise.  What a great party!  It was hard to unwind after. A few of us ended up going out to eat at Jason's Deli and then Sharon and Jerry wanted to see the cabinet shop so we stopped there after dark too.  Finally got home to jammies, a glass of wine and going thru more pictures together.  What a fun day!