Journal: New Baby Ian, and Florida Preparations

Victoria is looking for patterns – for wedding gowns and bridesmaids’ dresses.  She likes those skirts that have sections tacked up to make poofs here and there, like Hester and Lydia had on their wedding dresses. 

I tell her, I’ve never made skirts with rumples before.

Some call it ‘puffing’.  Victoria found this description:  ‘gently bustled’.

After hunting for pictures and patterns online, we’ve concluded that that style isn’t the RFM (Raging Fashion of the Moment).  That diminishes her fondness for the design not one iota.

She finally found a pattern that matched a photo of a bridesmaid’s dress she liked closely enough that I can make it match, I think.  She purchased one pattern from Amazon, and then, lo and behold, Hannah had that very pattern in the other size she needed.

Last Monday evening, after a dissatisfying hunt through freezer and cupboards, I sent the following note to Larry:  “I am in need of dessert.”

Larry texted back:  “Oh?  What kind of dessert?”

I replied, “I’ve been hungry for a Blizzard for I don’t know HOW long.”

So he brought home Snickers blizzards.  Mmm, mmmm.  I like those things.  A bit hard on the ol’ chompers, though, both during and after the consuming of said Blizzard.  I’m willing to suffer, though.

Tuesday afternoon, I prepared a pantograph for a customer’s whole-cloth quilt I was about to load on my quilting frame.  It was a printed piece with a children’s theme, and I found a ‘Tumblin’ Teddy Bear’ pantograph with little hearts in the connecting swirls that matched the print quite well.

In answer to some questions:  a pantograph is a continuous design printed on paper.  I tape the paper to my quilting table, after lining it up as needed, and then use the laser light on my quilting machine to guide the machine over the lines in the design.

That’s probably a little hard to visualize, if you haven’t seen it done.  Here’s a video showing how a pantograph is used:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l-EHtBOgWc

You should have seen what it looked like, the first time I gave it a try, following the design with the laser!  Looked worse than a one-year-old trying to color in the lines.  But here was the real aggravation:  Larry then gave it a try (we were at Country Traditions in Fremont) – and he followed that design neat as a pin.  Looked like an old pro, he did.  The salesman asked him what kind of longarm he’d been using.

People like that need some sort of evil retribution, don’t you think?!

Welllll...  all right, maybe not.  He did buy me my HQ16, after all. 

There are ways to do pantographs on DSMs:  Sewing Machine Panto and Thread-Talk-From-My-Sewing-Machine.

There are computerized programs for longarm machines; they’re pretty amazing.  And pretty expensive.  This is being done with a computer-guided quilting machine:  Quilting

The Pro-Stitcher is a computerized program made specifically for HandiQuilter.  There are a number of video tutorials explaining how to use it.  Here’s one that explains corners and borders:  Quilting Corners and Edges

And then there’s Bernina.  Just look at this.  Makes me drool.  I tried one just like this in Omaha last summer.  (swoon)  Bernina Longarm

Did you know that the man who designed the first HandiQuilter had been a technician and designer for Bernina in Switzerland for many years?  A lot of Bernina’s impressive workmanship is in the HandiQuilter.  My HQ16 is a 2005 model.  They’ve improved a lot in the last 11 years.  Someday, I hope to replace mine with a newer version.  Gotta pay for the Jeep first, though.  One toy at a time; one toy at a time.

Here’s a problem I ran into with the whole-cloth quilt:  when I squared up the batiste backing, it picked up every last shred and fiber of satin and taffeta that were residing unseen on my cutting mat.  I used up several pages of sticky on the lint roller, cleaning that off.  And still I discovered a stray thread or two inside the quilt sandwich, after the quilting was complete.  Arrgghh.  Batiste is see-through, did you know that??!

I went and picked up five little Jackson kiddos at school.  All five are finally well again.

On the way home, they regale me with stories (and sometimes I regale them with stories).  That day they were telling me (with great enthusiasm) about a couple of their cats that keep getting in scraps and feuds.

“Maybe you should read Bible stories to them each night before they go to bed,” I suggested.

I was still grinning a couple of hours later, remembering Emma’s low-pitched laugh, which made all her little brothers (and even her big brother) giggle.

I received news about a massive rock slide on I70 in Colorado.  Amazingly, no one was hurt, although the crashing boulders bent a large truck trailer nearly in half.  The Interstate, the same one we take when we are traveling from Denver to Dillon, will be closed for weeks, they say, and the shortest detour is 140 miles long, and goes up over mountain passes.  140 miles of that is not very much like 140 miles of I80 in the middle of Nebraska.

Kurt’s father Bill happened to spot a Baldwin console piano on Craigslist – like new, for only $600.  The MSRP of a new one like it is $9,895.00.  :-O 

Well, they knew Victoria will want a piano for her own house; she plays mine all the time.  In fact, she’s been saving up for one.  Bill told her about it... suggested she offer $500 (just on general principal, I guess)... Victoria called the lady... made the offer... and the lady accepted.

So Tuesday night Larry, Victoria, and I went to see the piano.  The lady lives just a couple houses away from my brother.  The piano was beautiful, has a lovely action, and was in tune quite well, even though it hadn’t been used for several years.  Victoria sent a message to Kurt, and soon he, his father, and his brother arrived to help haul the piano out and put it into Kurt’s pickup.  It was no easy task, as the piano was oak, making it quite a lot heavier than an identical piano in American cherry.  (There’s a Bolivian cherry that is almost as hard as ebony.  Put on a back brace before you try moving a piano in Bolivian cherry or ebony.)

In addition to the piano, the lady gave Victoria all the music inside the bench – everything from simple beginner books (Levi will be pleased) to difficult classicals and rags.  That music in itself is worth a couple of hundred dollars, easy!

Well, the men got piano loaded into the pickup.  None of us had remembered to bring a blanket to cover it, so Larry used his sweatshirt to cushion the end of the piano where it was against the cab of the truck.  Then Kurt & Co. climbed in to the pickup and carefully drove off, heading toward his grandparents’ home, as they’d offered to store it for Victoria, since we don’t have room for it.

The like-new piano now has a small scratch on one leg, to Victoria’s dismay.  It happened at the lady’s house when the storm door didn’t open quite far enough, and there was too tight a fit around the corner of the porch between door and porch railing.  I think a little wood oil polish will cover it.  :-\

Larry, Victoria, and I climbed into the Jeep. 

Larry was hunting around... “Where are the keys?”

“Oh, probably in your sweatshirt pocket that’s going away with that truck,” I said carelessly, gesturing, not really thinking it was.

Larry stilled his search.  Then, “They are,” he said.

Victoria grabbed her phone, started whipping out a message to Kurt – but I just happened to have a spare key in my purse.

So, after that small bit of drama, off we went.

The next drama ensued when they had to lift that beast of a piano out of the pickup, into the house, and then down a flight of stairs to a room in their finished basement where it will be safe from multitudes of exuberant grandchildren.

Along the edge of the staircase runs an elaborate built-in shelf on which Dianna, Kurt’s grandmother, has many pretty things.  Larry, helping Kurt with the lower end of the piano, was on the side nearest the shelf.  Victoria, peering over the ornate oak railing at this precarious operation, suddenly cried, “Daddy, don’t sit on the goose!”

It was a lovely glass swan, actually.

Everyone, including the worthy piano-movers, promptly cracked up, with Larry admonishing everyone in some alarm, “Don’t laugh, don’t laugh!” (though he was laughing, himself).

So Kurt and Victoria now have their first large piece of furniture. 

Victoria also has a violin, but she really hasn’t had time to learn it as well as she’d have liked to.  Last summer, she got a new little instrument – a guitulele (part guitar, part ukulele).  She took it to choir practice, handed it to our blind friend Penny – and Penny, who’d never ‘seen’ one before, took it, tuned it (without benefit of a tuning fork or a piano note), and promptly played the song the choir had just sung.

Victoria calls it a ‘gook-a-lay-lee’.  Or a ‘yook-a-tar’.  I think the main reason for most purchases she makes, never mind of what variety, is cuteness.  :-D

Larry makes her snort around by calling it a ‘Piccadilly’. 

 “Why do they have to be so heavy?!” asked Norma.

“So that Laurel and Hardy could make a routine about piano delivery?” I replied.

And here it is:  Laurel & Hardy Piano Delivery

If anybody else in my immediate family decides she wants a piano, I’ll recommend she get one of those electronic keyboards on a piece of vinyl that you can roll up into a small tube.

Lydia has my first grand piano, a Kimball that my father bought for me when I was 13 years old – by coincidence, the very day the Jacksons moved to town. 

The previous week, a cousin of Larry’s and I were talking about Jacksons’ impending move here, and she remarked, “Kenny (Larry’s 12-year-old brother) is really a lot of fun; but Larry is hard to get along with!”

Well, I’d known this cousin all my life, and she was none too easy to get along with.  So I thought, Well, that was nasty, badmouthing someone before they even get here, especially after they’ve had tragedy in their lives (two older brothers of Larry’s had died, one of a brain tumor, one in a car accident).  Therefore, I thought further, I shall befriend Larry!

You see how that turned out.  :-D

Later Tuesday night, I finished the whole-cloth baby quilt for my customer.  Then I posted photos of Larry’s ‘new’ motorcycle, and the flowers blooming brightly in my laundry room:

Larry’s New Motorcycle, and Laundry Room Flowers

Larry’s a good rider.  He has trophies from his teen years when he lived in Trinidad, Colorado, and competed in the races there.  The officials weren’t quite fair with him; though, in their defense, they were just trying to make it more equal for all the riders ---- they made Larry quit competing in the children’s races when he was only 11 years old, so he had to compete with the adults. 

He wasn’t very big when he was 11 – I have pictures of him on his motorcycle, and he couldn’t put both feet on the ground at the same time.  On one of his races – a youth race for those up to 12 years old, his father advised him, “When you get to the ramp over the wall, whatever you do, don’t throttle back.”

He meant, ‘don’t throttle back until you get to the top.’  Larry did as instructed.  He didn’t throttle back – at all.

The spotter said he’d never seen anybody fly so high or so far after cresting that jump.  And because he was light weight, he had a low amount of gravity, too!  haha  He made a perfect landing and went roaring on without pause.

“My heart took a while to start up again, though,” remarked Larry’s father, in telling this tale.

Wednesday, I headed for my sewing room to draw up a new pattern for the Buoyant Blossoms BOM. 

If you enjoy watching the live streaming hummingbird cam, the babies’ eyes are just starting to open.  http://www.bellahummingbird.com/  Keep the volume up, and pretty soon you’ll hear a whir of wings – the mother will arrive to feed them.  Won’t be long; she feeds them often!  They are in La Verne, California.

Good grief, I just watched another feeding ... I absolutely cannot understand how those teensy, weensy chicks survive their feedings, what with the mother bird jamming her sword of a beak up and down into their skinny throats like that.  haha  They’re already doing ‘wingercises’.  As I watched, a little dinky wing poked out of the nest and flailed madly before the little guy tucked it back in beside him.  Promptly thereafter, his sibling scratched the tip-top of his wee head with a tiny, scrawny leg.

I find it amazing, the energetic, thriving life in these tiny little creatures – they’re barely the size of a quarter.  Did you know that a hummingbird’s heartbeat can be as fast as 1,260 beats per minute?  But on a cold night when they are in torpor (hibernation-like state, to keep them from using up all their energy too fast), the heartbeat can slow to 50-180 beats per minute.  And think of this:  their wings beat at up to 70 times per second!!

Meanwhile, the eagles of Decorah, Iowa, have their first egg:  Decorah Eagles.  It’s a windy day there.  Papa Eagle is in the nest right now, and his toupée is relying heavily on gorilla glue.

I was worrying that I didn’t have enough background fabric for the Buoyant Blossoms blocks, so we went to Wal-Mart after church Wednesday night to get more (it was from some 108”-wide yardage I’d had for another quilt) --- and they don’t have any more of the stuff!  So I’m being vewy, vewy ca’ful with what I have left.  

I found some nice fleece and matching minky in the remnant bin in Wal-Mart’s fabric department, along with a piece of John Deere fabric.  Dorcas likes John Deere ... and her baby boy is due any day now.  Perhaps I’ll make him something with the fabric.  The fleece and minky is big enough to make a child’s blanket – fleece on one side, minky on the other.  The fleece is black with white and gray basketballs printed on it, and the minky is dove gray.  Any of the grandsons would be pleased with it.  There’s enough extra fleece to also cover a neck roll pillow – and I actually have one to cover.  I’ll sew the pieces together around the edges, turn it, and stitch shut the hole – because tying the edges would make it a little too small, and the minky might run, anyway.

Thursday morning, I heard a motor making a whole lot of noise out back.  I went and peered out the window – and discovered Larry out there trying to load his big scissor lift onto a trailer, and the ice and snow and mud were making matters quite difficult.  Ooooo, he makes me nervous, with some of his singlehanded endeavors!

He finally got it loaded, using a winch on his pickup.  He hauled it to the school, where he made use of it in fastening the steel frames he shaped and welded together over the doors where they will make brick arches and peaks.

Dorcas sent pictures of a rooster, writing, “We got us a rooster!  A fella Todd works with had to let him go to a new home and yesterday was the first  time  I heard  him crowing.” 

They are planning to get chickens, too, and turn one room of their barn into a chicken coop.

When they were looking for a house, Dorcas told Todd, “All I want is a pantry, chickens, and a clothesline.”  :-D

Well, they have a pantry, and now they have a start on chickens.  Because of the baby on the way, they’ve done remodeling in the house – everything in a different order than expected.

Dorcas sent a picture of a crocheted set – hat, diaper cover, bib – in John Deere green and yellow that she just finished for the baby.

Last Sunday, Kurt ate dinner with us.  The night before, he planned to wash Victoria’s car at Walkers’ shop in one of the truck bays while she was at choir practice.  He had to wait on a couple of other people to finish their vehicles (there are room for at least two in the bay), so Victoria sent him a text, asking if she’d have time to go to the store (in his pickup) before he washed the car. 

Shortly, she got a reply – he was asking what she needed to get at the store.  She told him.  In a few minutes, another text – he wanted to know where to find a certain item in the store.  Victoria wondered, Why does he need to know that? 

She told him... then asked, “What are you doing?”

Well, he was getting all the things she needed for the next day’s dinner, that’s what.  He thought she’d asked if he had time to go to the store.  Furthermore, he wouldn’t let her (or me) pay him back, either!

I had to re-install the Skype plug-in for Windows 10, as it’s been a coon’s age (definition:  ‘longer than a hamster’s age’) since I used it.  I had to get a new password first; I’d forgotten mine.  This, because Dorcas wants to be able to show us the new baby right after he arrives.

Well, my Skype contact list showed up, and there are three names I recognize from my quilting group (no idea why or how they got there – did I do that, a long time ago?) – and there are three names I don’t know from Adam.  I deleted one name – and then wondered, Do people know it, when you delete them??  :-O

I told Dorcas, “In my contact list is a bald man named Herbert Doofus and a white-haired man named Ivar Gookachec.  Who are they, what are they doing there, and if I delete them, will they come after me with the Skype mafia?"

“Can you see their profiles?” she asked.

“No, they’re looking straight at the camera.  (joke, heh)  No profiles.”

I looked for Dorcas’ name, added it to my contact list, looked for Hannah’s – and then wrote both of them a note:  “Did you know there is only one Dory Ellison on Skype, but there are 3 ½ gazillion kerbillion Hannah Wrights?  Shall I just add them all in, and see what happens?”

I ate Asiago Focaccia bread for breakfast Thursday morning – cheese bread with jalapeños from the Hy-Vee bakery.  It was so good it gave me lockjaw.

Then I headed downstairs to my sewing room to starch and iron the edges of 51 little appliqués. 

Victoria got home from work and went to playing the piano with feeling, directly overhead.  It makes one consider whether or not the floor joists are sturdy.

Amy sent me a picture of Warren with food all over his face, asking, “Think he liked it?”

Loren brought me some jalapeño Velveeta cheese – it’s too hot for him; he got it by mistake.  We’ll make grilled cheese sandwiches with it.

I glued appliqué pieces onto the background fabric, and began machine-stitching them down.  I won’t be posting the pattern until next week.  Since we were planning to go to Florida this week, I had to make it last week, and have it on my computer ready to post.

I got all the appliqué pieces sewn down that night, and did the embroidery the next day, adding a few tiny beads besides.  French knots would’ve done the trick, too; but I’m fond of tiny glass beads.

Besides, I’m not so good at French knots.  I’ve watched other people do them lickety-split, and they turn out neat as a pin – but mine are a clobbered-up mess.  I get better if I do oodles and gobs of them – but those first few! – oh, my.  Years ago when I was embroidering a very large tablecloth with gazillions of those silly knots (mine aren’t French; they’re Lower Slobbovian), I learned to ‘cheat’:  I caught one thread of the cloth and then made the knot by just putting the needle through one loop of thread, and the thread I’d caught first held everything in place perfectly.  Those knots looked so nice and neat, I wondered why others hadn’t thought of that long before.

And if you think French knots are hard, just try bullions!  Aarrrggghhh.

Funny, I discovered that I can do knots and bullions much better with silk ribbon embroidery than with embroidery floss.  I wonder if that’s true for anybody else, or if I’m an aberration?  :-D

One day I was visiting a friend, and she was embroidering something.  She came to an area that required a huge wad of French knots to make up a lilac bush, and went to knotting pell-mell like a first-ranked boyscout on a mission.  Those little knots just settled down politely in perfect order, one right after another.

So I said, suddenly, “Awww, cut it out!”

She jumped out of her hide, and then we both laughed like idiots.  She well knows what my French knots look like! 

Just for the record, she can make bullions like an ancient Bayeux.  That is, proficiently.

We had strong winds overnight, with gusts up to 50 mph.  I saw several long-haired Chihuahuas and a small child go winging past our windows.

At 2:30 a.m., Larry got a text message:  Lydia and Jeremy’s baby had arrived, about an hour earlier!  It’s a boy – their 3rd little boy.  His name is Ian David, he’s 21 ¾” long, 8 lbs. 9 oz.  All are well, though Lydia still has a bad cold.  We are thankful and happy.

We had the name Ian in one of our name lists, but it didn’t make it to the top.

The baby, all bright-eyed and alert, looked like he was wondering, Who turned on all the lights?!

That afternoon, I sent a text to Victoria:  “Your fish jumped out of the tank, and evidently the cats ate them.  Plumb vamoosed, they did.”

Actually, she’d taken the betta, the large pleco, and the little albino pleco back to Earl May, deciding she didn’t have time for two tanks of fish.  She still has the pretty bright red-orange betta with the purple fins in the bowl upstairs in her room.

Shortly after she got home from work, she inadvisably befriended the stray striped yellow tomcat that resides in our garage, the same stray striped yellow tomcat that beat up Teensy, causing the $94 vet bill.  So now the stray striped yellow tomcat loves her, follows her around purring, and thinks he belongs here.  He marches up on the front porch... Teensy and Tabby growl and snarl.  The yellow cat sprawls out grandly and goes to meticulously cleaning his paws and washing behind his ears.

I brought our Christian cats in and left the heathen cat on the porch.  Our Christian cats promptly went out the pet door.

It wasn’t very long before there was the most unearthly screeching and shrieking on the back deck.  The yellow cat had gone back there and was having a threatening stare-down with Tabby, and Tabby was letting the world know of his displeasure by screaming bloody murder.

((rolling eyes))

This brought me on the fly.  We don’t need another $94 vet bill for a hurt cat who needs to be medicated every day for a week, particularly if we’re going to be gone for a week.  The yellow cat decided he’d better run for cover, and then Tabby, of course, thought he should take chase, old man that he is.  For crying out loud, he’s a lightweight (only about 8 pounds), and he’s 18 ½ years old!  But he behaves like the Israelites who’d been cowering in terror from Goliath, and then when David killed the giant and the Philistines started running, the Israelites all took off after them, just as if they were big and brave.  Siggggghhhhh...  Cats.

To convert cat age to an equivalent human age, an accepted method is to add 15 years for the first year of life.  Then add 10 years for the second year of life.  After that, add 4 years for every cat year.  By that formula, Tabby is the equivalent to 89 human years old!  He certainly doesn’t act it.

I washed dishes... finished the embroidery on the next blossoms block... took pictures of it... scanned the pattern drawing... got it ready to post next week when we’re gone... went to the bank... and then paid a visit to the Wal-Mart Baby Department.

Victoria called while I was there.  She, Kurt, and Jared were at the David City hospital, wondering where Lydia and baby Ian were.  I’d forgotten to tell her that Lydia was in the Columbus Hospital.  Oops.

After Larry got off work, we went to see Jeremy, Lydia, and baby Ian.  That baby is completely, perfectly beautiful.

Lydia was almost asleep when we got there – she’d hardly slept for 36 hours.  They got her back to her private room from the delivery room at 4:30 a.m.  Jeremy lay down on the couch to sleep.  Lydia had just fallen asleep at 5:30 a.m. when a nurse came bustling in, flipped on the lights, and proceeded to take a blood sample from Lydia for ‘lab work’.  Why was that necessary, right then, and don’t they give a hoot if they make their patients sick from lack of sleep??  Good grief.

Someone once told me (probably before my second baby was born), “Each baby after the first gets easier and easier.”

The person who said that ought to have her toenails removed with a pair of pliers, sans anesthetic, one by one, and she should be told, “Each toenail after the first gets easier and easier.”  Yeah, I’m still feeling testy about that, after all this time.

Earlier that day, Jeremy had taken Jacob (age 6) and Jonathan (age 2) to see Lydia and the new baby.  He put Jonathan up on the bed with his Mama, who was holding baby Ian, and she gave him a new Thomas the Tank book, with flaps and hidden pictures and stuff.  He was sitting there looking at it, and Lydia asked him, “Are you going to like being a big brother now?”

He turned and looked at her... looked at the baby --- and then, just like Jacob has always done with him, he proceeded to start ‘reading’ his new book to the baby, holding it just so, so that Baby could see it. 

Jacob and Jonathan stayed with Caleb and Maria Friday night.  Jacob enjoyed that so much that when he was supposed to go to a birthday party for a little friend the next day, he said, “I think I’d rather stay with Maria!” 

(By the time Caleb went to pick him up, though, he was having enough fun that he wasn’t quite ready to leave.  Isn’t that always the way?)

I spent part of Saturday packing things for our trip to Florida.  Larry took the Jeep to have new tires put on it and to change the oil and lubricate the flimflamdingledonglebittywittyrolphgidget.  (Technical scientific term for ‘thingybobber’.) 

Since we’re going to be in multiple weather zones, I filled my bag with long-sleeved (but not too thick) sweaters, cardigans to layer over them, and a couple of short-sleeved tops.  On our way back home, we plan to cut over to the Gulf side of the peninsula, and follow the coast all the way to New Orleans before turning north.

Victoria is in a great paradox of feelings:  excited to go, sad to leave Kurt.  I told her, “Absence makes the heart go yonder!” and then, stuttering, “Oh, uh, that is, er, ‘grow fonder’.”  Victoria rolls her eyes.  hee hee  Dating couples are so entertaining.

I read the news... scanned through some rhetoric from various presidential(?) candidates...  None of them are particularly upper caliber, in my book.  Donald Trump does make me laugh now and then, and I like the way he doesn’t give a hoot about being politically correct – but I don’t much care for the way he doesn’t give a hoot about certain moral aspects of life, either.  One of the other candidates, after noting Trump’s ranting, raving fit about something, remarked that Donald was having a ‘trumpertantrum’.  

Last week, Trump got all up in arms when the pope took issue with his desire to build a wall at the Mexican border.  “It’s a ‘disgrace’,” said Trump, “for the pope to question my Christianity!!!” (though I believe neither one of them really knows the Lord of the heavens) ------ and now the pope’s spokesman is trying to smooth things over.  ha  

Is there such a thing as a willy-nilly blowhard?  That’s what a whole bunch of people in high places are!

And then there’s Hillary, who is such a bald-faced liar, cheat, thief, and general Enemy of the People, that I can’t understand why people continue to cluster around and pander to her.

I actually suspect Trump might get more things done that I agree with than some of the others, just because he’s so bound and determined to do it.  He’d probably do a plethora of things I disagree with, too, however.

I don’t get too upset about these things.  I just vote to the best of my knowledge, and then do what I can to make my little corner of the world cheery.  No matter what happens, it’s all according to God’s great plan.  ”He knows the end from the beginning,” the Bible says – and nothing is ever out of His control.  We often don’t know the reason things happen – but we can always know it’s in His hand!  And that should give us great peace.

That evening, I made some supper for Loren, and he came to pick it up.  I fixed mixed vegetables, ancient grain-encrusted cod, cheese-filled pasta shells with Ragu, cherry jello, and a blueberry muffins made by Victoria that morning before she went with Kurt and his parents, Bill and Ruth, to Gretna to the Outlet Mall.

By 11:00 p.m., everything that could be packed was packed; the last few items would have to wait until we finished using them Monday morning.  I ran a backup from laptop to external hard drive, then pulled email out of Outlook and put it on the drive, too, since I was running low on storage space on my laptop.  I’ve downloaded WizTree to learn where the biggest files were, so I could transfer them to the external hard drive, too.

Larry had the Jeep all ready to go, other than changing the oil.  He wound up doing something with his tractor instead; he’ll change the oil tonight after church.  The Jeep is shined ’til it glows in the dark, and the new tires have fancy white lettering on them.  Whewweeee, we’re lookin’ fancy-schmancy!

Jeremy, Lydia, Jacob, Jonathan, and new baby Ian were all at church this morning.  That baby is cuter than ever today.

I finally went and looked all over in our new school and Fellowship Hall after the morning, and took a bunch of pictures.  You can see more here:  New School and Fellowship Hall   

Here is the main Fellowship Hall, on the main floor.  It will easily hold 600 people, and there is room for overflow downstairs. 

This is one of two atria over one of the stairwells in the new school.

Victoria’s friend Robin is going to take care of the cats.  I gave her some $$$ with a note:  “For Feline Fellowship and Feeding Detail”.

Teensy is still sneezing, but he’s breathing better, and just plain looks better.  Let’s hope they don’t get into too many lethal fights with the Ol’ Yeller Cat while we’re gone.

Well, I’d better hit the hay.  We plan to leave early in the morning and drive to St. Louis tomorrow.  We don’t usually take any excursions east; Larry (and I, too) love the tall mountains to our west.  But I like to explore new places, too. 

’Til next week...

,,,>^..^<,,,     Sarah Lynn     ,,,>^..^<,,,