Last Christmas Gathering and a Sewing Bee Prize

These gorgeous pieces of fabric are from Mary in AZ on my stashbuilders group. They are really pretty and will find their way into a quilt soon!

This is Kathy's neice Megan holding up her Orange Crush quilt we gave her tonight. She seemed to like it, but didn't even open it up and ooh and ahh. Which I would have if I had gotten a quilt...but this is likely her last quilt anyway--she has two now and this one is huge!

Her oldest son Mikey was FAR MORE EXCITED to get his quilt. Of the four kids getting an ABC quilt with their initial on it his reaction was the best. Megan was thrilled that the kids would have new quilts since they have been loving their old ones to pieces. So that was good. Next quilt for these kids might be graduation..again they each have two now!
Came home and watched a movie with my sweetie and it was nice to just be at home. Tomorrow I am going to get sewing and pick out fabric for my Bonnie NYE Mystery. My sweetie gave me a gift certificate to my favorite quilt shop so I can buy whatever my heart desires...which will be nice!

A Busy Christmas

Yesterday we spent the day chihuahua shopping with my sister, my mom and a few of my sister's friends. One of them took home this sweet girl who liked the spot between the heated seats and me in my sister's car!

My sister got the black one the night before. She is calling him Chai (as in tea since he is a tea cup) but half the time we call him nugget. He has a great personality, travels well (puked on me once lol) and is good with kids, cats and huge dogs already. I love him! The other one is one of my sister's friend's new one. She is sister to the other one. Very hard to get a picture of them all together they move so much. You can see my nephew's original I Spy quilt underneath them as we were trying to keep them warm in the car.

Here you can see Quarto (or Cujo as we often call him) my sister's huge mastif dog. Left to right...my step dad Gary, my mom Toni, my sister Tina, me, my brother Sam. You can see my nephew's navy pic in the background and he took this photo too! Was good to have him home for Christmas..the Navy is doing worlds of good for him! I was more dressed up Christmas Day when this was taken, but started cooking and cleaning and changed my clothes..never did change back...Oh well!

This is Ben in his new pajamas with cute feet on Christmas Eve. He enjoyed opening his gifts and several of the things I got him were a hit and were immediately put on or played with. Glad he is a happy boy!
Today we are going to Kathy's sister's house for Christmas with that side. I am Christmassed out...seriously ready to just chill at home, but we will have fun once we get there. Very excited to sew tomorrow...going to get all my HST's done (and Kathy's too since she works) and also going to pick out fabrics for Bonnie at Quiltville's NYE Mystery. I know, two mysteries...but Bonnie's starts that day so I will work on it between clues for the other one if I have time, or work on it the next day since the next clue will come at some unknown time. I skipped Bonnie's last mystery-Tobacco Road because it coincided with the start of the school year and I had so much to get ready for. I really liked it and wished I had done it! So I am finding time for this one...don't know who any of these quilts are for or anything. Some people drink, I sew. LOL. Hoping one quilt will suit Coleman when it is done. Oh and speaking of my oldest son...remember the bad news I got from him? He sent a letter out the next day (but I wasn't home to get it until yesterday) and he informed me that I had been "punked" which in case you don't know means fooled...he was kidding about the bad news. Chalk one up for him...I am not happy about the joke, but he is high functioning autistic and his sense of humor isn't quite on with the rest of us. Still I love that kid to pieces! And as he reminds me often "gotta love me" which is so true.
These two pictures are several years old now but all my children are together at Christmas in these pictures so will show them to you. The youngest is now 16 so this has to be from 2002 or so (it is I checked)!
This one may be the same year or the next year...not sure but it is tradition when we are there for them to sit on Papa's lap (he is their great grandfather DeLos and is 81 this year and still recovering from surgery and his stroke but doing well).

The Phoenix Zoo and Zoolights with the Family

My parents are in town from Texas so we did something we have never done before. We went to the zoo as a family. My brother has a one year old and everything revolves around "the golden baby" as we call him so this is why we went. My sister and I have never gone to the zoo with the rents, nor did any of our four children. I can list many things we didn't do with the parents that our younger brother (the golden boy) did. While I say this with humor, it is absolutely true. He has been to Sea World, Disneyland, and lord knows what else, when we never went anywhere with our folks. In fact, after he was born they took a family picture and my sister and I are not in it. We were ten and twelve when he was born, and in fact no formal picture of us as a family was ever taken. Though we have a HUGE photo of the three of them framed beautifully when he as about six too. I love my parents (and my brother) but things were never fair and I think my sister and I still deal with that reality to this day. She has a harder time with it than I do, but I have three children and I could never consistantly do more for one than the other...so anyway if you are still with me (and I don't blame you if you aren't) we went to the Phoenix Zoo.

My brother has a friend that works there and she took us behind the scenes a bit and one thing we got to do was feed the elephant (Reba) and hang with her for a bit. She is 42 or so and used to be in the circus. She was amazing up close and we all fell in love with her. Ben especially enjoyed feeding her cookies and she was able to pick them up with her trunk...she has amazing fine motor control with that thing! We all wanted to touch her, but we had to stay behind the yellow line and just admire from afar. It was worth the price of admission (which was VERY expensive, I may never get back to that zoo, lol).
We went to eat after seeing a show at the zoo and some members riding the carousel and camels and touching stingray and such.

I took the pictures so I am not in any of them--except the one they took as we came in. The rents let us be in it--GRIN.

This one I took when we came back for zoolights..and paid another admission fee. My stepdad Gary on the left, mom Toni, sister Tina, brother's gf Tiffany with my nephew Ben on her shoulders and my brother Sam on the right. He is a really nice guy despite being spoiled by us all, all his life.
This was my favorite tree in the whole zoo. The lights are rainbow colored and the tree is just amazing. I even managed to get a picture without any people in it!

I suggested we all buy a little elephant ornament to commemorate the visit. Every year I buy an ornament for us (I used to do it for my kids every year, this is the first year I haven't since the baby is 16 now) and write the year on the bottom of it. I try to pick something out that reminds of us of what we did that year. This is the year of the elephant I guess. So everyone bought one so that was fun.

Got bad news from my oldest son and it has affected my mood (as if you can't tell) going to be a tough Christmas...sigh.