Wordless Wednesday

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Vacation! (part 3)

Are you still with me? This is the 21st century version of trapping you to watch our home movies, isn’t it? We’re almost done, I promise.

We spent all day Wednesday here:

That’s right, the Happiest Place on Earth. We realized we hadn’t been to Disneyland since Christmas time 1999 when we froze to death. This trip was much nicer, it was a perfect day. Low crowds, pleasant weather.

We just puttered around on Thursday. After lunch with Mom and Dad, we stopped at a quilt shop in Garden Grove. I only got to spend about 10 minutes there, but I bought a scallop tool to use on the unnamed quilt.

On Friday, we went with George, Ken and Sue to Universal City Walk so that I could get a t-shirt from the Dodger store:

And that night, Brian invited us to dine at “his” restaurant. Because of logistics, we went to the Long Beach location where Crystal works rather than the Newport Beach store where he works. Crystal took care of us and we were excited to see Michael and Sabrina and meet their 2-year-old, Makayla. Because she was born a month before Erin and Kevin were married, they didn’t get to come out here, and it had been 4 years since we saw them, when they got married.

We all think Michael and Brian look a lot alike for cousins, but they don’t see it. What do you think?

Saturday we went to the movies with Sue, Ken and Scott and saw “The Informant.”  We went to dinner and Coldstone with Mom, Dad and Dana and then it was about time to pack and get to the airport.

The End (about time)

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Vacation! (part 2)

One thing the Kaspars and Hoffs like to do is eat out. So we had to make sure to hit our favorite restaurants that don’t have locations in our part of the world. For Mexican, we love to go to Vera Cruz in Downey. We did that Saturday night with the Kaspar side. The only ones missing were Michael, Sabrina and Makayla as they were camping in San Diego that weekend. On Monday, we had dinner with Sue and Ken at Marie Callender’s. Yum! Tuesday night was Hennessey’s, Seal Beach for burgers with Mom, Dad, Brian and his girlfriend Crystal, Thursday at Ruby’s Diner at the Irvine Spectrum with Brian, Friday at Yardhouse, Shoreline Village, Long Beach with the Kaspar side and Saturday at Hof’s Hut, Marina Long Beach with Mom, Dad and Dana. Remarkably with all this food, I only gained 2 pounds. Woot!

We went with Ken and George to Griffith Observatory. There had been a large renovation project since we left town and I also thought I might get some good Wordless Wednesday photos. Well that didn’t work out so well as you can see from these:

I think my problem was the polarizing filter. I thought it would help cut the glare of the midday sun, but instead it just made my shots look dull gray.

Tuesday night we went to:

I have to say this game against the Pittsburgh Pirates was one of the more boring ones. The only action happened in the bottom of the 9th when the Dodgers tied it up 3-3 and the bottom of the 13th when they won 5-4. It was 11:30 pm by that time and I was praying for the Pirates to win it because I really didn’t think the Dodgers could pull it off.

John and I:

John’s brother George and and his wife Chris:

Son Brian and Crystal:

It looks like there are a lot of empty seats because I took these pictures while we were waiting for the game to start. There was actually a good crowd of 52,000 there that night.

To be continued:

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Vacation! (part 1)

We actually got to take a trip! Woohoo!

My parents are getting older and it had been 2 years since we’d seen them. So it was high time to go back home to L.A. and visit. That’s where we’re from and where we left all our family. We hadn’t been back there in 4 years. In the past year or so, my brother took a job transfer and moved to Phoenix and of course, my daughter and son-in-law now live in New Mexico.

What was so great about this trip is that we got to see all of them. My sister organized a family reunion and Erin and Kevin arranged a long weekend and drove in and my brother was already there on business. Dana was able to gather almost all the cousins and their families together and we had a really nice picnic at the clubhouse/park at Leisure World, Seal Beach, where my parents live. It was a beautiful day, weather-wise and family-togetherness-wise. We got to meet my cousin’s daughter’s husband of 2 years and their new baby girl. Joe seems like a great guy and the baby is adorable.

So here is a pictorial representation of our week’s festivities:

Not long after we arrived in town, Erin, Dana, Marc and I went for mani/pedi’s. John would never ever be caught dead doing this (although he could benefit from it) but my brother doesn’t let it threaten his manhood.

It was a good time. And look how cute my toes are:

From the picnic: Three generations: me, Mom, Erin:

One exciting event was when my cousin Greg arrived from out-of-town and got to meet his first grandchild:

To be continued…

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Tablerunner project

I have been remiss in posting for the past few weeks. It seems getting ready for vacation and then the vacation itself pulled my attention elsewhere.

I should have been very excited to show you that over the Labor Day holiday I actually made something! It’s not quilted yet (as are so many of my UFOs) but I was so relieved to get it this far.

This was an impulse buy at an out-of-town quilt shop I was investigating. They had a sample on the wall which I really loved, so I bought the pattern and the Moda charm pack that went with it. But it sat on my table for more than a year, I think, and I was getting darn tired of looking at it. I was afraid to put it away untouched for fear (well-deserved) that I would never see it again.

The pattern is from the Little Charmers collection by Heather Mulder Peterson of Anka’s Treasures.

These patterns are designed specifically for 5″ charm squares and I made the one on the left, called “Mango Tango.”

Here’s my version:

It shouldn’t take me very long to quilt it and finish it, so long as I can get started.  LOL

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Wordless Wednesday

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Wordless Wednesday

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Wordless Wednesday

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Full moon rising

We went out for a really nice dinner at a new-to-us place in Shockoe Bottom or Church Hill (not sure where one stops and the other starts) called Sette. It’s in a very unassuming building and you’d never know that there is courtyard dining hidden from the street. It was a wonderfully mild evening and we sat there over pizza and salads and wine with our friends Ed and Susan.  Yum!

After we dropped them off, we headed over to a local schoolyard with camera and tripod to shoot the full moon unobstructed by all the trees in our neighborhood. This was my final attempt after many tries at the wrong settings:

f22.0 @ 1/30 ISO100

Not bad, eh? I did put a levels adjustment on it in Photoshop to make it a little brighter.  I’ll have to try this again tomorrow night if it’s not cloudy. And get an earlier start. It might make a better picture taken at dusk rather than 9pm.

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New baby

I just found out on Facebook that our niece is expecting their second child. You know what that means, a quilt!

I just bought this Karen DuMont “KariePatch Designs” pattern after seeing the shop sample at Quilting Adventures. It’s soooo cute. But it’s girly. I really hope Sabrina has a boy, because we need to keep the Kaspar name alive. And because my brother-in-law George has 3 granddaughters now, it’s time for a grandson.

Karen does have this cute pattern for boys…

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