Baseball in Iowa.........another road trip!

I was back in Iowa for 2 nights (4 baseball games and 1 softball game) this past week.  Two summers ago, DD and I went up to watch my older nephew play 8th grade baseball.  This time I wanted to see the younger one play 8th grade ball (Iowa plays school baseball and softball in the summer).  It would have worked perfectly with the baseball schedule to go up 2 days prior to the guild shop hop and just meet up with the quilters in Winterset, but my nephew got "called up to the majors" so to speak.  He was moved up to the freshman/JV teams.  So, that schedule didn't work.  So this trip allowed me to see 4 games in 2 nights and only take off one day of work and see both nephews play ball!

My guys are #24 (freshman in the fall), and #2 (junior in the fall).  #2 was the catcher the first night and had an awesome JV game even though they lost.  The varsity game was very exciting (rain delay) and they won, beating a really good team!

The second night, #24 was in left field and #2 started out pitching!  It was so fun to see them both on the field at the same time.  Both nights were cool and the second was windy.

Finally got them to pose for a photo!

The younger one just got his permit, so he chauffeured me around town during the day, except for the quilt shop, he stayed home to do this.............

My sister and I got pedicures and also did some looking around town.  We found this..........

And made some plans for more elaborate wine bottle bird feeders.  I came home with a stash of wine glasses from a flea market and some of my sister's bottle collection.  The hubs had found an even cuter design in his Handy Man magazine, so we collected the supplies for him to make some.

No big trips planned for this week.........Wednesday was going to be a "stay home all day" day, but then realized there was a massage scheduled for the afternoon!  So other than that, it was a "stay home" day.
Christi

Guild Shop Hop!!!

A group of 14 guild members left for our shop hop on Friday morning a week ago.  It was so much fun!

Father's Day

This is a favorite photo that happened the week before Father's Day..........

They are watching a movie trailer for the new Winnie the Pooh movie which will come out the first weekend in August.  Seeing this is one of DD's plans for the weekend of her 21st birthday.  

June is Bustin' Out All O - o - ver!

It's June!  The rose bush on the east side of our house was very active at the end of May.  Most of the blooms are wilting now.  Just a little to the right of this is the new pistachio hydrangea that we planted.  I'm giving it another week to get bloomed out before taking a photo.

Time Flies!

I can't believe how this month has flown by...........here we are taking care of the neighbor's rabbits again while they are on vacation!  They were gone at the beginning of the month and now the month is almost over and they are gone again!

 Here are the babies that were born the last time I took care of the rabbits!

And, I picked their strawberries last night as well...............2 strawberry pies worth!

I did finish my second barn quilt embroidery block............

And, I got another drawn to start the embroidery on.  This was quite the undertaking as I use a light inside a clear plastic tub (homemade light box!), all of which were full, so had to take some Christmas decorations out of one..........which worried the hubs.........he questioned my sanity - getting Christmas decorations out in May!  He had heard of Christmas in July but thought May was really pushing it.

All about animals.........and some quilting!

Our neighbors were out of town for a graduation this past weekend, so we were on rabbit duty.  Several rabbits were supposed to have babies, but only 1 did.  Here is the little pile of fluff I encountered that had 5 pink naked babies under it.

I spent Saturday morning cleaning out the shed.  It was full of bugs and dirt, so I carried everything out, swept the ceiling, walls, and floor, and then hosed it out.  I also made some new cushions for the kittens from fabric I didn't want and scraps of batting.

My kittens seem to enjoy them.  This was the scene I encountered on Sunday morning.  If you look and count closely, there are more than 5 kittens here........

This little guy had joined the fab five.  He is about the same size as the other kittens.  I am guessing that he belonged to Black Toe, the first cat to have kittens and she had them out somewhere in the really cold weather we had a month or so ago.  Apparently she was tired of feeding him and deposited him in the shed with the others.  The 2 mothers who are sharing didn't seem too upset about another mouth to feed, and he sure is cute.  I have named him Sylvester.

And this mom and 4 babies seem very content.  They have their eyes open and spend most of their time sleeping or rolling around in their box.

Here are 3 more chickens joining the flock for the yellow/gold month.

And here is the whole flock......

May's color is pink/rose.  I have decided that I really don't have many scraps in pink and rose, so am skipping this and will spend the month making more blue and green and gold chickens to even things out.

I picked some beautiful lilacs and they looked great on this table runner I finished.  They looked great for all of 5 minutes until Jason 2.0 knocked them over.

I also finished piecing these 2 table runners.........

 I don't particularly care for this one, but may use it to practice my machine quilting.

I like this one better, but may try quilting it as well.

I dug some cherries out of the freezer and made the hubs this cherry crisp this past weekend.  

We're looking into another busy week.  The hubs wants to finish planting beans and will weigh pigs in the research barn again on Friday.  I will finish up piano lessons for the summer and move dd home from school on Friday.  I also have a quilt guild meeting and we are working on our charity quilts.

Christi

Visit from Spain!

On Saturday, (after the late night return from the concert in Rolla), I headed to Bethany to visit my parents and their special guest - Merecedes!  She was our exchange student from Spain when my sister was in high school.  It had been 7 years since we had last seen her.

Mercedes is on the right and her sister, Ana, is in the middle.  Ana is a year younger and was an exchange student with a family in Iowa the year after Mercedes stayed with us.