Nyiah, Nice! We usually just shovel and I hate it. My father-in-law has a snow blower, I don't know if it is gas or electric, but I know that he loves it and said it makes clearing his driveway and walkway so much easier. I hope that you love yours just as much.
In other good things news for our house, Quin and her boyfriend are celebrating their 3 years of dating anniversary today. A long distance celebration since he is still at college and won't be back for a visit until the day before Thanksgiving, but they are both very excited about their anniversary.
We went to see the Army Field Band and Chorus concert today. It was in the next town over and Quin mentioned that her college music appreciation class professor told them about it and that they could do one of their analysis reports on that concert. Quin had already done her reports on other concerts, but the class was told that anyone who was already finished with their reports could write up this one for some extra credit. Quin told us about it and also told my mom, who really enjoys things like this, too, so she also went with us.
The music itself was phenomenal. The group is wonderfully talented. Before the concert, the chorus director came over to chat with us and was telling us about the music and how their tour was going so far and she asked a bunch of questions about the area and if any of us had been in chorus before. We had a nice chat. Then a few minutes later the Colonel, who is the unit commander, came by and saw Quin making notes for her report in her notebook and asked about it. She told him that she was writing a report for her college class and what it was supposed to entail. He started telling her all sorts of information about the group and the performance and they chatted back and forth for a bit with Quin asking a bunch of questions and he answered all of them and gave her his card and said that if she had any other questions to send him an email and he would be happy to help her out. He stopped back a handful more times, too, to see if she had any questions and once during the intermission to ask how it was going and she already had a couple of pages of notes that she showed him and he seemed impressed and said as much. Quin typed up her report tonight when we got home and sent him a copy and said that she appreciated his patience with answering questions and let him know that it helped her out a lot.
It was a really nice time and I'm so glad that Quin found out about it and that we were able to go.
I decided to crochet scarves for the kids for Christmas. Kinda...bit off more than I could chew at the start and have been learning as I go, to do something other than the basic single stitch (turns out, I wasn't taught how to do a proper Double stitch when I learned to crochet as a kid) I'm still working on the first scarf (Big Kid's) because I've had to take it apart and start over a total of 5 times now. I'm pretty sure I've nailed ribbed stitching with Doubles, and I think I've gotten the hang of it enough to not skip any stitches anymore. And I'm reasonably sure I won't miss any at the end of the rows anymore and accidentally create sloppy eyelets. I still haven't figured out how to crochet at lightning speed (I'm a very slow crocheter) like the more experienced folks do, but I'll get it done eventually. 6th try's the charm!
Queen of English Language Mangling, Master of the Edit button
Nyiah, Awesome! A lot of my friends crochet and make so many beautiful things. You'll definitely have to post pictures some time, I would love to see your projects.
I had a really nice couple of days. My cousin is visiting from South Carolina for a few days to see family. She grew up here, but moved to be by her husband's family after they got out of the Navy and after they got divorced she stayed down there so that their kids could still be near their dad. We got together with her, her fiance, and one of her sisters and had a blast. It was so good to see her again in person. We talk all the time, but haven't seen each other for more than 15 years since her last visit was about 8 years ago and my family was out of town then. I hope that it won't be so long until her next visit.
Then tonight my parents had us over for homemade pot roast and veggies. It was amazing. I have been married for 20 years and still love to visit and have mom's cooking. It is comfort food, I guess. After we cleaned up dinner and dishes we sat and visited for a while and just chatted. It was a nice relaxing evening and I loved it.
I'm just about done with Big Kid's scarf, now to finish it with a single stitch edging row and add fringe I'm getting really sick of looking at burgundy yarn, so YAY, almost done!
The rabbit seems to have litter box trained himself. We have re-purposed cloth diapers from when the kids were little that we use as cleaning rags and such now, I'd been using them to spot clean his pee spots (nothing wicks up liquid better than cloth diapers) I would set them on a storage tub lid on the floor that I put over top the spot to prevent Round 2 when I was done, and he took it upon himself to designate any lid, anywhere we put it, with that type of rag on it as a litter box. No rag, no pee, he won't go on bare plastic. He does his business, does his Crazy Bunny stuff, comes back & uses it, etc. Hey, I'm not complaining, one less thing to train him to do and I'm all for reusing things I already have instead of buying overpriced specialty stuff! If he prefers doing his business on specifically these cloths, I'll get another regular metal cake pan he can't chew through & just put the rags in that.
Queen of English Language Mangling, Master of the Edit button
Nyiah, That is awesome! How clever of bunny, too. That has to be one less headache for you and if you have those cloth diapers left that he likes, even better. You can always come by more cleaning cloths if there aren't enough cloth diapers to cycle between his lids and cage and still have others for cleaning available.
Awesome on the scarf, too. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that the finishing line of stitching is easy for you and I would love to see a picture of it when it is finished.
Yay, Christmas tree's up! And a real wreath on the door this year :) Spyder wanted a real tree, but the budget didn't allow for that this time, so we opted for a real wreath instead & put up the fake tree, and it's sure a purdy wreath out there We got a little string of battery-operated lights to weave into it, and a few glittery ornaments to hang on it, too. Simple, but way nicer looking than a plastic wreath is.
We also got some new ornaments for the tree this year, we were never really happy with any of our "inherited" ornaments' color schemes. We do white lights, white/silver garland and it was just a hot mess of everything in the crayola box. Now the main colors are settled -- icy blue/mint blue, white & silver ball ornaments, it shouldn't be too hard to work with that for the other ornaments we already have. Big Kid's new personal ornament this year is a little Snow Owl, the tree actually has a very wintery feel to it with the blue colors now, so the owl fits right in.
Big Kid's scarf is finished & fringed, and washed up. It softened up a LOT more than I expected, I kind of want to keep it now XD Little Kid's scarf is coming along, about a quarter finished with it. I'm kind of winging hers in a way, I grabbed an extra yarn and it's...not the same shade. I think I'm going to try to edge it in that color a few rows around, and reserve some of it for blending with the other color for fringe. It SHOULD work, or it might look horrible, I don't know yet. I'll try to get photos of the scarves up here in the next few weeks (I still have a photo thread to keep fixing photos in, too!)
Also, Little Kid is very talented at gift-guessing. She's managed to guess within a damn accurate range exactly what some of the gifts under the tree are already just by the noise they make being rattled
Queen of English Language Mangling, Master of the Edit button
Nyiah, The wreath and tree both sound beautiful. I like the colors that you chose and can see how they would have a wintry kind of feel. Quin was also good about guessing gifts, but we solved that problem by keeping the gifts all up in a closet that she can't get into and not putting them under the tree until Christmas eve late at night after she has gone to bed. It isn't as big a deal now that she is older, but it definitely helped keep her from guessing all of her gifts before she opened them when she was younger.
That is awesome that the scarf softened up even more! I bet the kids will love them.
Finally the worst of my cold is over with just some congestion and coughing left. Despite that, I feel so much better now. Today was a good day. Quin had her winter band concert and it sounded wonderful! So proud of the band kids and how much work they put into learning and improving.
Quin is getting to go see the musical Wicked tomorrow for a school field trip! She has wanted to see this for as long as she can remember. It is one of my favorite musicals, so we have been listening to the cast recording since she was little and she knows every word of all the songs by heart. Since she is going as a school trip the ticket only cost $20.00 and some money for food and any souvenirs they might want to get. I am so excited for her and can't wait to hear all about it!
I am getting my Christmas present early! Russ ordered a new computer for me. I have been using his work laptop for a while now and when he needs to take the laptop to work I am computerless and now that won't be the case any more. I am so excited and can't wait to get it and get it all set up!
Quin's boyfriend got to come home from college for winter break a bit earlier than expected. Unfortunately it wasn't as early as he was trying for. He was scheduled to fly out at 7 p.m. and to land at about 10 and that would have gotten him home by about 11:30 or so. Ususally if he gets in around then I will let him come over for an hour-ish to see Quin. His flight ended up getting pushed back and he didn't even take off until about 10 which would have him arriving at 1 a.m. and not getting home until 2:30 or so. It is only a few hours difference, but I am in bed by then, so they didn't get to see each other until Quin got off work at noon today.
But, it is nice to have him back for a bit. He isn't here for very long, though. He leaves again on the 22nd with his family to go on a 10 day cruise, so Quin is sad that she won't get to spend Christmas with him this year. I know that she is happy to have him home at all, though, and will enjoy spending as much time with him as possible.
Well, since this is the happy thread.... I got a new laptop for Christmas!!! Which means I can finally find the sites I lost with the old one! The downfall of having everything saved in favorites I guess! Using my old Droid phone to get on line was a bit exasperating. Hope everyone here is doing well!
Hey! Great to see you. I had that happen with my previous computer, too. I just got a new one and had been using my husband's work laptop since this past summer and when I got the new one running I had none of my bookmarks anymore. It has been frustrating trying to remember all of the links to all of my favorite sites and re-bookmark them.
It is exciting to get a new computer, though. I am happy for you! I imagine it was frustrating trying to navigate forums and around the internet just on a phone.
We are doing well in my family and hope that you and yours are also doing well.
YAY!!! Quin got a package the other day from the office of admissions from her first choice school, Augustana College. She got all excited thinking it might be her admission acceptance letter. It wasn't. It was a dry erace white board with a note written on it that said "Congratulations on your acceptance to Augustana! We believe you would be a GREAT fit here at Augie! Best of luck with your senior year and I hope to see you on campus this fall!" That was pretty awesome, but she hadn't gotten an acceptance letter yet. That was on Thursday and it didn't come on Friday, either.
Today we were back at the college for an open house and scholarship competition and we saw her admissions counselor, so we asked about it. He said that he personally authorizes those to go out and he only allows them to be sent to kids who have been accepted. He said to give him a minute and he would check his computer. So we wandered around and talked to the people who had tables set up for the major she is interested in and chatted with some of the students who are in that major now. A few minutes later Eric, the admissions counselor, comes back and finds us and tells us that everything looked like it should and that she is definitely accepted and that he would resend her letter on Monday morning, but not to worry about it because he was assuring her that he personally approved her acceptance and the spot is hers if she wants it!
She was so excited she could hardly see clearly. After that she went to the scholarship competition part of the morning and for her major it was a test. She said that out of 50 questions she knew all but 2 and those were things she hadn't gone over, but was pretty sure she knew the answers to. She said that all 48 other questions were things that she had learned in her advanced biology and her anatomy classes last year and that she knew the answers to for sure. She said that she was one of the first people to turn in her test and that she felt really good about how she did on it.
Now we wait for her official formal acceptance letter and financial aid packet and once we get that we can pay the tuition down payment to get things started. Quin (and Russ and I) are so excited and relieved that she got this acceptance and now the choosing a school part of this process is finished.
Last Edit: Jan 13, 2018 22:42:16 GMT -6 by Glencairn