Cousins get together

How fun when family gets together! Last night, Dick's cousin, Cathy, and husband Don and 4

of their 6 kids; Nicki, Heather, James and Jason came over for dinner. It was a balmy night

and we spent most of it catching up. I have put a lot of photos on my new Mac, and was able to

catch them up with our family. Their kids are great at the computer, so we caught up with

them on their various Facebook pages. Heather and I are now Facebook friends.

Cathy just retired, and she is doing a lot of ancestry research, which is great for Dick, because he has no photos of their shared grandparents. Cathy has a satin quilt that was signed by family members in NY a long time ago, and we hope that it will help getting the names correct. People used a lot of nicknames, which makes research hard.

David's 38th Birthday

David, Robin, Shannon and Evan drove out after the kid's soccer games. With the kids busy schedules they don't get out to see us as much, but it still is very special. They have been to this house 3 years, so are very comfortable here. We swam, hot-tubbed, had the Family Birthday cake after dinner. The photos are Shannon reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It is a long book and she wanted to finish it so we could watch the movie. She did, and did well on her comprehension test in school.
David and Evan were playing Wii Sports Resort in the other photo. Dick was just coming in from the pool. Evan is a master swordsman.
I mostly take the pictures.

Lego Land in California

We arrived at Dave and Robin's on Friday in time for me to help out in Evan's kindergarten. I did it with Shannon and I loved seeing her with her classmates as most of them learned English or Spanish for the first time. Sr. Regueros is an amazing teacher and has lots of assistants to make it all work. They have 33 or 34 in each class, so it is pretty amazing. Evan is understanding more than he can say, but I could tell he was getting it. He has changed a lot this year.
We took them to Legoland on Feb. 28. As you can see the weather was beautiful and we had fun watching them on all the rides. The park wasn't very busy, and I thought the time on each ride was a little short. I can see cutting it during a busy time.

First Playdate with Mason's Library friends

I was a little nervous setting this up, but I love the kids who are in the library group with Mason. Actually there are about 80 kids and parents, but this group formed before the library remodel was finished. Mason did a good job of sharing after the first toy. The mom's and kids stayed about 1 1/2 hours and it was a lot of fun. I think it was great that Kai and Sora's older brother, Shin, was there as the other little kids liked following him around and letting him chase them.
I got out the chalk board, picnic table and folding table, there where play area's in the living room and family room. Having a lovely sunny day helped every ones spirits. Maki brought home-made rolls, which we all enjoyed.
I love being a grandma with time to really get involved with Mason's day to day life.
Before the kids came at 10:00 Mason wanted me to turn on the TV. He says, "TV", in a very compelling way. I said, "No, not now, your friends are coming over soon." He gives me the cow-eye pleading look, taps his arm and says, with his five fingers out-stretched, "Minutes?" He was negotiating a five minute time frame. Clever kid!

Girls who lunch

The board from last years Ladies 9 Hole Golf had such a good time together that we decided to get together for lunch every month or two. The first was at the new Neiman Marcus restaurant in the Braven, and today was at the Restaurant Paradiso. I love getting together with people who you really like and don't see very often. Of course we will be golfing together soon, but we did a lot of catching up in 3 1/2 hours.
Good friends are . . . Good!

Finishing up Christmas gift

I set off to make a quilt for Robin for Christmas. She had picked out a frog pattern and the piecing part went very fast. The frogs are so cute, and I love the colors. It was a pretty big quilt, and a friend told me about a quilt shop in Duvall, WA that will rent their long-arm quilting machine by the hour after taking a class. Took the class, not too hard, and quilted the top of another quilt for practice. I zipped Robin's quilt on the frame and quilted the background. I planned on quilting the frogs' in a diamond pattern, realized it would be very difficult to manage on the big machine, and discussed alternatives with my instructor, Tina. She really loved the look of the diamond quilting for each frog and convinced me to try to quilt it at home on my small machine. This was all before Christmas. I am a little nervous to start, hating to ruin a pretty cool looking quilt. I mentally quilted it many times, and finally, yesterday, got out my machine, threaded it and went to work. Alas, I had forgotten how to use the quilting foot. I packed up the machine, and went to the sewing machine shop. They put me on the path and here I am finishing up Infrognito. It really does look good! Merry Christmas, Robin!

Valentine's Day

Dick cooked Surf and Turf (lobster tail and filet mignon) for dinner. Yum! These are the flowers he brought. Just had a call from Kate that Mason is asking for us. They are on their way over. It was fun to get my first responses to my blog. Now I am trying to download photos from my camera. It seems like they transferred, but neither Dick nor I could find them. Our new Mac laptop just arrived, so I will be even more techie, I hope!