Thanksgiving

Today we are heading to my son's house for their annual, delicious Thanksgiving dinner.  Kris is a great cook and always has some unique dish she prepares.  Her mom is in charge of the rolls (home made of course, as she's also a great cook!) and she'll make a pumpkin cheesecake.

 I'm in charge of making two lemon meringue pies.  I have a recipe from the late 60's that makes the best lemon pie ever!  I saw  earlier this week on GMA where you use vodka along with water when mixing your pie dough (yes, I make my own pie crust).  I won't know how well the crust tastes so you'll have to wait and find out in another post!  They look good!  HA

I haven't been dong hand work on my hexes daily...I'm giving my hands/wrists a break and only doing hand work every other day or two.  UGH...left hand is starting back up with discomfort, which I'm not thrilled about.  I have a call into the Ortho Dr. who injected my wrists this past summer to see if I can get in before we head south the end of December for another injection.  Keeping my fingers crossed.   This is the progress so far...I have each row sewn now to sew the rows together.

And I only have 12 Valentine fiber cards to finish the edging on!  Woohoo....I have 30 cards totally finished!!!!  All I need are the stamps, which I'll do sometime in December.  I don't want to wait until Florida as the lines at the post office in Ocala are long, long, long!  It's all 'we' snowbirds you know!

Wednesday, Kalee had her 'day job' of visiting the local Assisted Living center.  She just loves all the people....

 There is also a Memory Care Unit next door, which we haven't visited until today!  I was talking with the manager of the Assisted Living unit and she asked if we have visited the Memory Care unit.  She thought the residents at Memory care unit would also enjoy Kalee and asked if sometime I would go over.  I said "sure, how about today?".  She grabbed her coat and off we went!  The residents were great and I know for those few minutes she brought some smiles to their faces.

Oh, just so I have documented on my blog....Tuesday night we lost power a little before 7 p.m. until almost 11 p.m.!  We are lucky to have a gas fireplace upstairs which kept the temperature in the house at our regular 72 degrees!  We were actually quite comfortable. I read, we talked and looked at pictures on my Ipod.  We do have a generator but Bob didn't think the power would be out too long...hence we ended up taking out items from the frig, put them in coolers and sat them out on the deck!  About 30 min. after we did that the power came on!  Go figure!

I do hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and you eat until you can't eat anymore!  HA  It's just what we do isn't it!

Moving on!

Just about 99% finished with 'the bird'...then onto creating the cactus for him to stand on.  I am going to redo his beak and I'll add beads for his eye (there is a hole there right now but hard to see!) when I place him on the quilted background.

I'm surprised I made this much progress as yesterday we ended up taking Kalee into the local vet for what we think was gastritis...as the Dr. was examining her, he was examining her back legs.  Kalee has a condition called Luxating Patella...in layman terms her knees pop in and out..kinda gross if you pick her up you can feel the joints pop.  Well, as he examined her he said "wow, she won't put her weight on her leg but I didn't do anything"...hmmmmm ....I was holding her at this point so we didn't notice anything else.
Ok, off we went to go back home with meds in hand to treat her gastritis (she has a history of pancreatitis so we can't take any chances when she acts ill and besides we like to contribute to the local economy!)...digressing again....sorry about that...so when we get home Kalee can't put any weight on her back leg...tail down....really  hurting...fortunately, we were given pain meds for her gastritis so I gave her meds and put a heat source on her leg....she was in a lot of discomfort....poor baby...just about killed me...

She and I went to bed early and she slept through the night.  This morning she got up and ran, yes, ran outside to go potty.  When she came back in I thought all was well but then she started to hold her foot up in the air from time to time....ugh...so we called the vet and I took her back in.  Appears her leg was irritated and probably inflamed, hence pain/discomfort...the vet we had today was the wife of the vet we had yesterday.  I told her that her husband "broke my dog"...she laughed and after her exam, diagnosis and two shots she called her hubby at home (they work opposite weekends) and told him the same thing..."he broke our dog"...kinda funny.  Kalee is doing well now...she's on "no mile walking" until Monday but I am to keep her walking around the yard, etc.   Vet doesn't want her getting stiff.  We'll start our mile again on Monday and so far she's doing well.

Kalee can't walk her mile but I'll be doing some 'mile' walking Sunday, as I'm headed to Gainesville with some ladies to go to the Tioga Fine Art Fair.  This is an event I go to each year.  Last year I met Regina Roper who creates amazing beaded pieces.  If you're on FaceBook, you can check out some of her work...that's one of Regina's pieces on the Art Fair flyer above!  Pretty nice.  I am looking forward to meeting up with her again and drooling over her wonderful work!!!  Weather should be perfect so looking forward to a nice day.  Pics will be forthcoming!!  And my Fit Bit will be working overtime!

Happy Birthday, Kalee!!

Hop on over to Kalee's blog...it's her Birthday today!!!  Can't believe she's 3 already!!

Good Day...Bad Day...

Well, let's start with the good news first...I only have a very small section left on my leaf!  Check it out!!!  I should be able to finish this section by the end of the week...as long as Tigers are on TV!

Next, on another good note (the 'bad' is coming!)...I won a $10 gift voucher at Superior Thread from a Give-Away on Lily's Quilts!   How cool is that!!!  I love Superior Threads and especially the newsletter!  The voucher can be used to purchase the titanium-topstitch-needle or any other item.  I have heard about Titanium needles before so I think I will try them!  Cool, right!  So thanks Lynne!!  I know...her blog is called "Lily's" but you'll just have to go on over and read why her blog is call Lily's and not Lynne's!


Now for the bad news!!!

Kalee chewed/ate a plastic dental pick!  UGH!!!  Of course, because I was screaming like a Banshee monkey, she thought I was playing...so as I was trying to get her to "drop", "out", chase her, corner her...she kept munching (which I guess was good if she wasn't going to drop it!)...I only found 2 tiny, tiny pieces of the pick left!  Of course, I called the vet immediately...and they wanted to know what ingredients were in the pick.  Well, you would think this was a huge trade secret!  I couldn't find anything on the package or on the web as far as ingredients and neither could the vet tech.  So I called the company and found out there is a resin plastic called Polystyrene and Polyethylene and essential oils used to coat the plastic (vet was concerned about another ingredient, which wasn't in these)!  UGH...both the "P" words are used in food, cosmetics, medicine...just to name a few!!  I recently checked out a book from the library called 'Eat It to Beat It' which tells you which processed, fast food and restaurant meals are better or worse for you!  Who knew that the same ingredient used to make a Yoga mat are also in our food(s)!  Now I just hope Kalee' digestive system can handle the "P's"....Just what I need...more worry in my life!!!

Sandwich time and an all nighter!

This afternoon I sandwiched the other five panels of Ian's T-shirt quilt.  The first panel I sandwiched was hard to do as I had to sandwich it on the floor.  Today I remembered the kitchen table has an extension in it so that worked out perfect!  The table isn't the full 72" length I needed but long enough I could baste all but 3-4" on either side.  Time consuming but so much easier then getting up and down from the floor.
Whew!  Glad those are all sandwiched and pinned...now to get them quilted!!

I haven't stayed up all night with a sick baby in over 40+ years...but I did last night!!  Kalee  had another bout of her gastritis/pancreatitis last night...poor dog was so miserable....she was fine all day long but around 10 last night, she wanted outside to eat grass...this went on and off for about 45 min.   Then starting around 12:30 a.m. she wanted out again trying to eat grass and just waking around...this went on until 7 a.m....she never got sick until 4:30 a.m. but would only lay for 15-20 min. at a time.   She kept burping, licking her lips and wanting outside...I knew what it was but just don't know what set it off.  Anyway, we got to the vets this a.m. and after two shots, meds for the next 10 days and some new dog food, we are all resting.  She isn't suppose to eat until tomorrow and so far she isn't bugging me too bad.  I think we'll all sleep good tonight!!!  At least I hope so!!

Still beading...

Well, no surprise there that I'm still beading...probably will until my fingers totally quit!  This is the beaded part of my MACRO quilt for the online challenge.

I know it's hard to imagine what it is...but that's the fun part, right!  Anyway, I dyed my background piece and cut out some other pieces I need to finish this piece or at least to start laying it out.  I need to get a jump on this challenge as it's due the end of November, which is my busy time with holiday's and getting ready to leave for Florida.

This a.m., I fed dogs (Cody spending the night), fed Grace, made a frittata for our breakfast, on my 3rd load of laundry, cleaned bathrooms and then scrubbed Grace's cage and area...decided to take a coffee break so I took our 'tunnel' out back.  M friend, Chris, who is a dog trainer and does agility, gave me a tunnel and a jump for Kalee!  We are having so much fun (Kalee and I)...Bob doesn't really get this at all...it has nothing to do with golf...go figure....

Anyway, this is how we play with the tunnel.  Kalee does love it and it replaces a walk!  Well, maybe one of the walks!  Gives her some exercise and we both get to go outside!

And for those of you who are into dogs...check out Kalee riding shot gun on our way to Obedience class the other night!  I just love this dog!  I have posted before on FB and her blog a similar video...she rides like this all the time!  She's in her harness and sitting on a pillow I made...but she loves to look out the window!

What a weekend!

My last overnight 'date night' with the kids this weekend. We had a great time and it was Kalee's first 'sleepover' (you can read about her weekend here on her blog). The kids were great! Auntie and I split the time as Darrin and Kris went up north for a few days to get away. I have to say the kids were just great and I had so much fun! So now our countdown to leaving for the winter!! It's always bittersweet as I love going to Florida but I do hate leaving the kids. Thank goodness for SKYPE!! Makes the time away and missing everyone not quite so bad.

Not much going on!

Not getting much done at our house this week! You can check out Kalee's blog here to see what we've been up to!

Raising a baby!

Well, it's been a month since we lost our Mandy girl and our lives certainly have been turned upside down. Raising a puppy is like having a toddler in the house. I have a few friends who have small grand children and even one who has raised a grand child and great grand child. I forgot what those days were like. Our grand kids are now 8 through 20 so those toddler years have been erased from my memory!
Our kids don't understand why I need to devote so much time to raising Kalee. As my son said "it's only a puppy, mum". Yes, Kalee is just a puppy but I want her to be a good dog and not a monster puppy/dog. I also want her to be a therapy dog like Mandy was and to be that type of dog she needs good training. I feel it's worth the effort but it is time consuming.
I know the one good out of all of this is the exercise I'm getting! Walking Kalee at least 4-5 times a day gets the old joints moving as does climbing up and down the stairs to take her outside. That's the good side.
The off shoot is the time to devote to training her is certainly taking away from my family and artwork. I have to get into a new routine of working her and then working my old schedule back into our routine. So this week I'm going to try to start a new daily routine. My old routine was to get up, pick up house, decide dinner menu then start my art work or my outings. I now to add in her routine to my routine. Hmmmm I might have to take an online project management course! It's been 12 years since I've had to manage a project so guess I better get started on Project Kalee! OK, so Monday is dye root day, Tues. is Dr. appt, Wed. is puppy class...hmmmmm guess we'll start project management on Thursday!

The worse of times, the best of times...

No, this isn't a Tale of Two Cities...but it's been the most awful time for Bob and I. I didn't know I could hurt that much from the loss of our beloved Mandy. I'm not going through everything that happened last Friday because it's too hard talking about it over and over again. Mandy most likely had a clot, stroke and went into cardiac arrest. She's not suffering anymore and Dunkel Vet's here in Davison did a wonderful job trying to save her. We'll be forever grateful for everything they did.
And now it's "time" for the best of "times"! We brought home our new puppy yesterday afternoon! You can read all about Kalee on her blog here. She's the sweetest little dog and so far just the smartest, best little puppy you could ask for! Kalee has brought us so many smiles since yesterday and is filling some of the void in our hearts. No dog will take the place of Mandy but Kalee will certainly create her own spot in our world. I hope for those who follow my blog and are animal lovers will go over to Kalee's blog to meet her.