Pictures of Our Babysitting

On Monday afternoon, we had all 3 of the B. kids, instead of just Lincoln because the girls were off school. Jason, Emily, Faith, Hope, and I went to the Letford Elementary School playground, and there we played tag. It was warm, but windy!

L-R: Emily, Hope, and Faith posing


Faith and Emily playing tag -- neither of them was "it" right then


Me on the run playing tag...


Hope touching "base"

Lincoln last Friday

Miscellanious news

I have a list (of 6 things) before me, all of which potentially could be blogged about. (I didn't want to forget anything during the time I didn't have time to blog.)
It is as follows:
-Sewing machine
-Blood donation
-Babysitting
-Out of personality - school
-Finished book
-Our "perfect" day

There you go. If you're interested in any of those topics, read on! ;-)


Sewing Machine - I purchased a new sewing machine a about a week and a half ago, due to the fact that we couldn't (after searching high and low) find a belt for my sewing machine from Aunt Hazel. My new one is a Singer, and has several cool features. I hope it will be good for me for many years to come. Mother and I haven't had enough time together yet to work on figuring out how to use the 35 stitches, or how to just sew. We are planning on going to a class in early October to learn about it.

Blood donation - Although it is ill-legal for children of my age to donate blood in CO, I had mercy on poor blood starved insects and gave blood. That's right, just like thousands (or millions) of people across our country and around the world I was a victim of mosquito bites. I thank God that I have not (yet) contracted West Nile virus from my generous donations!!! (By the way, I hate mosquitoes, if you couldn't tell.)

Babysitting - I babysat Linky-dude again last Monday, but I won't today because of Labor Day.

Out of personality-School - We started our home-school year last Monday. I did something totally out of personality for me (people usually say 'out of character', but this is more of a personality thing than character, I believe.). I covered both my 3 ring binder and my notebook I use for my Algebra 2 studies with stickers. We have had a wide variety of stickers in our collection: Sunday School stickers, goofy cartoon ones, and miscellaneous others. (The BJA is a homemade-handmade paper thingy, taped with double back tape. The rest are stickers.)



Finished book - (I am so proud of myself! -just kidding- but it is very rare for me to read a whole book by myself.) I finished reading a book within the past two weeks, entitled "Tortured for His Faith" by Haralan Popov (Zondervan 1975). I really enjoyed it, and believe that I benefited from having read it. It tells the story of a man who gave his very life and all for Christ. He could have easily died in the 13 years of torture, but God preserved his life, for a purpose: God used him greatly in the salvation of, and ministering to many fellow prisoners and later in help to the persecuted church. It is amazing to me how God can, does, and will help Christians be true in terrible times and come out of it serving the Lord with far more fervor.

Our "perfect" day - Well, I really enjoyed our day in the mountains on August 23rd. You can read about it and see pictures... (if you haven't already)... on my family's blog. We had a picnic in a perfect little spot on the St. Vrain River we had never picnicked before. The only problem was all of the bees and ants who wanted our food! But it was beautiful. Then we drove and drove looking for a specific place on our map, and we finally found it. Most of us (not Mother) went on a hike there. It was absolutely beautiful. There were several campers taking advantage of the beauty and nice weather. While on the hike, we took pictures, waded in the water, and you guessed it - hiked! It was a lot of fun.

Ok, that's all the news on my list.

In other news - Today, some of the family is making grape jam, in celebration of Labor Day. Dad is off of work and we kids are off of school (except for Jeff and Jason who are trying to catch up from last week when Emily and I started school while they were still working for ABE LAWNS. They are now pretty much off of work... on "school break" :-)). I have been working on God's Girls Newsletter and all that goes with getting that out every month.

All of us kids (including the ones in MO) are working on plans for a 25th anniversary celebration for our parents in October- so I have been working on invitations for that.

I wanted to share some cute/fun/whatever pictures we stole from my cousin, Rebekah!
This is my sis-in-law, Brenda, and Bren's and my mutual nephew Quil.

This is my cousin, Leah, and my nephew, Quil. I thought it was so cute of him peaking around the fence.

This is Tim standing by Bren, who's in a hammock. I love this picture.

Cousin, Rebekah and Quil in the hammock. What a cute look on that boy's face!!


So long!

New mp3 players

My generous, hardworking, young brothers, Jeff and Jason, gave Mother and I our birthday presents early on Saturday night. We both were given mp3 players and we are very happy about having them. We are enjoying listening to them and are trying to figure them out. Thank you Jeffrey and Jason! Now Mother and I can listen to music and stories more easily while we work.

Cleaning and babysitting

I got to clean on Friday as was planned. The main thing I did was clean the living room of the house. I also cleaned a couple of other smaller areas. Cindy, the friend I was working for, and I had lunch at Subway.

Yesterday, we started a new babysitting job, caring for Lincoln B. We call him Linky-dude (like dinky-dude). He is a sweetie. He liked playing with our (usually used as a bathtoy) toy duck. He says "duck, duck, duck". Emily was wearing a tee-shirt yesterday that had some ducks on it and he pointed to them and said "duck".

Me reading to Lincoln. (Notice the clench-fist duck.)



playing with a ball.

Quilt

Mother an I got all of the blocks sewed into rows-we finished that yesterday. Mother is now sewing the rows together, since it is much harder and more tedious than other parts of this project.
Here are all of the rows laid out. You can see the yellow tags on the left, labeling the row numbers.

The starters of rows 1 & 2.

Mother sewing yesterday. In this picture she is listening to her new mp3 player.

Yet more quilt top pictures

Here are Mother and Emily laying out quilt squares and deciding position for each.

Me and Mother. I am putting some out.

Mother and Em and all the quilt blocks.

A closer view.

We are getting excited as we see the quilt "coming together"!!

The promised quilt progress pictures

This is about the progress we have been making on the quilt. We've sewn thousands of stitches, but we've been using only 3 pincushions worth of pins (the same ones over and over).

Mother pinning. She is kinda getting tired of pinning, and pinning, and pinning and is ready to help me with sewing the blocks together.

In this picture you can see the 5 different kinds of quilt squares there are. In each of the upper left and lower right sides are blue-ish triangles. The left bottom and right tops of each vary in the other miscellaneous colors we are using.

From the right to left this picture shows how a 9 patch turns into the quilt blocks. We add two triangles opposite each other, then the other two; always starting with the miscellaneous colored triangles and adding the blue.

Making a quilt top!

Mother and I have starting putting together a new quilt top. I am loving every minute of it!! We are making it for Jeffrey and Jason to use on their new queen sized bed. The pattern we are using is Crossroads to Jericho. (See picture at end of post.) In a Crossroads to Jericho pattern there are 9-patches turned diagonally with triangles on each of the sides. To make this quilt you use a strip piecing method. You cut the strips with a yardstick and rotory cutter. That makes it faster than drawing out all of the pieces and cutting them out with scissors. The strip piecing method is also faster because you sew the pieces a couple of times compared to trillions!

We have been going pretty fast since we started it a week and a half ago. I think we have more time because of not having school, and because Tim and Brenda's wedding is over and all the rush with that.

As some of you may know, Mother and I have already made one quilt together (Mother did the pinning and cutting, and I did the sewing).
A picture of that quilt on my bed.


Mother has also made 3 other quilts by herself through the years.

Sometime this year (probably in June) the Lord provided for me by giving me a sewing machine for free from my great aunt Hazel, who was moving to an assisted living type of place and couldn't keep her sewing machine. I am very thankful for it and I love using it already! Mother did a cleaning, oiling, and ajustment on it (she plans to teach me how next time).

Mother and I cutting out the strips and triangles for this quilt top.

Our hands.

This is when we had the strips (3 pieces each) sewn together and several of them together on a table.

A view from the other way.

After sewing all of the fabrics into strips we cut them into 2 1/2 in. pieces.
The piles of cut strips.

Next we arranged the strips into 9 patches.
Lots of nine patches waiting to be sewn.

Mother pinning the 9 patch pieces together for me to sew. She's holding a pin in her mouth.

The pinned pieces just as they are before I sew them.

Me sewing on my new (it's old, but new to me) sewing machine.

When I am sewing the 9 patches I do them all in a string, so as not to waste thread cutting it in-between them.
This is something like they will look like when they are done.


We got this quilt pattern from the book "Scrap Quilts - fast and fun" compiled and edited by Patricia Wilens.
This is the page of the book that we got the quilt from.

P.S. This quilt is made almost entirely with scraps, so it is cheaper to make than other quilts.