As Promised...

Grandkid update photos!

The Utah girlies attended a wedding yesterday, Randi's next-to-youngest brother Michael got married.  My girls look so sweet and grown up.  Such a nice family shot.

Oh yes, do check out the footwear below; they are their mother's girls, very stylish!

Three generations of lovely Utah women - left to right, Randi's sister Tessa, her daughter Olivia, Randi's mom Becky is holding Evie, Isabella and Randi.

Evie and Uncle Nate, Randi's oldest brother:

The Utah-ers will be here in Florida in three weeks -- yay!  Grandpa and I are moving into exercise-mode in the (probably vain) hope that we'll be able to keep up with them.

And our Vermont babies:

A couple of pix from March, I believe.

From our most recent trip earlier this month - Marcus in his camo sweats:

Ruthanne did a lot of earth moving.  The weather was fabulous during our whole visit.

Ruthie also loves role-playing - reminds me of the hours I spent with Isabella on this deck while she was a beautiful princess and I was either a handsome prince or scarey dragon, witch, or mean stepmother (I NEVER got to be the beautiful princess).  Here Ruthanne is a Kitty-Mom (love the beads, huh?).

She buckled her baby in this stroller every-single-time.  Such a good parent.

Picking flowers for the baby.  The forsythia was in beautiful bloom while we were there, but we just missed seeing the lilacs - they were still in a tight bud.

Do not despair.  I'll have more pictures up again soon. But before I go, a Happy Birthday to MY baby, Joshua, 32 years young today (yikes).

 --cds

Long Time Gone

Our mockingbirds are raising a child.  It peeps incessantly from its hidden home in the bushes alongside of our house.  I'm thinking that probably right now it's the human equivalent of a twelve-year old.  It can achieve a low sort of swoop from the bushes to the branch of our smallest palm tree, but it still peeps for its parents to bring breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Which they immediately do, because even mockingbirds are not immune to the anguished call of a hungry babe, and let's face it, all parents are suckers that way. 

So, yeah, I've returned to my poor neglected blog.  In my defense, I've been having technical difficulties uploading photos to my ancient laptop.  I now own a Samsung Tablet, so modern and speedy, but who can type on one of those things?  I'm a one-finger-texter at best.  Pardon me for being able to type 110 words a minute on a regular keyboard (thank you very much, dear typing teaching Mrs. Folsom - I always liked you even though you were a fearsome looking woman with an unfortunate underbite and the cool kids made wicked fun of you).

So now I've had to get used to using a new browser, Google Chrome, instead of Internet Explorer to post blog photos.  I don't know why - I just scrolled though a bunch of help topics until I found one that said to try Chrome and turns out that worked.  See?  Baby mockingbird on the back of the chair.

Tomorrow hopefully I will get back to the important business of posting pictures of cutie grandchildren, which is, of course, why blogs were invented.  --cds

Sewing, Sewing.....

I have been sewing.  Miss Ruthanne has a fancy dress occasion coming up, so I wanted to try my hand at a fancy dress. 

This is a simple pattern, but the light blue polka dot makes it look pretty dressy, I think.

That and the ribbon trim - it's my favorite bit, made from one of the embroidery choices on my Bernina, blue thread on a piece of white grosgrain ribbon.

The zipper is in and I'm starting on a little white jacket to go along with the dress. The dress has an underskirt that I made out of white muslin and tulle I had on hand, but I'm trying to score some nice organdy or batiste for future garments. I can feel myself falling into the world of heirloom sewing. Oh yes, there is a world of heirloom sewing. I love the Innernet. --cds

So, We've Been Away...

In fact, we have been the opposite of snowbirds.  We were sunbirds.  We left the sun and heat of Florida and traveled to Vermont, land of bitter, brutal, bone-chilling, fingertip-cracking, excruciating, sub-zero temperatures.  How I survived 40 years in the North is a mystery -- youth, I guess.  However, we had a job to do -- our mission was to watch over Little Miss Ruthanne while Mommy and Daddy went to the hospital to have Baby Brother.

 

 

Tough job, huh.  Ruthie is so cute and funny -- and articulate.  I asked her if she wanted to try sitting on the potty and she just said "No, thanks." 

 



 

We colored and built block castles and made puzzles.

 



 

 

 

Her most favorite game is to throw all the stuffed animals in the box, climb in and then tip over.  Much screaming and laughing ensue.

 



 

She tried her hand at golf, but lacks finesse, just yet.

 



 

 

And finally, FINALLY, after almost three weeks of waiting, Baby Brother decided to make his appearance.  Here is Marcus James Shover.  All 8 lbs., 12 oz. of him.

 



 

 

Ruthanne got to visit him at the hospital.

 



 

A picture of the happy family while Marcus sleeps soundly in his little bed.

 



 

 

His homecoming - that hat looked so tiny at home!

 



 

 

 

She will be such a helpful big sister.

 



 

Grandpa and baby Marcus.

 



 

Love this snap.



 

 

His most recent photo, snapped today before his bath.

 



 

Anyway, that's where we've been and what we've been up to for the past month.  We're easing back into our Florida routine - at the moment I can hear the palm leaves outside rustling in the soft sunny breeze -- my second favorite sound in the world -- the first favorite, of course, is the wee ones calling me "Grandma," or as Ruthie says "Bamma."  --cds