Family Christmas

Family Christmas in Flower Mound

We had a very nice family gathering in Flower Mound at our daughter Sheri's home. Two of our children and their families were there. Along with her husband, Perry and the kids, Brenden, Jacob and Emma had the house all decorated very nicely. They also welcomed Perry's new German Shepherd puppy, Sofie.

 



 









Our son, Jay, daughter-in-law, Rosario and our grandson, Todd came, bringing our great grandkids – (Russ's little ones), Amorina and Ryan with them. 


  


It was great that our oldest grandson, Russ and fiancée, Jessica were able to take time off work and make it. 

We were all very happy that my father-in-law could come too - so was Coco, who loves to sit in his lap! 
We all had a great time.

We all visited with our son, Mike, his wife, Lili and her family in Sofia, Bulgaria via Skype. It was so nice to be able to see and talk with them and share our gift exchange with them long distance.

The kids had a great time as well as did Grumpy Gramps!








 
And the Grandkids and Great Grandkids!

Best Buddies - Amorina & Emma

Jacob and Todd

 Brenden and that fabulous hat!

  

We had hoped to get a five generation picture but due to time restraints were not able to do it this time.

Family Calendars Update

2010 Calendars

The theme of last years cover page for my side was "Sisters", so this year's theme was easy. It was "Brothers".

For HD'S family the cover page features my father-in-law in his second childhood. He was goofing off at his great granddaughter's birthday party and turned his cap backwards. My DD is super quick with her camera and caught the moment.

The calendar for the kids this year is wedding photos - ours and each of our three children.




Next year I will be searching again for a new cover page topic.

The Making of Family Calendars

After printing all the cover pages, I  make any changes to family information, such as new births. anniversaries or deletions.  I print copies of the new year calendar for each family group. I take these and make copies.

Setting up a large table works best to combine calendars and cover pages. I punch holes in the top of the calendars so they can be hung with the backing I made many years ago.

I add the cover page and a Christmas note and request that they thank my brother, Robert & wife Ellice for funding the calendars.

I mail my families calendars to one city in Texas and one in New Mexico, but most go to Mom and everyone picks them up there.  Two of the kids calendars are given in the gift exchange and the third mailed to Bulgaria. For in-laws, they were delivered to my father-in-law's to be picked up there.

Shoulda' marked 'em Soup. . .

I did some baking for the holidays. Years ago, when I made cookies, in order to keep them from disappearing so fast, I had to hide them. I made them when the kids were in school, put them in non see thru containers and marked them SOUP.









My HD really likes my sugar cookies. . . I don't make them often these days but I think I will be making another double batch for Christmas!!

Mom got me started making pumpkin bread. HD doesn't care that much for it but the kids do. They used to fight over the crunchy top when the loaves are baked in metal coffee cans. The kids did not care for nuts, especially when they wore braces, so I used Grape Nuts cereal for the nuts.

I also got my pie crust and pumpkin pie recipes from Mom. She has always been such a good cook.

Round Two - SOUP!!I made these this evening!

Friends from the past. . .

Maureen

We met at a block of the month quilt class in Odessa and became fast friends. She came from England and was the most loyal friend, even when we had to move away. Just before we moved back closer, we lost her to cancer. I still miss her wonderful friendship.

This is an afghan she made for me using up her yarn scraps. It is so beautiful!

 She was always making little things for me and cheered me up with squishies in the mail when we moved. Here are some of what we shared.

A Taste of Japan 1998

I found about 100 quilt magazines at a garage sale and they were given to me to “get rid of them”. As I went through them, I marked pages with yellow stickies with comments like “very nice”, etc.

Unfortunately at the time we had a new puppy, Dach, who thought it was great fun to pull all the markers out after he found my stacks of treasured magazines. He didn't get all of them before I discovered it, thank goodness.

I found this pattern in Quilt World November 1989 and marked it. I loaned out the magazines a few at a time to my very good friend, Maureen. For some reason she kept this particular book for a long time. When she presented me with this wall hanging for my birthday, I knew why. She found my sticky note saying how much I liked this one and made it for me. It is what I treasure the most from Maureen and it hangs beside my bed. She borrowed it back from me to enter into the arts at the Permian Basin fair and it won a blue ribbon, which she also gave to me.

The Quilters
These were made from a mail order design. Mine is teal and the one for my very special friend, Maureen, was blue. Hers was returned to me several years after she passed away by her daughter.

The Flower Garden Seminole was one I made for Maureen. I used a pattern in a quilt magazine but in one of our moves lost a considerable number of my quilt books, that being one of them.



Faraway Fabrics Signature Quilt 1997

This wall hanging was made of fabrics from around the world. When my HD was traveling, he would bring fabric from whatever country he was visiting. I embroidered the name of the country in each block that fabric came from. I started this after he had been traveling for awhile so I didn’t get some from every country where he went. Included is fabric from England (from my friend Maureen), Taiwan, India, Germany, Singapore, Japan and the USA.

Mitsuko
We met when I went on a business trip to Japan with my HD. Her husband and my HD worked for the same company.

While they worked, Mitsuko took me on a tour of Tokyo, and surrounding areas.I worried about the language barrier, but we both had our little translator dictionaries, so we did fine. It was a wonderful trip. We wrote to each other for several years and they visited us here in Texas but we have since lost touch. Perhaps one day we will meet again.

We sent baby gifts back and forth for grandchildren and she made me several small items, including a small purse with hand appliqued flowers on it . I use it to take yoyo's with me to work on while waiting for appointments. She also made a very nice small table mat. What I treasure the most are the dolls she sent me. They are truly beautiful.

Amber Waves of Grain Wall Hanging 1997
I found this pattern in one of my quilting books and enlarged it in three steps to the size I wanted. Most of the fabrics in this one came from my friend Mitsuko in Japan. I made a matching one for her as well. I entered this one at the Permian Basin Fair in Odessa Texas and awarded a red ribbon for it.

Noah’s Ark Baby Quilt
Made for my Japanese friend, Mitusko's first grandchild






Bluebonnet Carpenter’s Square
I made Mitsuko a vest using the pattern Lupine Bluebonnet Quilt Almanac from Chickedee Charms. I had previously made quilt blocks and a pillow and really liked the pattern.

Japan Fabric Pillow
This pillow was made from fabrics bought in Tokyo from our trip to Japan.






Japanese Quilt Book

I also found this quilt book as a souvenir of our trip to Japan. It has some very nice patterns in it but I will need a translator to help me understand the directions!