Back from vacation

Good morning!  We arrived home from a week in Colorado on Saturday night, and I've been doing some catch up the last couple of days.  Haven't sewed at all but did get a bit of reading in.  The Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear is coming to an end (sob!), and I'm nearly finished with the last book.  It's hard to say goodbye to a favorite character.

Big loads of laundry have been done, the refrigerator is restocked, and the garden has been checked over for weeds and such.  Our blueberries are heavily laden and were drooping, so we staked them up and are hoping for a bumper crop.  That means I need to get rid of some of the berries we still have in the freezer.  Friday (after a check on my blood sugar and pressure at the doctor's), I plan to make a pie.  Yum!

We had a great week visiting Mom and my sister Jenny.  It was just the right mix of activity and down time.  We sat on the back porch and chatted quite a bit and also went out a few times.  I did some sashiko while enjoying the breeze and watching the birds.  Mom loves to go out for breakfast, so we took her to the ultimate:  Denny's for a "grand slam" with waffles.  

Chris and I went to the Coors Brewery gift shop for some retail therapy, and we all visited the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum.  Luckily, they had two chairs outside for Paul and Chris to sit in while Mom, Jenny, and I did some detailed looking at the quilts.

We had a fun 102nd birthday party with Mom's Dutch-Indonesian club one day.  Mom was very happy that Chris could come along with us this time.  He's her "favorite grandson," she always says (he's also her only one!).  All of the guests brought food and a huge cake, which we all enjoyed.

Mom was very pleased with the Birch Street collage I brought her, and we hung it up so that she can look at it from her favorite chair.   At the party, I had a fun conversation with Inga, the daughter of Mom's late friend Judy.  She mentioned that when she was cleaning out her mother's house, it was full of items made by a friend who is a quilter.  That's the way my mom's house looks, too - table runners, tablecloths, bed quilts, and wall quilts are all made by me.  It's nice, since we live so far apart, to have a bit of myself there for her to enjoy.  And Paul and I enjoyed sleeping under one of my first quilts, a handquilted Amish sampler made in the 1990s.