On a Roll!

After a slow - ok, a late start - for the week, at least with respect to trying to put a post up here daily, I got a little bit of momentum going today and knocked one item off my "to do" list. I finished up sewing 30 baby bibs! So if my former classmate, Bernie, happens to be reading this, that's how many bibs you get to choose from for little Emma and the new grandchild due in August!

I really love to make these things. They're really easy as pie to put together. You can use either the regular size dish towels or the slightly smaller fingertip towels and fold the towel about a third of the way down, then fold it in half length wise and measure down about 2 1/2 inches from the top of that fold and cut a half-moon section out of the towel to form the opening for the neckline. Then you measure out rib trim - depending on whether you want the neckline to have a crew-type neck, mock turtleneck or full turtleneck is the determining factor for how wide you want to cut your rib trim and for the length, I generally figure on cutting a piece about 16-17 inches in length then of the ribbing. Sew the rib together with the right sides together at the side seam, then turn it so the right side is facing you, fold it in half and divide it into quarters.

Mark the middle of the back of the neckline with a straight pin, do the same to the middle of the front neckline and place a straight pin at the shoulder on each side and then pin the ribbing piece to that - matching the quarter-marking pins on the ribbing to the pins on the towel-bib neckline with the seam of the ribbing being matched up to the pin in the middle of the back. All that is left then is to use a zig-zag stitch to attach the ribbing to the neckline, and to finish it, I stop stitch along the neckedge on the towel portion which stabilizes the rib trim and the neckline of the bib. See - didn't I tell you it was easy as easy can be! And these bibs are really great because you just slip it over the baby or toddler's head and it covers from the neck down to the lap as well as across the shoulder area of the child's clothing completely. No muss, no fuss and easy to launder after being used as well. Plus, just being really cute if you manage to find towels that have perhaps a seasonal design on them or have a cute design printed into the towel. Although we have a whole drawer full of bibs of all types that Mandy has bought or received over the past 3 1/2 years for Maya and also for Kurtis, the ones we do tend to use the most are the ones I've made mainly because of the amount of coverage they provide and how easily they wash up and are ready to be used all over again.

The rest of this week now, I will be concentrating on getting things finished up to be all ready for when the visitors from Sweden will be in the area. They will arrive here at 1 p.m. Thursday afternoon and after meeting them up at the motel, giving them a bit of time to get their stuff settled in, etc., I'm hoping to be able to drive them around, perhaps take them down to Peale then if the weather is nice that day. And then, get them back to the motel and lead them down to the home of the lady who is having them for dinner that evening. My next big planning session will involve determining what to cook for supper Saturday evening when most likely they will be dining here with me and my family. Plus, Saturday also happens to be my son-in-law's birthday too so I have to make time to bake a cake for him for the occasion as well.

Then, next week I will start working in earnest on scanning the photos I have received, courtesy of some of my former high school classmates and with the help of my friend Sharon - from high school - try to figure out how we will organize these photos and present them at our class reunion. I have some really neat photos of several of our classmates in group settings, taken when we were maybe 7-8 years old and it was so much fun trying to figure out who is who on these pictures! Hope the rest of the class enjoys looking at some really old, old pictures!

The class reunion will be on June 2nd over in Clearfield at a nice restaurant there - Hedges - and I hope the reunion attendees will find the food - and service - more than adequate at this place. Our last reunion, although nice and fairly well attended too, was a bit on the bum side with respect to the food. It definitely left a LOT to be desired plus, they had about 40 of us squished into a room where we barely had any room to turn around, much less to really be able to visit and mingle nicely. Personally, as I've said before here and to lots of former classmates, I would much prefer that we were still having our class reunion at the home of the guy who isn't attending this year - good old Joe -but the majority voted to have it at a place where we would be to ourselves, a private area with a little upscale atmosphere too, so I'll go along simply because the majority won that round. I'm not that particular about where we meet, just so we have the opportunity TO MEET and enjoy an evening remembering our good old school days together a long, long time ago now that was!

The story for the day involving the little Princess, Miss Maya, involved Mandy going to State College to take care of the last minute paperwork details for the new job she started last week and she took both the little ones with her, along with a friend and co-worker of hers from up at the store. While over there, they stopped at Perkins Restaurant to have lunch. Mandy always likes to stop at Perkins whenever she has a chance because she worked for them for about 4-5 years several years back and she likes to pop in and say hello to the managers there and the waitstaff still there from back when she waitressed and was a shift manager.

She said initially she was a bit concerned because there were no open booths available and they had to take a table in the back part of the restaurant. She had figured it would probably be easier to manage Maya if they sat in a booth but once they got settled in, Maya was on her good behavior - no fussing, no meltdowns, and she only got down from her chair about three times while they were waiting for their food and after it arrived.

However, when they were almost finished - Maya WAS finished - she got down and before Mandy could stop her, Maya had ventured over to a table across the way from theirs and just as nice as can be, hopped up on a chair there to "visit" a bit with a lady who was sitting there all by herself, eating her meal. Because she couldn't help but hear Mandy and her friend Lois, talking to Maya, calling her by name, the lady immediately spoke to Maya and addressed her by name which apparently kind of floored Maya as she gave her a somewhat startled look as if to say "Hey, how'd you know my name?" But the lady was very nice and friendly to Maya and talked to her a bit while Mandy got the baby ready to leave and when they went to gather Maya up, she turned to the lady and with a little wave, said "Bye Bye" and then blew her a kiss goodbye!

Well, now we know for sure she is turning into quite the little social animal and is definitely not "strange" around people!

This afternoon, the stepgranddaughter came to me while I was sewing asking me questions about history, the Civil War, in particular because she was trying to study from her notes - such as they were - for a test in school tomorrow. Although she claims she read the chapter in the textbook pertaining to this historical period, it was more than obvious that she hadn't done a very thorough job of reading the text and she was pretty much expecting that she would ask me a question and I would just give her the answer she needed. Nope kiddo, it doesn't work that way!

I was in a bit of a state of shock at how little she actually understood about the Civil War. All she seemed to know was that it was a war between the North and the South but she had no real concept as to what it was about much less lots of other things pertaining to general American history and even geography too. Part of me thinks "What the heck do they teach these kids in elementary classes nowadays but then, that's not really fair because it is automatically laying blame there on the teachers who, even if they are trying to present accurate and good data to the students, if the kid pays no attention, doesn't show the least bit of interest in the learning process, doesn't study anything, you can't say the problem is automatically the fault of the educators, can you?

So, hopefully with what questions and notes Kate went over with me and if she really tried today to pay attention to what I tried to explain to her - after forcing her by questions I asked her to "Think" about the question and try to reason out the answers often just from the few things she did remember, she might do fairly well on the test tomorrow. I simply refuse to do the study work for her, same as I refused to do that for my kids when they were in high school too. If they come and ask a question, ask to have something explained, I will do that but only to a degree. I won't give an explanation that just answers the question up front but rather will answer it with other questions to make her (or whoever) think about the question completely and then figure out the actual answer on their own. If they can come up with the correct answer then, fine - I'll tell them that, maybe explain a little bit more about the ifs, and, whys and other things where I can but not until the basic question has been answered and in this case, that she understands a little bit about what was actually taking place. There were several instances though when I wouldn't tell her anything other than that she obviously needs to go back an re-read the chapter in order to understand and be able to figure out a lot of the answers she needs to know.

So, that's how my day went on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007. How was your day? Hope it was a good one for you and like me, you managed to get something accomplished too.

Now - since my eyes are starting to show the wear and tear of sewing 30 bibs, telling me it's time to "hit the hay," I'm gonna post the Bushism for today and go to to bed!

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

If they predecease or die early, there's an asset base to be able to pass on to a loved one." - On Social security money that would be stored to private accounts. Cedar Rapids, Iowa; March 30, 2005.