What We Did on Our Summer Vacation

Hi Fellow Quilters,

Summer is over, and it is time to settle into our usual routines again.  We hope that each of you had a great summer, filled with family, friends, and fun times!

One thing that we both recall from our elementary school days was the essay that we’d be asked to write on the first day of school.  The title was always “What I Did On My Summer Vacation”.  Today we’re going to briefly share our summer adventures, along with a few photos.  We hope that you’ll enjoy our post!

Sharon’s Adventures, Summer 2018

 

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Sharon here!  I stayed fairly close to home this summer, driving my Bernina and making a nice stack of quilt projects that you’ll be seeing here on our blog, eventually.  I spent time swimming and relaxing at the neighborhood pool, had several leisurely lunches with friends, and spent lots of time throwing the squeaky ball for Rowdy.  I also took a couple of trips to mix things up a bit.

My first little trip was to visit our son and grand-dogger in San Antonio!  The photos above were taken at Guadalupe River State Park, just north of San Antonio.  We really enjoyed our hike to the river, and there were lots of photo ops for pretty flowers and the river.  Naomi (my grand-dogger) enjoyed all of the smells along the trail.  She was the first to spot the armadillo, and the only one of us to lie down in the river to cool off.  (Although I was VERY temped to join her, as it got a bit warm toward the end of the hike!)  We also did some cooking together, played cards, and watched the first two movies in the “Lord of the Rings” series.  (I guess that I’ll need to plan another trip so we can watch the final installment!)  It was a really nice and relaxing weekend!

My second trip was to Austin, for a two-week professional development class at UT-Austin.  This trip was mostly about work, with training all day from Monday through Friday.  We learned all about the “new” (to me) engineering design and problem-soloving class that I’ll be teaching this year, and we had fun together while we were learning.  I met lots of new teacher friends from all over Texas and a few other states.  I helped to build a pinhole camera, a model earthquake-proof building, and a device that takes photos as it falls from the sky.  I ate (too much!) good food, and went swimming almost every day after classes.  My husband drove over from Houston to spend the weekend, so we enjoyed some time away from home, together.  We visited the LBJ Presidential Library on the UT campus, which was really interesting to me.  I was just a little kid when LBJ was President, so I didn’t know much about the things that he had done during his time in office.  On my way home, I stopped at a wonderful little quilt shop in Giddings, Texas.  (Of course, I had to indulge my fabric addiction!)  Doesn’t get much better than that!

And that’s what I did this summer!

Susan’s Summer Sojourn, 2018

 

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This year was my 40th (shhhhhh, did I really say that out loud?) class reunion in Montana and this is the first one that I have attended!  Blows a hole in the whole theory that I am still only 29!!!!  After weeks of nightmares that they randomly chose me to be a stand-up comedian at the event, I was finally on my way and had quite a delightful time.  Funny how seeing someone after all these years, the time melts away and you can enjoy each others’ company.  Our cousin played in the band and everyone had a rockin’ good time!

My favorite part was spending time with my brother, Blake, in Glacier National Park for the day.  The shots above are just a few highlights from my adventure with him in the Park.  My entire plan was to spend time with him in one of his favorite spots, so he chose Many Glaciers on the East side of the Park.  We had a wonderful drive up the Going to the Sun highway to the summit at Logan Pass.  We even saw a grizzly bear, elk and several other mountain critters!  (You’ll get to see all of them in our “Born in the Rockies” quilt pattern, due for release this fall.)

It was so great that I got to spend time with my family!  Although my parents don’t live in my hometown any more, I was able to enjoy time with my Aunt Jessie and my other aunt, uncle and cousins (even three cousins who were visiting from Ohio) while I was there. I delivered the farm quilt that Sharon and I made for our cousin once-removed and meet their sweet little red-headed baby who can now enjoy all the fun farm critters and Sharon’s carefully crafted tractors. (Read about the cute farm quilt here!)

Our Aunt Jessie is a quilter, so of course we had to visit two quilt shops in town and find new treasures to make some of the future quilts in our shop plans!  

Whew!  What a wonderful weekend in Kalispell, Montana!  Early Monday morning, Aunt Jessie and I loaded up her car and headed to Bozeman, Montana to spend some time with my parents (oh, Sharon’s parents too) and our youngest brother. After being forced to stop at two more quilt shops on the way (I know, it was a hardship, but Jessie insisted, and so I braved through it and more fabric jumped into my suitcase), we finally arrived in Bozeman.

In my bag of tricks, I had another baby quilt (the cute hippopotamus ballerina quilt that Sharon made last fall) which was delivered to yet another cousin once-removed and her sweet baby girl.  (Read about it here!)  It gave me great pleasure to see our cousin and her beautiful little girls!  Big sister loved the fact that the quilt had fairies on the back of it, but the baby grabbed a hold of a corner and staked her claim to the new quilt.  Whew!  That was just the first evening there!

The best part of going to Mom and Dad’s house is that we relax, eat good food and spend time with our youngest brother.  We played lots of cards, I taught Mom and one of her friends how to make a fun Christmas ornament, I went for a nature hike with my brother, showed Mom the paperless paper piecing technique that has helped me actually enjoy paper piecing (yes, we will talk about the technique in a future blog) and, of course, I had to go and visit two more quilt shops.  You know there is no fabric in Texas (yeah, right), but I helped Mom chose the fabrics for her cute paperless paper piecing project which she now has ready to quilt.

My time in Bozeman flew by and it was time to go home.  The first hurdle was to make certain that my visits to six (yup, I said six!) quilt shops didn’t make my suitcase too heavy, put my suitcase on the scale and I could have purchased thirteen more pounds of fabric!  Guess that was poor planning on my part!

I’m happy to say that my husband was glad to see me, but my dogs had a “cool you’re home” but fairly distant attitude, it wasn’t until the next morning that they actually acted excited that Mom was home.

I’ve been back home a couple of weeks and am wishing that I could be back in the fresh air where the night sky is full of stars.  But on second thought, they have that white stuff that falls from the sky in the winter and is really cold!  Guess I would still rather swim six months of the year than ski!

Thanks for letting us share our summer vacations with you, what did you do this summer?  We always enjoy your comments and thanks for visiting our blog.

Happy Quilting!

Sharon and Susan

Ms. P. Designs USA