vacation wrapup

I have been back from my trip to visit with family in Illinois for week now and up there for one day shy of a week so it has been a bit since I posted. But, no matter---I'm doing it now, LOL. It was good to get away but we are happy to be home.

DJ put me on the plane out of Atlanta on Tuesday and I arrived at the Central Illinois Regional Airport right at the stroke of 1056 a.m. Funny thing is, the flight time is equal to the drive time to Hartsfield Airport so DJ got home about the same time I landed in Bloomington-Normal.

I arrived up at my folks with this view in the family room. The bins were piled up since they normally sit under my mom's cutting/pinning table. She had already told me she needed my help in pinning the 15 tops she had been piecing over the last couple months. BUT a local gentleman had called them to come out to get some fabric that had belonged to his wife who had been admitted to a care facility with Alzheimers. He wanted it to be used for Mom's donation quilt work. She told him she would share with me as I was also involved with the same work. The woman was quite a collector but her husband said she had never made a quilt.

We had a ball going through it and pairing things up for this quilt and that. We had at least 13 stacks that would go for this or that pattern pulling only a few pieces from her stash to go with. Warm Wishes, Naptime, Prairie Stroll, Log Cabin, some new ones we had seen on the internet recently......you name it. We printed patterns off, I worked something up in EQ and all those were labeled with what went where in the scheme of things till she could cut them out. Some of the fabric came home with me already but we will also divide up the leftovers once she cuts the kits out so more will be coming by way.


2 1/2 days later we decided that maybe we better start pinning at least a few of those tops! 11 of the 15 were tended to over the next few days--I was going to DJ's son's house by Saturday afternoon so we had to make good use of the time we had.

I want to share a few of her tops with you. Not sure where the labels will land though. (Obviously I don't have anything of my own to share) Click on the pictures to see them bigger, as usual.

This 1st one is BQ 2 from Maple Island Quilts--cute with novelty prints.



Warm Wishes--free pattern online at the quiltmaker/quilter's newsletter sites. This used the same print I had used in my 9 Patch Pizzazz recently and was a challenge piece between the two of us. Pat showed a bit of it on her blog post a few days ago. She was kind enough to quilt this one for me and will mail it on to M2M.

This was one of two Orange Crush Mystery quilts from Bonnie Hunters recent mystery quilt. Mom had quilted both of them so I could bring them back and mail them off with the others we had teamed up on.

We do love those scrappy quilts especially the ones that use up the strings and crumbs! Here is Mom's version of one that she saw on Jeanne's blog recently. Very striking, isn't it?

Okay, back to the narrative. I got to see my niece/god"child" Allison and my sister who lives in the area mid week so it was not all quilting, all the time. Next time up if I have time, I will definitely try to see my brother in the Kankakee-Bourbonnais area. It just didn't work out this trip.

DJ drove up in the car and stayed a night in southern IL so arrived at my folks late morning on Friday. We went down to B-N for lunch (Schooner's for onion rings and a big fat juicy cheeseburger---yummmy!) Then we drove past some of our old haunts and residences. His golfing buddy came by the restaurant and they got their tee time for Sunday before we headed back to my parents as we had an appointment with someone on the cemetary board.

This might sound a little morbid but one thing we needed to do this trip was arrange for our burial site. Originally we thought we were going to look in Bloomington and DJ had called the three sites so knew how much they were asking for them. For grins and giggles, I asked my dad what the going rate was in their small town---let's just say we got both plots for about 1/3 of the cost of one in Bloomington at the cheapest of the three cemetaries. The spot we have is about 10 feet away from my parents too.

DJ was staying at his son's on Friday and they were off to a basketball tournament near Kankakee on Saturday---see, I should have gone with them and had my brother come get me but it's too late now!! Mom knew I was selling some of my books on Amazon and took the opportunity to go through some of hers. Dad helped bundle the ones she up that she didn't want anymore and loaded them up in the car along with two boxes of fabric. See why I needed the car more than DJ did??



I had made plans to see my brother and his family Saturday evening. They had been at baseball games much of the day while the oldest nephew had a scouting event in town. My sister-in-law invited me to stay for supper and one of my niece's set up the appetizers and entertained us as we dined outside. They have a new puppy to love up on. No pictures though as I left the camera at Tracy's with my luggage on the way over to my brother's house. The kids are growing up, that's for sure!



Sunday the golfers went off to play so I read and caught up with my email, ran into town on an errand. Our grandson Joshua had a double header at his high school so we went in to watch that after lunch. Then back to their house to watch more baseball---this time the professional kind. Go Cards! Josh had plans that evening with friends and we ate in B-N at Buffalo Wild Wings that evening.



By Monday morning the whole household was up and at it early--back to work for Tracy & LuAnn and Joshua is on a summer workout program with all the sports he is involved in. No need for us to wait to get on the road. DJ got the IL and TN driving while I did the KY and AL legs of the trip and we hit the place where Skyler was being boarded a little after 5. I had forgotten to enter their number in the cell phone and we took a chance that they would still be open. Hurray, he got to go home with us too. What a sweet baby he was being last week!



Good to see our families take a break from our routine but good to be back home too.