Gram's Visit

One of the first things we did when my mom got into town was to find a duck pond to take Mal to. He'd looked at some pictures on her phone and among them were some of a duck pond, so he was insistent that he needed to see "his" ducks. I turned to Google and found one not too far from us, Meadowbrook Pond.

It's a great location. In addition to being a lovely neighborhood park, it serves to prevent flooding from Thornton Creek. Not too many people there, and tons of blackberries growing along the trails. We'll have to remember it next summer when the berries are at their peak. The boys still got many berries as we walked, but there were lots that were past their prime. Mal loved getting to see the ducks and we enjoyed checking out all the walkways.

We found some large rocks places among some trees and the boys wanted their pictures taken.

Once the boys were in school my mom and I did some shopping. We set out looking for some things to help us organize paper clutter. When we didn't find what we wanted, we ended up wandering into a couple clothing stores and I bought this outfit:

I also got the same top in grey. I'm hoping I can slowly start purchasing some professional clothes so I don't have to do it all at once in a couple years.

Aside from our quick foray into clothes shopping we kept on task and worked hard finding places for all our pictures. We focused on the boys' room first and got their pictures and book bags hung. Gareth was incredibly excited to have Starry Night and the book bags hung. He'd been asking when both were going to happen for some time now. We also got a couple other pictures hung through the house. We left a few for me to do this next week, hoping I can figure out how to hang multiple levels of pictures from the picture rail so I don't have to nail into the plaster walls.

On her final day here we did a bunch of baking, making various breakfast items that we can freeze and pull out later to give some occasional variety to breakfasts - waffles, muffins, quick breads, etc. The pumpkin-cream cheese muffins turned out beautifully (we ate these that day).

We were all sad to see her go, but she had to move on to see my sister's family. She took with her a couple projects that I'd started - Gareth's quilt and Mal's stocking - but which I will not have time to work on for the next couple years. I'm so glad she's willing to take them over for me. The stocking shouldn't take long, but the quilt has lots of work left to do. Gram will definitely finish them faster than I would!