Yesterday, when it was time for lunch, I found Daniel in his room up on his top bunk playing his DS. He said to me, "Mommy, I was about to come find you because I needed some pecklets." He was so adorable asking for pecklets, in earnest, that I grabbed my phone and recorded him. Here he is requesting and explaining pecklets. :)
....and then wanting lunch. Leads with his heart...follows with his tummy.
My friend Linda and I make that joke often, so I am sure no one else gets it. When we haven't had an opportunity to quilt in a while and we have to carve out some time for it, we make an appointment with our Bernina sewing machines.
Such has been the story this summer. We have been so busy enjoying the summer that the last place I find myself is in my sewing room sitting at my machine. Therefore, this little quilt took a good while to finish. I actually started cutting it BEFORE Gabriela's surgery and only finished binding it last night.
I chose to use Rural Jardin by French General for Moda to complete this quilt. I used a pattern out of Jelly Roll Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott. I quilted it using my ubiquitous stippling pattern. I wanted to complete a quilt using red, white, and blue fabrics for July and I barely finished it in time! I quasi-quiltlifted this quilt from a internet friend, Kelly. She used the same pattern with the same fabric line. She put her fabrics together differently and added additional borders on the front. In my opinion, hers was superior to mine, but I still love this one! It looks fabulous in our great room.
This year, we were unable to go to the Del Mar Fair because Gabriela's eye surgery required an extended recovery time with limited public contact. Since, we couldn't go to the Fair, the Carnival came to us! The San Luis Rey Mission, just down the street from us, hosted a Carnival for their Christmas in July celebration and we decided to attend. It was fun, but let me go on record as saying that Carnie-folk truly scare me.
The girls had a fine time on the Carousel.
Jake and I were the only one to ride the "big ticket" rides. I can't believe how big my Baby Jake is getting. (I also can't believe how lame I am at taking a self-portrait. My head looks detached. In my defense, we were twirling and I was leaning over a huge obstacle.)
Ahhh, that's better.
René had to help the younger kids down the slide,
so he decided to take a trip down, too.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Shea-shea rode every ride that he could. (Some he was just too short to ride.) In a few years, he will be there with Jakey and me on the big rides. I love my daredevil boys. :) Here, Daniel looks bored to death on the Carnival's equivalent of the spinning teacups.
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Arizona thinks that it has problems with aliens!
California totally has them topped. They are on every street corner!!
Seriously, this is the locally famous Alien for "Killer Pizza From Mars," which is where we went for dinner.
Such an odd, but fun, place.
For the first three weeks in July, every year, we are up at 5:00am almost every morning. We love to relax in bed and watch one of our favorite things: Le Tour de France. Ahhhh, guilty pleasures are good to have. Right?
I remember the first Tour that I watched that totally sucked me into the sport.
It was 2001 and it was specifically the climb of AlpeD'Huez. At one point, Lance Armstrong turns to make eye contact with Jan Ullrich and then works to drop him in the craziest attack ever. If you haven't seen it, you have to watch this video. Some of it is just training and shots from the race, but at 1:40 they show the look for the first time and then again at 2:19. Chills.
It doesn't hurt that cycling has tons of eye candy, in my opinion. One of my favorite pieces of eye candy is George Hincapie. Let's take a moment, shall we?
The view is nice. N'est pas?
My tour fanaticism isn't helped by the fact that I married a cycling enthusiast. At one time, my sweet husband had 4-5 different frames: 2 road bikes, a mountain bike, and a cyclocross.
Talk about eye candy! Here is my own personal hottie in one of his cyclocross races. (René is wearing an orange jersey.)
In this shot, he is off the bike and going over one of the obstacles. What a man! :)
Now, with the kids, he tends to ride his mountain bike most of the time (even on the road----yes, sacrilegious in the cycling world). My super-nice and streamlined Bontrager has turned into a thick-wheeled Beachcomber. We still have tons of bike frames, but they are mostly kid-sized. *wink*
Yes, cycling has certainly changed focus in our family, but we still have fun.
AND, we still live vicariously through the hotties, I mean athletes in the Tour. :)
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--Declaration of Independence, signed July 4, 1776
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