LHN and a Gibbon???

I finished hand-sewing The Traveling Stitcher to the pre-finished needlecase and project keeper. The needles design gave me some trouble and I had to use my seam ripper, but all ended well. I am pleased with everything. At first I was going to sew the project keeper design on the underside of the flap, but decided not to. Mainly because the floral/coral design is only on the flap and no where else, I didn’t want to hide such a gorgeous, yet small, piece of fabric. Anyway, I sewed mine onto the biggest portion of the keeper; the backside of the pocket. This was such a fun design to stitch and I highly recommend it. I noticed on this blog that some have changed up the colors which add interest. Anyhoo, the verse on this piece stands true to me. I do bring my stitching everywhere because you never know when you’ll need it. My motto: I’d rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

I helped my friend, Sally, finish the lid of her Susan Greening Davis basket at a recent moonlight stitching gathering at our LNS. Truly I had a lot of fun helping Sally put this together. I always learn something when I finish projects and I think Sally learned something too. :D We had fun with it! Sally did such a nice, nice thing for me. Because I helped with her basket she was kind enough to purchase me a chart as a thank you. Of course, a thank you and a hug would have done just fine by me, but Sally insisted and I wasn’t going to argue. LOL The ‘thank you’ gift was The Sampler Lady chart by LHN.

I couldn’t wait to start her. The design reminds me of myself. Weird, I know, but it just does. The over-dyed and DMC thread color scheme is so pretty, but I did exchange two over-dyes for some Gentle Arts I had on hand. They are still in the same color group though, so really there isn't much of a change. Unfortunately, after I took these photographs and put in a couple of hours of stitching I found a mistake. My mistake! I was so peeved. The left flower is off by like six stitches. I still haven’t learned my lesson. I need to quit stitching when I start dozing off at night. I guess I’ll never learn. Needless to say, the frogs attacked on this one BIG TIME. I had that flower just about done and I had to rip everything out. A big poohy there!

Lastly, Jose spent the night at mom’s Saturday and was with her for most of Sunday. In the meantime, dh and I took Cameron to the zoo to blow some of that jumpy, crazy, bent-up, baby-boy hormone steam he seems to have a lot of these days and we ended up in the Jungle Gym which is a play area for tots. He loves it there! This was the first time daddy did this with him and he was in love with the act. He screamed and cried when we needed to leave. I bet people across the way thought the zoo added a new Gibbon (Cameron’s cousins) to the exhibit. (I’ll spare you the horrifying death screams and fire spitting this child can, and did, make that afternoon upon leaving the tot area - you get the idea by Cam's cousins.)

Talk soon!

zoology

Today was a warm and sunny day. Not a cloud to be had and the high was 78 F. What better way to spend the day than heading to the Nashville Zoo. We live 8 minutes from it and we're members now (thanks to Nana & Papa!). There aren't any photos of any animals on this trip except the gibbons. No, this visit was reserved for horseplay and some outdoor fun. We did see some animals, but this was about me and my boys spending quality time together having fun and being boys, ahem, and a girl. I am exhausted now though. We were there for 5 hours ~ hard.......to........swallow!

When we entered the play foam area Cameron just stood there and surveyed things. He checked out all the kids running around, some screaming, some jumping, some twirling, and he stood there like a bobble-head. Slowly, but surely little shy grins escaped the corners of his mouth and finally he went to be a kid or rather a jumping sumo wrestler if there ever was one. He started doing those butt flops again (see my 'two monkeys jumpin' on the bed post'). Parents kept calling Cameron Elmo; some kids too. I think that confused Cameron bc it only made him look around and wonder where was that Elmo.

Taking a break and watching the kids play. This is the only time you'll ever see this child sit still and "look" normal. It was my first time.

Scoping out the place to find Jose. Gritting those teeth with intensity. Where? Where? Where could he be???

A-HA! Jose, I see you! (He spotted Jose across the play yard.)

Cameron and Jose were making their way to a bigger slide than this one and ran into a little girl that told Jose 'she liked his baby'. LOL

Jose can be the kindest, most loving of brothers. But he can be a booger too.

We have a runaway Cameron. He thinks he can go anywhere Jose goes, but he so can-not!!!

These are some of the gibbons and they are active and loud. In fact, a little animal fact here is that when these things start singing they can be heard 2 miles away. They make this really intense guuuuuuuuuuuuuulp noise, but they do it over and over and over and over and over...you get my drift. They are so cute, at least to us they are, and they are the big attraction at the zoo. We came by in the evening to say goodbye to them and there they were sitting on the ground seeing us out the door. Bye-bye loud ones.