Busy as a bee

It's been a busy week so far, and the rest of it is going to be just as busy!  I'm just going to get caught up here, so I'll just post a recap.

Monday, we left for Paducah.  DH wanted a fall trip, but we had taken several trips in the first 6 months of the year and the travel budget needed a rest.  But a 2-day trip to Paducah (approx, 3 hours from here) would be a nice getaway without breaking the budget.  We'd often talk about stopping off in Paducah as we'd drive by on our trips south.  But whenever we're leaving, we're just so anxious to get to our destination, and whenever we're headed back home, we're always hankering to hurry up and get back home ... so we never stopped.  So we decided to make an intentional trip to Paducah.  We wanted to see the National Quilt Museum, the riverfront, and Hancock's of Paducah (ok, I wanted to see Hancock's LOL).

I loved the Quilt Museum.  While most of the quilts weren't my "style", I still marveled at the designs, the way colors were used, the time and effort that went into those quilts (one quilt took almost 17,000 hours to complete).  I especially enjoyed the miniature quilts; they were 24"x24" or less, done to scale.  I had to take off my glasses to be able to get close enough to see the detail on some of them.  Simply unbelievable!

 We then walked over to the riverfront.  There were murals depicting Paducah's history painted onto the flood wall; it took a good while to be able to read the markers giving the story behind the mural, but it was definitely worth it!

We walked through the shops along the riverfront; it reminded me of the riverfront area of St. Charles, MO.  We stopped for lunch at Whaler's Catch; the food was good, not great, but the atmosphere of the old historic building was worth the visit.

We stopped at Hancock's on our way to our hotel.  It's not a quilt shop - it's a fabric warehouse!  Talk about a quilter's dream shop!  More fabrics than you could imagine ... so many that it was literally overwhelming.  I had intentions of buying some fabrics, but there were just too many to choose from.  And since I don't have a project in mind, I wouldn't know how much to buy.  So I bought some notions instead (replaced my cutting mat and ruler and bought an ergonomic rotary cutter). 

By the time we wrapped up our visits, it was just mid-afternoon ... and with nothing else to see/visit, we decided that if we were going to lounge around waiting for dinner, we could easily do that at home (and save the $$ for the hotel room).  And off we went!  LOL  So our visit to Paducah turned into just a day trip.  But we enjoyed it, and that's what counts, right?

Tuesday I spent the morning with DD and the 4 T's.  I watched the two littles while mama and the two bigs had their semi-annual check-ups.  T#3 had his teeth "counted"; he's in the middle of a heavy-duty obstinate phase, and he did NOT like having his teeth counted.  No bribery or coaxing helped; it hurt this nana's heart to hear him screaming, but I knew that he wasn't being hurt ... and that this was something that needed to be done.  Hopefully he'll be out of this contrary phase by April for their next check-up.  LOL  We spent the rest of the morning running some errands followed by lunch.  It touched my heart when an employee at Fazoli's mentioned to DD what it meant to her to see the 6 of us praying before our meal.  My heart just bursts with joy and pride at what kind of mama my DD is. That evening we went to the make-up soccer game for T#2; her game last Saturday was canceled due to rain.  She was very good in goal the last time she was chosen to play in goal; that evening, not so much.  She kept going way out of goal, which would have been fine, to cut down the angle on the shots -- IF she had been able to stop the play, but when the opposing players were able to get around her, the goal was defenseless.  I have to give her some credit for the effort, but considering the skill level of the league she's in, playing closer to goal would probably be better.  ;-)

Yesterday we started the deck staining.  We worked about 6 hours out there.  Well, I worked about 6 hours; DH twisted his bad ankle stepping off the ladder so he put in probably 4 hours of work.  He was to be the "ladder man" (since I do not do heights!!), but like I always say "ya do what ya gotta do", so I finished the ladder work.  ;-)  I think we did a pretty good job; I like the color I chose; it's going to look great when we're done.  Today we need to finish it up; I'll be putting in the majority of the work as DH has to go pay the 3rd installment of our real estate taxes (they're due today).  But that's ok; there's only a minimum of ladder work, and most of the tedious, labor-intensive surfaces have been stained, so today's work should go fairly smoothly, fairly quickly.  At least that's my hope.  I'd like to get this project done today so I can get back to that quilt top!  ;-)