It’s been a pretty nice day here in Iowa, and my family is out taking advantage, using up the very last of the sunlight for a little backyard baseball.  That’s my nephew pitching, Will hitting, Joe catching, Mark off in the outfield fielding, and unfortunately, my niece didn’t make it in the picture.  She’s off to the right of this picture, I could have moved my camera just slightly and included her, not sure what I was thinking.

Oh, and that’s Katie inspecting that tree. Cocoa was off inspecting something else.

Here they are demonstrating one of the drawbacks to having large trees in your outfield.

If the outfielder isn’t in the right place, the ball ends up in the tree.  Oops.

And then, when you all try to crawl under the tree, you’ll probably scare a bird out.

Meanwhile, I’m in here supervising my quilting machine:

It’s a little too dark for decent pictures, but this isn’t so bad.  Computerized block design by Anne Bright.  The continuous curve is also done by the computer.

I’m using lavender Bottom Line on the blocks, so it really blends into the blues/lavenders of the block fabrics.  The green sashing is Glide thread.  I’ve heard a lot of people raving about Glide and while I like it, I’m not sure why everyone acts like it’s the second coming.  It’s nice, it seems to be stitching well, and I didn’t have to tweak my tension at all.  However:  it is very shiny, and most of the time I prefer a more matte look to my thread, so I’m guessing I’m not going to be replacing my beloved Sew Fine anytime soon.

I can’t remember if I mentioned this or not in a previous blog post, but as you can tell, I got over the need to post daily self-portraits.  Part of the problem is that June is a terrible allergy month for me.  My sinuses are fine (Flonase is an absolute wonder drug, I tell you.  WONDER. DRUG.  Virtually NO sneezing.) But my eyes:  I’ve given up on eye makeup this past week or so.  I’m trying to avoid Benadryl (zzzzzzzzzzzz), and the other over the counter options don’t seem to do much.

In other news:  FOUR miles on the elliptical this morning!!!!  I was DRIPPING when I was done, but it felt good.  I redid my body measurements today, and almost everything (waist, hips, chest, calves, thighs) is down by at least an inch.  My hips are down 2 inches!  Those damn sit ups are finally paying off!  My upper arm measurement is up, but that’s just because I’m developing such amazing muscles, you know.  (LOL).

After supper, I announced this information to my family and one of the boys said “I can’t tell a difference.”

Everyone just looked at him.  The silence was palpable.  The other boy shook his head and said “That was the WRONG answer.”

Clearly, I have a lot of training left to do before these young monsters are ready for the world.