I should be cleaning house...

I think I will compose this journal entry in fits and spurts today as I take housecleaning breaks. This Saturday is the wedding at The Johnson Wedding Chapel. The new cleaning lady has us in pretty good shape if I can just hide all my stuff! As usual, I have about ten projects in the works and they are scattered all over! One of them is a baby blanket for the eagerly awaited grandson of our good friends from USAF days, Billy and Dianne Harrison. When I finish that item, I will probably post a photo. I am using what looks to be a very complicated pattern; it isn't really but it keeps me on my toes. Jenny's Lucy is a blanket collector - oh, wait - let me add a picture here...

Lucy was watching from the hallway as her mother got ready for a Halloween party. Looks like the procedure was pretty boring but, thanks to an ever-present blanket, she was able to make herself comfortable! (I am very disappointed that the picture is posting so small. Oh, well!)

Anyway, Lucy is a blanket girl, especially liking a particular yarn (Baby Bernat Coordinates) and pattern. When I was making blankets for Hattie I decided not to make any like Lucy's favorites so that there would be no confusion or hurt feelings. I found another yarn that I loved (TLC Cotton Plus) and made Hattie's first blanket from it. Jenny declared that to be her favorite baby blanket EVER so I am duplicating that one in blue for Baby Fitzmaurice (Fitzmorris?). I just finished a pink blanket for another friend's granddaughter-to-be and have the yarn for a bib and washcloth to gift with it in a pile. Yarn for hats for Arkansas Children's Hospital is in another pile, another started blanket in another pile - well, you get the picture!

Tommy and I just got back from shopping to find the wedding planner and a friend busy decorating. If the weatherman will only cooperate, this will be a beautiful, beautiful wedding!

Tonight Tom and Jimmy are going to see Merle Haggard in concert here in ElDo. Tanya and I will go watch Hannah in a skit at the Junior Service League style show. We have no ticket for DanMan for the concert and he sure doesn't want to go to a style show; hope he is welcome at Zach's for just a little while!

Maddy's first Honors Day

Well, Miss Maddy Nolan has begun her school career well! Here she is after her first Honors Awards Assembly. She received a certificate for being on the Principal's List - all As and Ss - but the thing we were all more proud of was her Citizenship Award! Sometimes it is hard to conform to all the rules and traditions of "big school" but she has handled the transition successfully! CONGRATULATIONS, MADDY!

A Maddy Day!

It is early voting time so Julie is working extra hours and JP had an appointment at the VA, so I got to pick Maddy up at "my old school", Hugh Goodwin, yesterday! (By the way, she got her first report card from REAL school on Friday and she made nothing lower than A/S!) Tom "needed" some help spreading seed for rye grass - and you can see he got it! We are hoping that the grass will sprout in time for the wedding on November 13. I am not sure if I mentioned in my last post that the Wildcats won last Friday night, ensuring a bye for the first round of the playoffs! That means Jimmy will be available to rehearse his part as a groomsman and we will be home for the rehearsal ourselves! GO WILDCATS!!!

After the work was done, it was time to play!

Cinderella

Here we find Cinderella trying on her glass slippers.

Here we see the poor girl trying to stand after she has successfully put on her glass slippers!

Here is the "happily ever after" with Cinderella helping Prince Charming fix dinner. (EP WAS the Price Charming in the family dramatization of the favorite fairy tale/movie. I was the fairy godmother. Bibbity, bobbity, boo!)

Pop the pup!

The things that Papa will do! Here he is playing the part of a long-eared dog during one of Lucy's imagination sessions!

Three of the Little Rock grandkids

The first three pictures show a pile of granddaughters playing and I couldn't decide which picture was cuter so I posted them all!

The exersaucer, formerly Lanie and Kate's, that Lucy had used was covered in mildew while Jenny and Eric stored it in their Atlanta garage. Hattie's parents agreed that she did not need to wait until Christmas to own one so Tom, Lucy, and I went shopping on Monday. It was another one of those shopping trips where the store's computerized inventory said that there were several of our chosen style in stock but there were none to be found actually physically present in the entire Babies R Us store. A very helpful customer service rep called a nearby Toys R Us and asked them to hold the only one they had in their store at the checkout for us. As always, assembly was not as easy as it looked - or should have been. Tom and Lanie worked together very well to get the job done. The three of us who might not have been as patient, Kate, Lucy, and I, went outside to read books. Stephen came to pick up his girls, and to drop off Hattie - we had made a trade-off in duties - before the chore was finished. Lanie begged to stay and see the project through to the end and here is the result!!! Hattie's interested, excited expression made all the assembly frustration worthwhile!

Papa plays with his two youngest grandgirls!

Can you tell Tom is loving retirement?! This was on a Friday afternoon when he would have been at work!