Mother's Day and birthday

Well, my birthday has come and gone.  My wonderful husband, about whom I rave nearly  not enough, surprised me by inviting my kids and families to a bday dinner at a great restaurant.  It truly was a surprise and I loved it.  As a gift, as if that wasn't enough, the kids gave us tickets for cirque du soleil, Totem, which we sawing Saturday at Citi Field in New York .  As always, the performance didn't disappoint.

Mother's Day we met again, and had a great time at dinner in the same restaurant where we celebrated our wedding.
I've been meaning to show pictures of the quilts I'm working on, and here they are.  One for Katie, and one for Noah.  I'll show the other two the next time!

Green, green and more green

The week was  busy, and passed quickly.  I'm working on quilts for birthdays, and I am having a lot of fun with that.

I still haven't taken a photo of them with my camera, I'm using the iPad and the phone, but I can't add them to the blog from there.

Today we went hiking again.  To Pyramid Mountain, which is just a few miles from the house.  We are surrounded by woods, large forests all around, nature preserves, with houses nestled in the woods.

Compared to last weekend, look how green the forest is!  Amazing, the light green popped up and is so fresh and .... green.

Ferns... and below skunk cabbage.  

No idea why it's called that, supposedly it stinks when disturbed or pulled up.

I didn't want to try.

And violets and moss

And of course uphill.

No hike would be complete without an uphill battle.

A white dogwood, all by itself on the mountain.

Below workers on the electrical tower.

Part of the trails were closed because of the work on the towers.

Look how close we got the worker on the tower, and see below in the photo is

where we were standing and zoomed in on the workers on the tower.

View from above

And a wild columbine

Dogwood blooms 

And below a little flower, I think an Anemone, a different kind then I'm used to.

Tomorrow we're hoping to go to High Point State Park, I haven't been there for a hike before, and I actually never stopped there either, I just drove over the mountain, thinking I'll have to come back sometime.
I will report back!

Spring hiking

Busy week.  This is not a complaint.  Lots to do, just finished a couple of orders, started working on getting-ready-for-more-orders stuff, and promptly received a large order.

We babysat Percy, Jessica's and Matthew's Budgie.  They were on vacation, and asked his to entertain the bird.  Which with Sophie, the cat, in the house, was quite the responsibility.  But we all survived, and Percy was picked up on the way home by the family.  Michael had made a bird bath for Percy, which he rejected when he was alone, and promptly showed off how much he liked it when his family was there.

We went hiking yesterday (what else!).  This time we hiked a bit on the Appalachian Trail - indulge me, the Appalachian Trail runs from Georgia to Maine, about 2,200 miles, or 3,500 kilometers.

 Trail marker of the A.T.

  No, we didn't hike the entire thing, just a bit of it.  It's remarkable to me that the famous trail is just a small path in the woods.  We hiked for a while, and then went off it to make it a complete circle.  Very nice, on top of a mountain ridge in Harriman State Park, where we do a lot of hiking.
My brother Claus would not have liked it, we were in the woods for 3 hours, and ran into 9 people.  He would have thought it too crowded and not gone back there for a couple of years - or so he tells us.

Today found us in the woods again.  Greg wanted to do something with the boys, and asked us to go hiking. So cute!  Evan, who will be three this summer held up really well, didn't want to be helped at all, and climbed and clambered over rocks, and only on the way back did he realize how tired he was, and asked to be picked up by his dad.

 Roasting marshmallows in the woods

Another April week gone by....

We've been very, very busy at work.  To the point of exhaustion at night, rush, trying to get things out the door, not make customers wait, get it done, and trying to get it done correctly.
Not complaining, but why does it always happen that all the customers send in orders at the same time?  And no way of telling which customers, and what to prepare, besides it's too hard and too expensive to work on 'maybe' work.  We're a small outfit, and we are a niche market, who make custom filters, etc...

We hung out with the kids after work, Jessica started tennis lessons, Matthew put on his baseball uniform and went off to games.  Yesterday we went hiking again, we just love exploring in the huge State Park, now our quest is for antlers, with as many deer as there are in the park, there have to be antlers!

We also saw Jackson, Evan and Andrew yesterday, me met them and their parents at a park where they were riding their bikes.  How awesome it is when the boys are excited to see us, and ask us to come home with them!  And how big Andrew got/ is getting!

I cannot get the pictures to turn.  I turn them in the editor, but they come up sideways here.  Oh, well.
I just thought it funny how fast Andrew changes his expression, these photos were taken within seconds of each other, and that's how fast his expression changed.  Amazing!
He is driving his mother nuts at the moment, he turns from his back onto his stomach, and hasn't figured out how to turn back yet.
(Btw, I made the crib sheet, it's really easy, and the moms love them.)

I am also working on yet another quilt, I'm appliqueing a quilt for Andrew, for Christmas.  It's adorable, and I will post photos soon.

Ruthy, thank you for your comment and your tip to find another Reader!  When I have a moment, I will set myself up on that site.

When I got up this morning, I was fine, and as the day wore on, I realized I'm working on a bladder infection.  No, I'm no hero, I immediately went to emergency care and got antibiotics.  I firmly believe in supporting our pharmaceutical industry, besides, it works immediately, and there is hardly any downtime and I know it gets worse, and I hate the idea of being in pain, not being able to sleep, being miserable....  No thank you, drugs for me!
.

 nap in the wilderness

  And those are from last week's hike....

Easter, NYC, Atlanta, and a baby

It's getting more and more rare that I sit down and write something on the blog.  It seems to me that the other bloggers I read are going the same route.  Google reader will end this summer, I believe, and I'm really not sure how to follow everyone after that.
It's harder to blog because I do a lot of my Internet stuff on the iPad, which doesn't allow easy blogging.  I have trouble typing on the glass surface, it's not the same as feeling the letters by touch, and I have trouble, even while looking at the letters.  So anyhow, I have to dig out the laptop to blog, and that happens less and less.

On Good Friday we took Matthew and Jessica to NYC, to meet up with their mom for lunch.

 Of course we went to the kids favorite stores, ToysRus, and American Girl Doll

 And we got to see a really cool lobby.

To Jessica's delight we went to Mood fabric store, which she knows from TV

 enormous choices, I couldn't even think about picking out a fabric, it was overwhelming

What did we do Easter?  We flew to Atlanta.  On Saturday afternoon, and we came back on Thursday.  We spent the days with Michael's family.  It was lovely to see spring, but even as far south as Atlanta spring is having trouble 'springing'.  We did have a wonderful day on Monday, the weather was beautiful, and we didn't want to go into the house it felt so good to feel the sun.
Here are some signs of spring from down south:

 And on Tuesday we went to the Atlanta zoo.

 There are four pandas in the Atlanta Zoo, and my kick-butt camera caught them close-up