ending with a beginning

I didn’t do a good job of knitting instead of mindlessly swiping today. I spent the morning helping in the sewing class at my sons’ elementary school for the LED cuff day. I was a “guest teacher”. Being in an elementary school classroom even just for a couple of hours reminded me of some of the benefits of older kids. For example, they don’t generally want to be in your personal space like a kindergartener does. It was fun to see the other parents but I am definitely looking forward and not back.

After the kids were in bed I decided to watch This Is Us and knit, finally. I ordered some yarn recently for the Little Hats, Big Hearts project. They are collecting baby sized red hats for American Heart Month. I picked the very apt Baby Hearts Hat and, thanks to how tiny baby heads are, I’m already almost to the decreases.

I got three balls of this yarn and it seems like I will get two out of each ball, so I guess I am knitting six hats!

So that is NaBloPoMo for this year. I missed a couple of days and posted very short entries on others. I enjoyed the exercise of trying to find something to say each day. I would like to say that I’ll be blogging more regularly after this, but I think we all know that is not true. See you next November, at least!

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running out of steam

It is the day before the end of November and I haven’t knit at all in several days. I am also feeling slightly grumpy. Those are probably related! Tomorrow, I will pick my knitting up instead of mindlessly stabbing away at my iPad. You heard it here first.

But first, sleep!

a hike to clear the head

I went for a hike this morning at one of the open spaces nearby.

I am not sure if you can see it, but this view goes all the way to the bay and I was on a hill in Palo Alto. I love living in this area for that reason. So much beauty so easily reachable. The dog didn’t get any ticks either, so it was definitely a good hike.

mushrooms

I missed yesterday and have nothing to say about today. To placate the blog gods, here are some weird mushrooms I saw on my walk today.

It’s the end of a month of daily blogging. The well is running dry.

more leftovers

I ate leftovers again today. See?

After lunch, we went to a friend’s house and played games. I love board games and card games and really enjoy that my kids are old enough to play fun ones and still let me play with them!

I also wanted to share this picture of Docker’s grumpy face earlier today. I think all our going out and visiting friends has him antsy. Hopefully he’ll settle down when school starts back up again.

leftovers and serger

A friend invited my family over today for “leftovers brunch”, which, frankly, is a brilliant idea. I didn’t get any photos of the beautiful food, including some nuts roasted with herbs and garlic that I ned to try to make myself. I also didn’t get any photos of the wonderful people who were there. I did get a picture of our dogs playing.

They spent a lot of time running around and chasing each other but didn’t find the tug of war toy until it was almost time to leave. Silly dogs.

As I mentioned, I was planning on getting a serger. Well, yesterday the serger I wanted was Amazon’s deal of the day so I ordered it and it arrived this evening!

Craftsy was having a Black Friday sale on their classes so I signed up for a beginning serger class that someone recommended on Facebook as well as a couple of other classes. I still need to order thread, then I can start watching the videos for the serger class. I am very excited!

gratitude

I hope you and your family enjoyed our country’s annual tradition of gathering and eating turkey and, more importantly, stuffing and pie.

This year I am grateful for:

• My adorable dog’s continued adorableness.
• My family all being in good health.
• The beautiful California weather.

beach and knitting

I managed to drag my kids out away from the computer for at least part of one of the days of this vacation. We went to my favorite off-leash dog beach. Look how beautiful it is there!

Also, my dog loves it. He even let his feet get wet this time. Usually he avoids being wet at all costs.

We all had fun. The kids and I watched the dog run around and play with other dogs and dig and roll around in the sand. Dogs are pretty entertaining when they are off leash and having fun.

Just because this is a knitting blog and I have posted a picture of it in a while, here is my poncho in progress. It’s getting longer, at least!

missed a day, movies, joys of homeownership

I missed yesterday, thinking I didn’t have anything to write about, but I sort of did and forgot. I went to see Bad Moms Christmas with a couple of friend’s yesterday. It felt like an excuse to see my friends, turn off my phone, and eat popcorn. All things I generally enjoy. The movie was okay. It seems like since Bridesmaids they have really ramped up the raunch factor on some of these movies starring women, just for the sake of raunch. I laughed a few times, I was glad when characters resolved their issues, and I got to eat yummy popcorn.

After the movie I went to a friend’s house to play with her puppy for a bit. She was going to be alone all day and needed a bit of a break. That was fun. She is really cute and loves playing with my dog, which I enjoy watching.

Before the movie and early this morning we had a plumber over to check some drain issues. A couple things needed replacing (which is why he had to come back today) and right now there is water dripping under my kitchen sink (I have something there to catch it) so I guess I’ll be seeing the plumber again tomorrow!

Isn’t homeownership fun?

rewards of parenting

One of the things I find most rewarding about parenting is watching my children enjoy things that I enjoyed in my own childhood. Yesterday, my younger son and I went to see the local middle school’s production of Annie. It was really good and he fell in love with the songs and asked me to put them on his iPod. I flashed back to my own childhood and my cassette tape of the Annie soundtrack which I am pretty sure I listened to until it fell to pieces. I can’t actually remember if I ever got to see the play but I know I saw the movie in the 80s and liked it almost as much as I loved that tape.

Today, my older son had his friends over to play Dungeons and Dragons. That has become a regular occurrence. They play after school once a week but recently they have also started coming here once a week for a few hours. I didn’t play much actual D&D but I used to play RPGs in high school and college. We would play our games in a marathon in my friend Jeff’s basement, and we were older so there were smoke (not for me) and coffee (yes for me) breaks. It’s nice to see this group of kids that I’ve known since they were kindergarteners as high school students doing something so much like what I did in high school. They even sometimes play board games and let me play too.