J is HERE

J arrived just now from the Right Hand Coast!! This leaving thing is for real! We took her to the Please Touch Museum to explore with us and took her for a ride on the Carousel.

Getting ready to head West

Today my friend J arrives to drive back west with me. We will take a couple days in and around G Town, then drive to Virginia Beach for a couple beach days. Our western path takes us through Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas to Denver Colorado where we will visit friends a couple nights and take a deep breath.

We leave Denver for Wyoming and Montana with a drive through Glacier National Park, Whitefish, Coeur d'Alene and home. Many many miles, many many sights.

Hello soon to all of you who may read this from the Left Hand Coast.

Jersey Shore

Thursday we returned to the beach. It's been TOO TOO HOT, and as we walked toward the beach the coolness refreshed us. Here's Miss C playing in the ocean. We got really cool!

Later, the biggest rainstorm accompanied by thunder and lightning rolled through. The streets flooded, the rain hitting the window looked like it was coming from a fire hose. The storm passed and we were able to get to our favorite Shore restaurant for a seafood dinner, then home.

Garage Sale

J is moving to Denver to get married and start her new life, so I went to NJ to help her with her garage sale. We made use of chairs until each one got sold, used a fan outside to keep cool, and sold all her big items.
It was a great day to connect with a good friend!

Art Museum

Mrs T and I took Miss C to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

She has an alphabet book, "A is for Art Museum," and is familiar with certain pieces. We started at the fountain at the entrance. The alphabet book was our guide for this tour.

M is for musicians.

X is for "x marks the spot."

Some of the pieces that are in the book were not in display, but we saw the Degas Dancer, a wonderful Chinese cage for a dog, Van Gogh's Sunflowers, a helmet (H) in the display of armor,

and the Japanese Tea House.

After a long morning, a foot soak in another fountain is just what is needed.

ZOO

We visited the zoo this week; we hadn't been there for a long time and it was a completely different experience with a 2 1/2 year old Miss C. She enjoyed seeing all the animals, the giraffes, gorillas, monkeys, polar bear, otters, rhinos; but here eyes really lit up when she saw the zoo train! Trains have been her obsession and this day was no different. We waited in line for a ride, and she couldn't have been happier to go round and round.

She also fed the lorikeets:

And wanted to ride the pony:

What next? She keeps surprising me.

Gardens

More beautiful gardens. . . . these flowers grew in the T Gardens in G Town!

COOL!

The cooling started last night and with it my energy returned. Hooray! It's 71 degrees today and 55% humidity, really comfortable for a West Coast person.

My time here is growing shorter; it's time to pack what will fit into my little car. I'll be heading back west July 2. . . . . home sometime mid July.

Hot Weather Activities

What do you do when the weather is in the 90's with humidity approaching 90%? Go inside; turn on every fan in the house; put a little fan at your feet and sew! Drink plenty of water and run up and down the stairs frequently. Ice cream also helps.

So, I've made two new sleepy sacks for Miss C. (She prefers to sleep in a sleepy sack and you cannot buy a sleepy-sack in her size. The newest ones are made of muslin and cotton knit for the very warm weather.) This brings my sleepy-sack total to seven!

Eating ice cream . . . . homemade!

I made a new cotton skirt for me and quilted a pillow for with a circle motif:

I made a little sun dress for Miss C from a yard of fabric that I bought quite a while ago; it was waiting for the perfect project. The dress is copied from one she had in her closet.

Here she is in the new dress checking out the chickens at the Wyck House:

And I have some new photos for you of the finished quilt I made for Mr & Mrs T.

We collected fabric in aqua bright green and purples. Some fabrics are also in other things that I've sewn. It's fun to use scraps and extras and create something new.

This is the back. You can see the pattern of the quilting stitches . . . straight rows just inside each square. I think it looks pretty good for my fifth quilt!