Whew!  I think I have every thing done.  Costume all gathered up? Check.  Bindle staff for spider?  Check.  Extra spider webs and decorations for the office?  Check.  Cookies made for Allison's class?  Check.  Sprinkles gathered up for Allison's class?  Check.  Cookies made for neighbors?  Check (and Ralph already delivered Jane's - AJ will take the others down in a few minutes.)  Bookmarks done?  Check.  Goody bags done for the office?  Check.  Pork done for the enchiladas?  Check.  Enchiladas done?  No, but I'll do them after dinner.  Dinner ready?  sort of - the meat is ready for Ralph to put on the BBQ, so I just need the side stuff.  Whew - my feet hurt!  My "cold" didn't get any worse, so I was able to get everything done.

Here are some of the cookies.  As you can tell, the kitchen was a mess after baking!  I made a double batch of sugar cookies - somewhere between 10-12 dozen cookies, and a batch of peanut butter cookies (upon request from both Ralph and AJ.)  AJ help be frost the sugar cookies, so that chore went faster than normal.

Rufus took advantage of the bedcover after it came out of the dryer - he was nice and snuggy warm!

Here are the cat bookmarks I made - they all turned out just a bit different - depending on how I finished up the tail.

Mom asked me to pick up some material for her at Joann's this weekend, and when I went to the cutting counter and took a number, my number was 96, and they were working on #75 or so.  I had quite a bit of time to wander around shopping until they could cut the material, and I found some more yarn,  (I know -what a surprise!)  I made it up in the flower scarf pattern, and it turned out pretty nice! The white is a different texture than the black, so it adds a bit of 'difference' to the scarf that I like.

We had a visitor the other day - and he stayed quite a while.  I don't think he was too scared of us.  (He was a pretty big lizard!)

No! No! NO!  (Visualize tantrum here)  I think I'm coming down with a cold!  I don't have TIME for a cold!  I don't LIKE colds!  I don't WANT a cold!  Whine, whine whine!  Hopefully Airbourne will work it's magic, and I won't actually get sick.  Luckily, I got most of the housework done yesterday, but today was reserved for baking and cooking.  I want to make sugar cookies both for Allison's classroom and for me to take to work (and maybe some for Ralph and Alex?)  We are also having a potluck at work tomorrow, and I was going to make up some enchiladas today, which means I need to cook the pork roast today, and then make the enchiladas.  I know it will all work out, and I am so happy I have my new mixer to make my cookies!  (Hey - it's being thankful for the little things that get you through life!)

I did a dry run for my costume for work yesterday, and I think it will work out fine.  I was worried about wearing a costume all day and trying to work (did I mention the last day of the month is usually very busy for us???)  My department is dressing up with a "spider" theme.  Two are coming as 'black widows' - women wearing black - and the rest of us are coming as a 'themed' spider.  While we were tossing out ideas, one person googled spiders, and started reading off the different types of spiders, and it just took off from there.  Did you know there is a Pirate spider, a Hobo spider, a Jewel spider, a Parson spider, and a Candystriper spider?  The names are just too much fun!  I am going as a Hobo Spider - I'm dressing as a hobo, and will have my spider in my bindle!  I'm thinking of making him his very own little bindle to hang from a stick too.  (Of course, that was BEFORE I decided to dome down with a cold - we'll see!)  The department draped spider web stuff over a lot of the department on Friday, and we are going in early tomorrow to finish decorating.  I'll post pictures of the finished projects!

I finally made it to the weekend - yippee!  What a long week - busy at work, busy at home.  I spent a lot of time on the phone with friends this week - some bad, but a lot good.  It was nice to talk to friends that I don't talk to often!  (It does eat up an evening, though.)  Between work being extra busy (the last week of the month and the first week of the month are our busiest times) and spending my evening chatting instead of my normal house work, my house is a wreck!  Today is cleaning day, and I started a little early last night.  I went to sit down in the computer room and watch TV, and I could barely find the couch.  I piled up all of AJ's stuff and put it in his room.  Now his room is a mess, but I can enjoy the computer room again.  His idea of 'cleaning up the computer room' is taking the dirty dishes out - which is a start, I admit, but that is not the end!  Oh well - it look good now!

And, I realized this morning, Thanksgiving is at my house this year - I need to do some major cleaning between now and then - carpets and drapes and dusting (I only dust once a year - whether it needs it or not, LOL) etc.  I think I will try to go through some of the stuff I have and minimize it a bit - it always looks cleaner without clutter!  We'll see how far I get on that plan.

Back to work today - and I'll probably be paying for my three-day weekend (which was wonderful, by the way!)  Mom left yesterday around 11:00, and I already had most of my laundry on the line.  It took all day to dry, so I was folding clothes last night at 6:00 p.m.   Yuck!  I want, somehow, to do laundry instantly - all the loads at once.  I hate it dragging out all day!  One nice thing about our summers, by the time I am ready to hang the second load on the line, the first one is dry.  It does cut down on the time element.

I keep thinking the weather is going to change.  I had Picot in my lap all afternoon yesterday (if Allison wasn't in my lap).  Odd behavior for both of them.  It must be coming up to winter time or something. Alli napped in my lap after lunch, and Picot curled up several times later in the day.  They both make it hard to crochet.  I'm trying to build up inventory for our Christmas Bazaar at work.  I was also asked by a friend that if they have one at her work if I would put some stuff in.  Sure!  I better get busy - I have quite a few scarves made up, but I need to make up a bunch of gloves,  They usually sell well, and don't take as much time to make as the scarves do.  I've been having a lot of fun playing with the different yarns that are out now - so beautiful and soft!

Koori is so proud of her toy.  She is such a funny dog.  She doesn't want you to play with her toy, she just wants you to admire it.

Finally - a family reunion of sorts.  We were supposed to get a reunion going this summer with the family in Sacramento, but we could never get it quite together.  So instead, Mom and I went to Sacramento for a 50-year anniversary party Friday night, and met up with them there.  The relationship?  Guy, Jewell and Alba were siblings.  Alba was my Dad's mom, Uncle Jewell was the father of Rebecca, Mary and Micheal, and Uncle Guy was the father of Tommie.  (I'll have my Mom verify that I have this correct - family relationships confuse me - you're related to me how???)  My Mom spent time with the families when she was teaching in Floyd (Dad's home town) and then semi-followed them to California.  (They found a teaching job for her here, and she moved out to Crescent City area, went back on a quick trip, got married, and Dad followed her out.)  When Mom was teaching in Floyd, some of the 'cousins' were in her class.

Mom and Mike

Just Mike

Tommie  (who probably goes by Tom in the real world - Mom has always referred to him as Tommie)

The lady in Red and the gentleman to the right in the light shirt are Peggy and Ty - 

the couple that celebrated their 50 year anniversary.

The trip was fun, but tiring.  We drove down and back in the same day, and the party was at 7:00 p.m..  As usual, we closed the place down and didn't leave there until after 10:00 p.m., which made for a long day (I was up at 4:45  a.m. Friday morning with Allison - and got in bed close to 1:30 a.m. Saturday - long day!)  I also had an impromptu lunch on Friday with some girls friends -fun!  Veronica was in from Paradise for Inventory at Rexel, so she and her sister Meredith and I met for lunch.  Friday was a pretty busy day!  I made up for it on Saturday - I asked Ralph to get up with Allison and slept in a bit, and took a nap in the afternoon.  Another lovely day!

I stayed up way too late last night working on another bookmark - this one for Halloween.  I should have gone to bed much earlier - I know I have to get up early, I have no idea why I didn't!  I found a pattern that looks like this cat (sort of) but I didn't like the way it was constructed, so I worked out my own pattern last night.  I think he turned out pretty good!  I need at least 9 of these by Halloween, as well as getting a costume together for me.  I need to get busy!  I have an idea for my costume, I just need to pick up the materials and get started on it - then see what I need to fine tune on it.  

Here is another key-hole scarf I finished - love the colors.  The photo doesn't do them justice, but that's what you get when you take the picture at 6:00 a.m.  I like this pattern, and have started a scarf in the other pattern from the set that I bought.  It uses front post stitches, so have a lot of texture, so I am using a different type of yarn for it.  I'll post pictures of that when (if?) if get it done.  Too many things on my to-do list.

I'm off this Friday for a family wedding anniversary in Sacramento.  Mom is coming over, and we are meeting my sister on the way down, so it should be a fun trip.  It may be a quick trip - we haven't decided if we are staying the night in Sac or coming back home the same night.  It depends on how long we stay at the party, I think.  

I finished up the next set of bookmarks for my book club.  We are reading "Ender's Game" this time around - a very good sci-fi book, but not one I could find a bookmark for from the book - genius children, war games, aliens, etc.  I just couldn't come up with anything.  So...we went with Autumn.  I found a pattern for fall leaves, and worked them into a book mark.  Not too bad!!

AJ and I took a quick walk last night after work - before getting dinner ready.  I finally found some fall color.  (And the dogs found a lot of mud puddles!  They had so much fun running and chasing each other in this one!)

Alli is going back to the doctor's today.  She has a skin issue under her brace.  I thought is was an infection, so was treating it with the medicine for the last skin  infections, but....it isn't getting better.  Of course, it flared up over the weekend, so it was either treat her with what I had on had or take her to a walk-in clinic.  I figured they would say it was a skin infection and treat it just like I was doing, so I didn't take her in.  Now we'll see what Dr. G has to say about it.  Poor baby.  It is very red and itchy.

Koori and I made for a walk this weekend.  We went down to the Anderson River Trail and walked a few miles.  The trails are not well marked, and I lost my way out in the fields, but we had fun.  Not a lot of color changes yet, but still a pretty walk.  

Aah.....the weekend....time to sleep in, be lazy....NOT!  Allison was up at 5:30 this morning, so I was up too.  I've been playing on the computer, trying to keep quiet - AJ had two friends spend the night, so I have teenage boys crashed on both couches.  Alli isn't cooperating very well.  She sees no reason to be quite just because someone else is sleeping!  She's been pretty good about not wanting me to fix her breakfast, but she just decided it was time.

My biggest plan for the weekend - try to carve out some time for a walk on a trail somewhere so I can see the autumn colors!  I haven't taken the time for pictures of anything by my crochet stuff in so long, and I need to!

It was "back to work" with a vengeance today.  Three day weekends are great, but you sure pay for them on Tuesday.  Luckily, I had a great weekend, so I managed to survive it.

Mom was down for the weekend, and I talked her into trying a new scarf pattern I had.  We sat around the kitchen table talking and waiting for the rain to stop on Monday morning so she didn't have to drive home in the rain (guess what - this is Redding, it didn't stop!), and she finished a scarf for me.  

The pattern is cool - a keyhole scarf, with the end tucked in through the 'keyhole' so it stays tucked in.  Cute!  While she was working on it, I worked up one that I had seen, but hadn't found a pattern for - a peppermint loop scarf.

It is about 60 inches long, and is pretty cute, if I do say so myself!  After Mom left for her rainy drive, I sat down all by myself in a quiet house, and watched a movie.  A real movie, all by myself.  Woohoo!  I don't remember the last time I did that.  I had bought Julie and Julia when it came out on DVD (a year ago??) but had never watched it, so.....I sat on the couch in the quiet and watched the movie.  I also (of course) crocheted while I was watching, and I completed most of this scarf - the same pattern that Mom used, just a different color thread.  

When Mom finished hers, she had almost no extra yarn left over, but somehow, I had a lot more in my skein left!  (I'm thinking that I must have used some of the yarn for a different project!)

I also finished up some coasters I was working on over the weekend, and almost ran out of thread for them, too.  I like using up all the little scraps of thread and yarn I have - my yarn/thread containers are growing - I need to use up what I have before I get more, but there are so many new corlors and textures of thread/yarn, I can't help myself!

The rain is back.  We had a glorious weekend - sunny and warm - and....it's raining this morning.  At least we had the weekend.  (And it isn't cold and blustery - just raining!)

Alli is finally back to school today.  She missed most of last week.  She was definitely feeling better this weekend. She just has the remnants of the cold now, a bit of a runny nose and nasty sounding cough.  At least she isn't wheezing when she breathes.

Mom was down for the weekend, and I made her go shopping with me at Joanns.  She did find some material she wanted, and I picked up three new skeins of yarn.  I need more time in my day to play with all the yarn I already have, I did not need more.  Mom and I sat down last night and played with a pattern for a bookmark.  I was thinking of making a black cat book mark for my department for Halloween, and nothing out there is 'perfect'.  I found one that was close, but the instructions are a bit odd.  I think I can re-make the instructions, and it will be perfect.  Even AJ liked it, and wants one.  What a surprise!

I finished up some coasters this weekend - speaking of odd instructions!  They turned out cute, but....hard to follow the instructions.  I almost ran out of thread on one of them - I just had a little bit left!  

Just when you think things are getting better.....Poor Alli.  I kept her home yesterday, just as a precautionary 'one more day' to make sure she was fine.  We ended up at the doctors in the afternoon because she couldn't breathe.  I dug up her old albuterol inhaler (that we haven't used in several years - the medicine expired in 2008!) and used it until we could get in to see him.  He couldn't find any sign of infection, so the treatment is just the inhaler - though he did give me a free sample so I wasn't using old medicine.  Poor baby!  She was still wheezing a lot last night, so we took off her brace, which seemed to help.  I used the humidifier in her room last night, and she slept through the night, sounding pretty clear. She was up bright and early this morning (6:00) and sounded good, until I put her brace back on.  Immediately, she was wheezing.  Great. She's allergic to her brace now.  Probably not, but when I took it off, she stopped wheezing, so for today at least, it is staying off.  She is still coughing occasionally, and has a bit of a wheeze, but nothing like yesterday!  She is out of school one more day - Ralph already had the day off, so he is watching her today.

Fall arrived with a vengeance.  We went from hot days and cool nights to rain and wind.  The snow levels dropped Sunday night, and all the mountains around us were dusted with snow.  The clouds cleared away in the afternoon yesterday, and Shasta looks awesome!  Even Shasta Bally (the mountain directly west of Redding) had snow on top.  Early for snow this year - it could be a cold winter!  I can definitely feel the temp change - we were 90+ during the day, and now we are 50+ during the day - what a difference!

Home with a sick kid again today.  Alli got over her stomach flu just in time to catch a cold.  At least it was just a cold - runny nose, congestions, slight fever, etc.  She is on the mend now, but I kept her home today, just in case.  Ralph picked her up from school on Monday, and stayed home with her yesterday - my turn today!  She was definitely cranky last night, so I don't think she was completely well.  One more day should do it though!

Just when I thought work might be settling down after the end of the month/first of the month and our move, I'm out for the day, and someone else was feeling ill yesterday.  I'm hoping we don't get an epidemic in the department - the move put us in closer quarters than we were before, so the sharing of cold germs will be ever so much easier now.  We did get everything re-organized in the office, I think, after the move, so now we can start focusing on the work load.  We got a nice gift card from management yesterday in recognition of the work that went into the end of the month last week.  We funded over $38 million in loans in one week!  We were busy!  Add to that the move and my stomach flu, wow!  No wonder I'm tired!

I took in a bunch of my 'extra' doilies to work this week.  My box of finished projects was getting full.  Most of them found a new home, and I have a couple of requests for 'custom' doilies.  One co-worker wants a larger doily in lavender, and one wants some in red for Christmas.  I e-mailed some pictures in of some larger doily patterns that I had, so I have a pattern to work with now, I just have to make sure I have lavender thread!

The house is getting back to normal now, I think.  I went down Thursday night with Alli's crud, but both of us are back to normal now.  I have a house full of guests this weekend, and my house is a disaster - that's what happens when your sick!  My sister and her husband came in late last night (AJ let them in, I was already in bed) and her daughter is coming in today to visit.  It should be a good weekend, and I'm glad I'm feeling better!