OH HAPPY OH JOY ANOTHER GRANDBABY COMING!

We have been grinning from ear to ear, and the reason can not be more wonderful than finding out that we have a new grandbaby on the way!

Our daughter Heather and soninlaw Jesse have blessed us six years ago with our first grandchild, Jameson. Our other children have added to the tally, so we have the joy of loving five grandchildren.  That in itself is wonderful and fulfilling.

Little Jameson has always asked for a sibling, because all his cousins had siblings and he wanted one too. Although they had tried to give him a little brother or sister for quite a few years, it was just not meant to be.  Or so they thought!  

Ta daaaaaa!!!!  The new bundle will be here in August.  Heather exclaimed that it's no wonder she's been emotional and hungry and even craving things like Los Banditos chili con queso....   she went to the doc and even got to hear the heartbeat! Ten weeks along...wheeeeee

This Granmuddah and Grandfaddah are so happy to soon have an even half dozen grandtots to love...

This is how they announced it to their friends and family on Facebook:

The first thing Jameson asked was if his new sibling will play video games with him?

We will remind him of that when the little tyke is pestering him while he plays. LOL

Friday I got to spend some time with grandtots Chelsea and Clayton. 

 I put them to work baking cookies:

putting together some stacking wire bins for yarn:

and made them cook their own lunch.... Octopus Hotdogs! 

 Stick raw spaghetti noodles into 4" long hunks of hot dogs,

simmer until the noodle portions are soft within the hotdog,

cut dogs in half again to make "octopus" lunch! 

We made a little snuggle area at the back of the closet wayyyy down behind the stairs, and it's a perfect hide-away with books and grandtots and doggers... Both Binney and Finney enjoy the cuddles and snuggles. Binney sure loves the grandkids and we are glad she has acclimated well to having small kids around.  When adopting a rescue dog, you are never sure of what their reaction will be to new circumstances or people.  I think we got a winner! 

The highlight of the afternoon is when our mail lady comes to the house.

She slides the mail through a slot in the door, 

and the dogs are as excited as the kids

 to see the mail come plopping inside! 

Even though it was cold outside, they wanted to hang out on the front porch until the mail came.  It is not heated out there, but they didn't care.  Even the dogs came out and hopped up on the loveseat.  I have a collection of blown glass paper weights lining the windowsills.  Although they are glass, the grandtots are allowed to play with them and are delighted they are handling real glass. 

The windows all frosted up, 

but they scraped out designs in the frost for me.

Yesterday my brother Butch brought my dad down for a visit, and they took home our extra washing machine for dad to take the place of his broken one.  Also the quilt that I repaired (see my last blog) was picked up by Paula and Pat, the people who sold us this house. So we had a houseful of friendly company to see us off on our upcoming vacation.


The weather is looking good for travelling on Tuesday, but dropping temps and snow by Wednesday.  Seeing as we will be doing about 500 miles on Tuesday, we might not get far enough south to avoid bad weather by the time we pull off the road for the night.  Steve suggested we leave on Monday as soon as he is done with work and get a couple hundred miles under our tires while the weather is good. Probably find a spot to overnight somewhere in central Illinois, but be up early and hit the road Tuesday morning refreshed and ready to roll.  We don't care to drive at night.

The rig is still winterized and we won't fill with water until we get further south.  We saw temps in the 50's and 60's around southern Missouri into Oklahoma which look mighty good to us. We take along a few big jugs of water to get through until we can fill the 100 gallon fresh water tank up.  The dogs drink bottled water for the entire trip.  (long furry haired butts on dogs and strange water types do not mix well when travelling)

Today is packing up day of clothing, dry goods, dog supplies and such stuff that won't freeze. Steve has all his tools packed, and his portable fire pit, bags of pellets, and the lawn chairs. We are looking forward to some lawnchair setting out in the desert for a few weeks.

I am packing up some fabric, yarn, sewing machine, sockknitting machine and other fun fiber toys. Gotta keep the hands busy ya know.

Then tomorrow morning I will turn on the heater, finish tossing in the last of the freezable stuff, load up the dogs, and our computer things.....  as soon as Steve gets done with work we will hit the road!  



P.S.  Would Be Thieves--- we have a house-sitter coming, two widow ladies on each side of us who don't miss a thing, three dogs alerting the neighbors in the back, and we live 2 blocks from the police dept and 4 blocks from the sheriff dept. They are always driving by. This year we even added a wifi thermostat that we can monitor the heat from our tablets or cell phone, and get a warning if the furnace develops a problem back home.  The alarms will be set and there isn't anything left of value in the house.  LOL.