Knock, Knock, Is This Thing On??

What, you may ask, has been occupying me since the first of April, leading me to neglect my poor blog?

Are you sure you want to know?

All right then, I'll tell you. And if I forget some of it, well, I'll have to chalk it up to old age or something like that. Certainly there have been a lot of reminders lately that I'm not exactly the spring chicken I feel like inside.

However, I can still get the happy when I'm in a loverly yarn shop and there is a surfeit of wonderfulness. And some of it can come home with me.

Really, what a shock, huh? This was taken at Twist during a "field trip" with my knitting group. It is a fabulous shop--and yes, they sell online--with an extraordinary selection of yarns, including that Malabrigo I'm cuddling (yes, it came home with me) and the Dream In Color Starry next to it. Considering that I was less than 5 miles away from Webs only a week before, and didn't get to go, I think I was being very good.

Well, at least good for Twist's bottom line that day. Our whole group found something, I think , but you'll have to check their blogs and Flickr pages to see. Or their Ravelry stashes. (You can check out my Flickr, too, for more pictures of this and the other things below.)

The Grandcarrot had a birthday, and turned 3. Here he is with his Auntie D4 and his birthday pinata. Made for him by his loving and slightly demented Auntie.

If you haven't met the Yo Gabba Gabba gang, you won't recognize Plex, the friendly robot. He was a big hit, and the little kids didn't seem to mind taking a whack at him--he was, after all, full of good treats!

I noticed that when the kids were scavenging up the loot after a well-placed whack opened him up, that some of them were taking the opportunity to take home an arm or a leg. Well, why not?

Here's something I didn't think I'd see for quite a while: a four-generations shot, and guess who is the oldest generation?


That's right. Little Paige Nicole, with her Grandma (D3) and mom Jessica. At least I'm not quite the oldest in the family--my dad, at 91, has me beat. We would have loved to get a picture of him holding his great-great-granddaughter, but he's not well enough to travel and it's a little far for Paige to go just yet. (Pics on Flickr of my dad meeting his 3 youngest great-grands, if you want to see. Maybe next time I'll post one of those here.)

Here's a shot of granddaughter Alyssa, at her college graduation in Providence, RI. Those are 3 of her proud aunties with her, and her carroty cousin who was more than a little overwhelmed at the whole giant graduation ceremony.

Alyssa graduated with her AA in Interior Design from New England Institute of Technology the day after she got married! Talk about a busy weekend...

Several of us, well, okay, all of us from California, flew out to New England for the wedding and graduation. D1 met up with us there in a miracle of scheduling. We met up with her in the baggage area of Bradley International and shuttled ourselves to a nearby Doubletree, which was a great place to rest and regroup.

There may have been wine involved. In fact, I'm sure there was. The little ones did eventually settle down in their temporary homes, and by morning we were able to get a couple of rental vans--followed, of course, by the obligatory breakfast at Cracker Barrel.

We spent Friday visiting my dad--the Massachusetts part of the trip--then found our way down to the lower part of Connecticut to #2's house, where we visited and relaxed till it was time to split up. I went to the wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, and the rest of the gang went to Mystic Pizza for dinner. There also may have been a trip to a package store for beer and wine and champagne...

Saturday was the wedding, followed by the reception at the wonderful Mystic Aquarium. I'm only including one picture from the reception here--if you want to see more, check out the Flickr links! This is me, in my pink suit (sometimes I call it my pink whale suit, but The Daughters don't like that so I won't do it here) with #2, D1, D4, D5, and D3. It was a beautiful wedding and the reception site was perfect.
So that's a quickie recap of the last couple of months. I've left out whole bunches of things, like D1's new house and being almost snowed in while we were in Denver, and peahens in the jacaranda tree, and how fast Little Miss is growing, and how cute the little grandboys are being, and all kinds of other stuff. I guess I will just need to be better about maintaining the blog.

I'll try!