Congratulations!

Congratulations to Donna and Paul Taylor, and the fabulous Quiltathon Committee who pulled off a spectacular event and raised a TON of money!

This past weekend was the 30 Hour Quilt marathon at Taylor Sewing Centre, in Brockville, Ontario, Canada. "The Quilt" is sponsored by Northcott Fabrics in Canada, and every year, quiltathons are held in quilt shops across Canada to raise money for Breast Cancer Survivorship. This program supports the patient and the family in many ways and is a very worthy cause. 

Unfortunately, all of us have been touched in some way by this terrible disease and we are all eager to help such a great program.

Donna told me they had eight teams of incredible quilters, all hand quilting on a quilt top that was assembled from blocks donated to Northcott for just this reason. The quilt top was put together and borders added at Taylor Sewing Center back in the early spring, and was machine basted by Christine Baker. The completed quilt will either be donated to a Breast Cancer survivor or to a group that will use it to auction off and raise money for cancer research or support. I am not sure where this quilt is bound yet!

The Quilters and store staff raised $10,000 in pledges!!! Way to go, Brockville and Area quilters! You rock!

And running simultaneously was a Silent Auction and Bake Sale which raised another $2,500! All proceeds from those went to the Brockville Palliative Care- which again, too many of us have had personal experience with, myself included on three separate occasions. The Palliative Care service in Brockville is excellent.

I really missed being a part of the fun! I miss working at the store and seeing all of my friends and fellow quilters.

What I couldn't miss was taking some time to say Congratulations and Job Well Done! to everyone who donated their time, efforts, silent auction items and bake sale items to help this event go as well as it did. You are all FABULOUS!

The Circus!

With all of the excitement of the kids' visit last week, I didn't get to blog a very exciting outing we had- to the circus!!!

Last Wednesday night Rich, Chloe, and I went into Denver to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey "Over The Top" circus and what a show! Heidi chose not to go, but she didn't know how much she was missing.

Chloe and I had never been to the circus and I don't think I will ever forget it. We got ringside seats and we were invited to participate by riding in a float toward the end of the first half of the show. How awesome was that?! 

There were clowns, daredevils, acrobats, trapeze artists, contortionists, and jugglers just to name a few. Of course these titles don't give any indication of how incredible their talent is- nor how awe-inspiring their acts made the show. There were dogs that were so fast and could catch anything, there were huge tigers, there were horses, goats, elephants, and even a porcupine! lol

Here is just a sampling in photos. In the first photo, one of the trapeze artists is hanging by her HEELS. In the second, the inner tube type things were cool- they would bounce in them and then flip right over! The third shows the elephants which I have always liked.

I took lots of photos of course... lol This is just a taste! If you want to see the whole folder, I have posted it on my Webshots page. Many of them are blurry due to the lack of light and all of the movement! But you will get the idea of how cool it was. If you want to see a short video, here is a link- if you aren't on the "Over the Top" page, then at the top left, you will see a button that says "Explore the Shows"- we saw the first one, the blue show. 

http://www.ringling.com/TopLanding.aspx?id=11612

There are three shows owned by Ringling Bros. so we will see a different one next year.  And make no mistake- we ARE going again next year! I wouldn't miss it for the world.

Heidi's friends save the day!

As you likely noticed, I had trouble publishing yesterday's post... something with an internet upgrade. ARGGGGHHH!!!!

Anyway, I mentioned that the girls went with me to the airport yesterday to see Holly and Ben off. It was upsetting and hard to say good bye and the girls were feeling understandably down.

But didn't Heidi's friends save her day! Three of her marching band friends, Whitnee, Nate, and Monica, had been planning for this occasion, knowing not only that it was Canadian Thanksgiving, but that Heidi would likely have a hard day of it, having to say good bye to Holly and Ben.

When Heidi got to school, she was given a t-shirt to wear that matched the other three; on the front it has a Canadian flag drawn on with dimensional paint, and on the back it says: It's all ABOOT Thanksgiving, EH!!! Some of the paint is glow-in-the-dark apparently. lol All four kids wore the shirts yesterday, and again after they competed last night in the qualifiers (for State semis and finals).

Not only did they do the t-shirts, but Whitnee baked Heidi a cake and they took Heidi out for ice cream after school to celebrate- and to cheer her up. Heidi was so thrilled with it all.

I am thrilled that she has made such good friends here.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our Canadian family and friends! I hope you all had a wonderful time with loved ones. We sure did.

Holly and Ben flew in on Friday to celebrate the holiday with us and to check out our new surroundings. They weren't overly impressed with air pressure at 30,000 feet, but had a good flight experience overall; flights being on time, good visibility, etc. They liked our neighborhood and kept saying they couldn't believe that they were more than 2,000 miles from home! lol

We had a very busy weekend with band stuff; a football game on Friday night and a competition on Saturday in Longmont. The weather was pretty miserable all weekend, rainy and overcast- something we have rarely seen here. Rich blames the Canadians. He says, coincidence??? Ha, ha, ha. As a result of the bad weather, Heidi's competition was cut short which meant she got home much earlier than expected and she had the evening to chill with her siblings. Their band came in third place.

The rest of us decided not to hang out at the competition for long and we headed over to Boulder. Ben had asked if we could try and get a photograph of the Mork & Mindy house- so we had looked up the address and over we went! lol

We did some shopping at the Pearl Street Mall (a pedestrian mall) and had lunch in this nice little Italian place that has a wood-fired oven to cook their pizzas in. It was delicious!

Sunday we had our big turkey dinner and everything went well. Zach came home to celebrate with us and to meet Holly and Ben. We all enjoyed dinner together and I am relieved!

This morning, the girls came with me to bring Holly and Ben to the airport. Lots of tears and hugs later, they were on their way. It's Columbus Day here today- but apparently it is a minor holiday, as most things are still open and running as usual. It's weird to know it is a full-blown holiday in Canada...

Homecoming Dance & Weekend activities

Here is a photo of Heidi and her friends going to dinner before the Homecoming Dance.

I have to say, our first experience with Homecoming was pretty great. The game was fun to attend and Heidi loved all of the activities throughout the week, ending with the dance. Being on TV was kind of cool too... lol

Yesterday we went to a corn maze and what a challenge that was! I had a lot of fun taking "artistic" photos as well as regular ones, and afterward we went for a drive up to the foothills to see the trees changing.

If you have ever driven on mountain roads, you already know there really isn't anywhere to stop, so most of my drive photos were taken from the car as we were moving. Considering that, I am happy with the photos, but they really don't show the colours the way I saw them- vibrant and breathtaking. 

It's the most amazing thing to see the bright gold aspens in amongst the evergreens- on the mountains it looks like fluorescent lights in the middle of the dark trees. 

I thought coming here that I wouldn't see the lovely fall colours that I am used to in Ontario, but I was wrong. Many of the trees and shrubs change here, and as you can see on the mountain, there are lots of colours to see here too. YAY!!!