Christmas Family Fun

We've been enjoying some serious down time with each other for our Christmas holiday. No quilting work has happened at all since the 23rd. Most everybody went to the Christmas Eve candlelight service at the Air Force Academy chapel (Heather had to work, and I was too head-cold sick to go).

That night I set my alarm for 2:30, but when I came downstairs, I found that Devon and Kyle had beat us to the Santa Clausing!  

They had draped several of our Christmas blankets and quilts on the sofas with snowball garlands, and even on the coffee table. . . 

And the onsies hung all around the room!! lol!! I don't know where they found onesies with feet that were tall enough for this family!

The stockings were already too stuffed to fit in the bits we'd picked up to add in! (Those two were having such fun planning their Christmas spending that I let them take the cash I would have used so they could also do the shopping for stocking goodies.)

I actually chuckled at the Kleenex left out for Second-Santa.

They had even cleaned the kitchen all up!

Scott and I added the last bits to the pile, and Navarre couldn't figure out if he thought it was the coolest thing ever to have a mini mountain in front of his tree, or if it ticked him off to have the front dive-in entrance blocked by it.  lol!!

Those onesies were a blast on Christmas morning, and each of the stockings had a furry snowball for a family snowball fight thus attired! This is the funnest bunch of "kids".  :D

Mr. Bear Cheeks - 

Navarre managed to last through the entire unwrapping event, albeit with a mighty glazed look on his face by the end of it - he gets overloaded with input sometimes when things are running out of the ordinary.  

But Isabeau preferred staying up above all the chaos to enjoy the scene.

These are some of my favorite images from the day:

Heather vamping that onesie up:

Kyle watching Pokemon while working on a tiny sculpture - 

Devon has always been my all-or-nothing baby - 

And it's fun to watch the two of them having fun together -

Marissa was adorable diving into her speakers jackpot

And those GINORMOUS Peppermint Patties -

How sweet can you get?

My Quilt Parlor was once again transformed into an actual dining room.

Gotta love Pinterest finds!

And I definitely LOVE my family. What a treat to have everybody living here right now!

I hope you're all having a great holiday time, whether it's quiet and relaxing, full of family fun, or bringing you travel adventures~!  I am back to more game-playing - that table hasn't been put back up on its risers just yet.  ;D

Graduated! ~ Grand Illusion ~ Fiesta Mexico

Welcome to the Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays! 

We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately. 

This week's link-up is at the bottom of the post.

Did you see that I graduated?  heh! Most of our family went over to Nebraska for the ceremony so I could wear that fancy hood I earned. Plus, it was a perfect excuse to go visit Scott's folks for a few nights, who live 45 minutes away from the university.

Three other cohorts attended the ceremony. The other 15 lived too far away.

Dr. Biggs is always resplendent in his mustache! He was a good thesis advisor. I didn't even think about bringing my Phi Alpha Theta cords! Silly me. . . 

My family had fun putting up their "Lopers" - the university's mascot is the antelope.

You saw mine a couple days ago. Might as well flash it again.  ;D

The only bummer is that Heather and Kyle weren't on the trip because of work obligations. 

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We got back last night, and I was too tired to do the Garden Friends BOM work that would have been slated for this week.

I did look at the Clue 4 of Bonnie Hunter's 2014 Mystery Quilt this morning, and cut those pieces out. I sewed the HST's via my favorite method for scads at a time (although I cut the papers into smaller sections to maximize scrappiness).

I only put together 1 of each orientation for this week's patches,

And now Clue 4 is stacked on top of Clue 3 and Clue 2. Real work on those is waiting for my FMQ work on my 2 Christmas quilts to get finished. (They're safe like this for a couple more weeks, because they live in a part of the house where no pets go and there are no young kids who would be tempted to check things out!)

Clue 1 was finished the first week, and their tray actually serves to mask something that has to stay hidden.

(Linking this up at Bonnie's Mystery Monday Link-up)

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Been doing last bits of decorating with family, and now I plan to enjoy the rest of my Sunday with some slow stitching while we all watch the second Hobbit DVD in prep to go see the final release in the theater in a couple of days. 

I'll be working on my Fiesta Mexico block. I pushed the stemwork along a bit more on the car ride home yesterday and back-basted some pieces of color on. 

I love how it transforms from this messy stage to a clean, gorgeous stage when the applique is done! This far edge is finished until I trim up the block after all the other stitching is in place.

(Linking this up at Slow Sunday Stitching and Hexie Weekend) 

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How are things at your place? With Christmas getting closer, have you done any BOM work lately? Maybe you've snuck in some sanity time to put a block together, or maybe you've started assembling one you've worked on all year? Or maybe it's just too crazy a time to do sewing and you're enjoying the holiday and your family?  :D

At Long Last!!

Getting my "Loper" on    :D


Later Addendum: In February I received my bound copies of my thesis!