My family is here!

Guess who’s visiting? It’s my family from Germany and I’m just in heaven!

My grand-daughter Lily just turned 3 and she chats away in both German and English. If she’s talking in German to me, I can say “Lily, tell Grandma in English” and she’ll translate.

It’s amazing to see what children can do when they are raised with two languages.  Mon always speaks German to her and Dad speaks English.  She goes to an American/German pre-school and one teacher speaks German and the other speaks English.  Because she’s learned both languages at the same time she thinks nothing of it.

Every morning Lily and I take the dogs for a walk.   I take the stroller just in case one of them gets tired.  Usually it’s Chelsea, my little short leg chunk.

It’s a little crazy around here now with family getting together.  Day trips are very involved and usually include a caravan of two cars.  A trip to the beach takes at least an hour to get ready.  We find ourselves cooking dinner for 9 to 10 people, running the dishwasher daily, and our grocery shopping has increased  by leaps and bounds.  Of course going out to eat is an event in itself.  Large tables are a highly prized commodity.

When I think about how normal this must sound to many of you I’m both amazed and a little jealous.  Today everyone went camping and the quiet around here is seems so strange.  Don’t you love it when your family visits?  Do your children all live close to you, or do they travel to see you?  Do you take trips together?

Behind the scenes, we’re still working to finalize our new website.  It’s into the testing stage and almost ready.  When the new site is up and running it will look the same, but we’ve added new products, a few pdf patterns (we’re starting with the Petite patterns and we’ll add more as we go along), you’ll be able to set up your own account to make check-out easy each time, or just check out as a guest.  I’ll let you know when it’s up so you can explore the new site and give me your feedback.  I expect there to be a few glitches but I hope our testing will have covered most of them.

We have another shipment from Valdani coming on July 7th and I hope to have all the floss kits for the punchneedle patterns in stock at that time.  Currently we have everything you need to make our Sweet Pea pocket, including the wool, trims and floss in stock.  You’ll find everything on our website.

We’re having a heat wave here for the next week and it’s just awful.  The fire danger is high with the 4th just around the corner.   I hope the 4th is fun and safe for you.  Keep those animals locked up inside.  The shelters here are already expecting to be on overload.  We have several cats who hate fireworks, and it’s our first 4th of July with Milkshake.  I don’t know how she’ll react but I’ll be ready.

I’ll be back soon.

Anne