Happy 4th Anniversary Chicks! And Fun with Moose!

We can't believe it's been four years since the Chicks organized! Last Tuesday was our celebration and as a thank you gift I made yarn and needle refrigerator magnets for everyone.

Our dinner started with yummy appetizers of deviled eggs and olive tray, shrimp cocktails.

Ellie helped the celebrating with Grandma Joyce. Mommy Ali joined us shortly after.

Enjoying lively conversation and good food.


When we finished our appetizers we convened into the dining room for dinner of kibbee, fruit salad, Ramen slaw, and Portuguese beans.
I was too busy eating and enjoying my company to get photos of that part of the dinner though. You should have tasted the Lemon Souffle and Key Lime Pie we had for dessert! MMMMMM!


For Moose's second birthday DeeDee and Poppop promised to take Moose to Sesame Place. So last Saturday we cashed in our coupon for a day of fun.

Where are we?

Oh Look! It's Big Bird and Sesame Place!

Moose is waving high above the crowd as he waits to try out his first ride.

Moose and Mom had a great time cooling off in Big Bird's Rambling River.

He and Poppop waited patiently for the carousel ride.

And it was well worth the wait too.

It was such a hot day that we welcomed the opportunity to go inside and watch Elmo and the kids pretend to be fishes.

DeeDee and Moose really enjoyed the Elmo airplane ride. Moose kept pushing the button to go higher and higher.

Just as we were packing it in to go back to the car we heard a parade.

Where is it? Who is that?

Here comes Big Bird!

It was a very long, hot day and we had lots of fun. But now it's time to go home and look at all the photos we took. As soon as Moose was buckled into his carseat he fell asleep, dreaming of all the fun he had at Sesame Place.

Moose and his mommy came home with us to spend a little vacation time. We have all kinds of fun planned, mostly swimming at the pool in town.

We started a new day with a healthy serving of Rita's famous Kibbee. Moose LOVES it! Then off to the pool for a refreshing dip...well, we're at least thinking about it.

The water is a little chilly after last night's rainfall. But Moose still spent a good 45 minutes splashing around and having fun...

So much fun in fact, that he slept for three hours in my arms. That's the longest he's been still on my lap.

After dinner that night we had some light entertainment.

And that's all for now, I guess.

We All Have A New Angel Looking Out For Us

There is some sad news to report today. Dear Sweet Alice Gregory passed away yesterday, Monday July 20, 2009 at the age of 95.

If you look way back to the May 21, 2008 entry you'll see this photo of Alice with her son, Jim.

Our prayers go out to Jim and the rest of Alice's family in hopes that many happy memories will help ease the grief of her loss. God bless you Alice.

Chicks have a visitor

Elaine's friend, Jill, came for a visit this week and helped with some of Elaine's knitting project. Next time she visits we'll have to be sure she remembers to bring her knitting with her. We wouldn't want her to feel left out.

Kathleen finished her tweed poncho and is thinking about what her next project will be.
Liz has another finished poncho to add to our inventory.

Elaine started a sweet little pink baby sweater for a friend's baby. Liz is working on a cabled scarf with lots of texture.

We finally see sunshine! We are much more productive when the rays are warming us.

You can tell by the exasperated expression on Maureen's face that she's only too happy to be nearing the end of her poncho. After awhile all that stockinette stitch gets a little boring, heck! a LOT boring! LOL!

Cate is at the end border of her baby blanket. By the end of the evening, she bound off the last stitch! Yay! Now she is ready to go off to grad school in a few weeks to study dentistry. Her mom, Maureen, bought her a set of Denise needles for her very own to take to school so if she has a few minutes free she can keep up with her knitting.

Stay tuned next week for our annual Chicks Anniversary Party.

A Little Knitting, A Little Celebrating, A Little Cooking

The Chicks little fingers have been busy as bees lately. We cranked out four more ponchos and a few more are in the works, as we speak.

The pink poncho on the left was made by Elaine, using a worsted weight cotton yarn. The brown one on the right was one of mine, using a DK weight, also cotton yarn.

Liz made the left blue poncho, using an acrylic yarn and Barbara made the blue striped poncho on the right using an acrylic/wool blend yarn.
In between time, when I was feeling a little bored with the poncho, I made this cute newborn sweater out of sock weight yarn. This will go into our inventory for a future donation. Believe it or not, this sweater started with three stitches! With carefully placed increases, it grows into a jacket which requires only two short seams to be sewn, making it almost fully assembled by the time you finish knitting.
Now onto the celebrating portion of today's entry....DH and I celebrated 32 years of wedded bliss last Thursday, July 9th. My husband loves to research where we will celebrate each anniversary dinner by choosing a restaurant where we have never eaten before. For the most part we have been very lucky with delicious meals. This year was one of our few "Five Star Winners" with the scenery being almost as great as the meal. "Michael's On the Hill" in Waterbury Center, Vermont ( http://www.michaelsonthehill.com/press.shtml) is a chef owned restaurant which won Michael Kloeti the first Vermont's Chef of the Year award. And he earned every bit of this award! Our meal was outstanding in taste and presentation and the service was excellent from the time we entered and the hostess remembered to wish us a happy anniversary, to the beautifully arranged dishes adorned with edible flowers. We even enjoyed the sunshine at our table, which after so many weeks of rain, was a welcome sight.
On Friday we drove up to Essex, Vermont to have some more fun. We stopped at Kaleidoscope Yarns ( http://www.kyarns.com/ ) in Essex Junction so I could enjoy some fiber shopping. And look! The sun is still going strong!

This is a little shop with a big heart! And lots of yarn goodies too!

Then we went to The Essex (http://www.vtculinaryresort.com/) to enjoy last year's Christmas present. DH bought me an afternoon with a lesson from one of the chefs from the New England Culinary Institute.

The resort is lovely and everywhere you turn down a hall or through the lobby, it is decorated with beautiful or whimsical cakes and photographs of food.

This cake had four different sides with trout swimming upstream to a vineyard with a wine cellar.

Soooooo cute!

These next two cakes were just outside one of the dining rooms.

I don't think I could cut into anything this pretty.

At 3:30PM our cooking lesson began. DH and I were in a class of seven, two husbands and the rest were women. Our chef instructor was Chef Courtney Contos and her assitant was Chef Kerri Bouffard. They were both so congenial and remembered all our names on the first try! How cool is that?!

Chef Courtney was explaining the Spanish Fiesta Tapas dinner we were going to prepare. We started out with Bacon wrapped dates, drizzled with Pomegranate Molasses, then moved on to Seared Diver Scallops with a Romesco Sauce, which is like a pesto only with almonds and roasted red peppers. The Goat cheese baked in Tomato Sauce with fresh basil was such a simple dish to prepare but it tasted like it required an expert. The next dish was Traditional Garlic Shrimp with a parsley butter sauce and with it all the most yummy whole grain country bread. Dessert was a small square of an orange/lemon cake topped with freshly whipped cream and a raspberry. By that time we all could hardly fit anything else. But everything was delicious!

Everyone in the class could participate as much or as little as they wanted.

If any of you know Ron or me you can imagine how we were itching to get our hands working!

After a few glasses of homemade Sangria it was time to put down the knives, back away from the fire, and finally taste the fruits of our labor.

We thoroughly enjoyed this experience and I'm now trying to convince Ron that we should make this cooking class an annual Christmas tradition.