Yes We Love Our Animals

This is Charley and Cocoa in my mom and dad's room. This is two of our three cats. They're enjoying a pleasant afternoon on my parent's bed. They're always together.

Cocoa is our newest member to the family. She's very skittish as she was found a stray. She doesn't like you sneaking up on her or touching her without her permission, but when she wants to be loved she's very demanding. She's very fluffy and has a tail like pampus grass. She walks and runs with it standing straight up so it looks pretty funny.
This is Miss Kitty. She's hiding in a quilt that my mom made. She thinks that mom made it for her. My mom had it in her lap while she was binding it and she crawled right in. She has a prissy attitude and has earned the nickname "miss priss". She thinks the house belongs to her and she's merely letting us stay here. Of course it probably helps that we feed her. Miss Kitty is a munchkin. She has short stubby front legs and longer back legs. Earning her my little nickname of "miss hotrod." She loves to do this ferret stance where she sits up on her back legs and looks out the window or french doors. Usually a sure sign that she wants out or in. She has a very distinct meow which can always be heard. She reminds us of a meer cat when she runs because her tail is always sticking up.






This is Grandma with Charley. He is our most cuddly cat. He hardly ever purrs or meows but loves attention constantly. He's recently gotten over an "affair" with a different family who lives behind us. Charley was also a stray, but is not skittish at all. He's our cool joe cat. His favorite pasttime is running up and down the hall at night with Cocoa and fishing in the fish tank. We even got a sign for the fish tank that says "no fishing", but I guess he doesn't read it.



This is Rascal. Our 9 year old Jack Russell terrier. He's very protective and thinks the whole street belongs to him. He barks at anything that moves on it, but if you come through the gate he's your best friend. Some guard dog. He's getting old and enjoys sleeping in everyone's bed.

This is a rare picture. Miss Kitty must have been asleep when Charley got in the chair with her. She doesn't like other animals sleeping with her, especially Charley. They weren't always enemies.
Just thought I'd show off the other "members" of the family. As soon as I get pictures I'll show you my tarantula, Harry:-)

Seth

Ladybug quilt

I've been looking around at the blog sites and realizing what talented women are out there. So I thought I would share a quilt that I made last winter. It was for a friend who was expecting her third child, first girl. The theme was ladybugs and she likes really bright colors. The hard part was having all my quilting stuff packed away in storage. We had just begun our major remodel. All my quilt patterns, etc were not accessible. So I just drew a ladybug and blew her up on the copier. Then did simple pinwheels. The recipient just loved it. Neither picture scanned too well so hopefully you can get an idea what it looked like. That's me behind the quilt and I'm standing in the living room. The palladium window looks out on our front yard.
Well I hope everyone had a better weekend than I had. I didn't even get my pantry painted. I came down sick on Saturday morning and proceeded to get worse all weekend. That's what I get for forgetting my water all last week and drinking out of the faucet in the library. I've hardly been sick this past school year and now I have to blow it this close to Spring break. I'd better get well before then. Went to the doctor today and she gave me a prescription. So hopefully I'll be on the mend this week. I've got way too much to do to be down sick. I want to get the cupboard doors painted over Spring break and some of the walls. Guess I'll also be adding the pantry to that list. Hope everyone has a great week.

Catching up is so nice to do

Perhaps it's time to add to the blog. We got our first comment from a visitor and the kids and I were just ecstatic about it. We like to visit other blogs and leave comments, so it was kind of cool to get one from someone else.

I've been so busy these past days. Work has been outrageous. I believe the students have gotten into spring fever religiously this year. We had twelve suspensions on Wednesday alone. The library was overflowing with bad kids, test takers and classes in need of returning/getting books. I came home with a massive headache.

BUT TODAY the pantry came!!!!! Yeah and I love it! Tomorrow I shall have to paint it, but I don't care. Last weekend I got all the drawers painted and they look so good! Seth and I even got the flower seeds planted last weekend. As soon as I figure out which film roll everything is on then I will post pictures.

Slowly but surely everything is falling into place. But I'm a pretty impatient gal. I keep telling myself to enjoy the journey, but I'd just like it done. I'm on a new kick to just concentrate energy and resources (read money here) on one room until it's done. Instead of the 1/2 dozen or so incomplete rooms already existing around here. I didn't think hubby's work hours could get worse but apparently they can. So he's no help around here. Thank goodness I've got great kids who can be bought to do just about anything. Just kidding, actually they're really good about helping.

Well gotta run. Hubby is home early at 6:30 and I need to get to Costco. We're down to just one vehicle right now. We got pummeled with supplemental property tax bill and can't get the other car fixed. Drat old cars, but new ones cost a lot and I like not having a car payment.

Everyone take care and have a great weekend!!! Yeah, it's the weekend!!!

Change in our name

We thought we would change the name of our blog to something that would reflect more of our interests and what we are blogging about. Also because we kept getting all these visits from media type websites. Well I guess Stockton Story is really about a murder/political thing that happened in Stockton, CA. We thought it best if we changed our name. Tina is very unhappy about our name change, but until we can find something that we all love we'll stick to this name. Besides, I really like morning glories. This picture was taken at the end of summer 2005. The morning glory looks great, but the rest of the yard was played out. Morning glories are so pretty and easy to grow. They will take over your yard if you let them. I guess that's why their other name is bind weed. Plant with caution. I always pull the little seedlings when I first see them poking through. They have heart shaped leaves and are really easy to spot.

We've been busy getting a few more things done around here this weekend. I got to go to a quilt show this past Saturday. It was pretty nice for a small quilt guild and show. Got a few fat quarters to add to my political quilt stash and a few more for the shower curtain. Sunday I was on Grandma watch while Neil and the kids went to church. I managed to finish putting away the snowman collection that I have. I like to decorate for winter instead of Christmas. We don't do a tree, but I love plain pine trees and snowmen that have no Christmas markings. I take down all my pink and white stuff and put up the snowmen around Thanksgiving. Actually the pink and white stuff comes down around October to make way for the fall stuff. When we lived in Virignia I had a lot of lovely Colonial Williamsburg pieces that I refused to part with when we moved to California. The colonial pieces did not go with the house we were living in at the time, so I thought I could enjoy them a few times a year by bringing them out in the fall. So that's what I do. Maybe I'll try to post a couple of old decorating photos when I find some. I am always glad to see my pretties (as my two best friends call them) when I unpack them sometime in February/March. So it was fun to put the pretties back up and I never can remember where they were before so we get new arrangements every year. Well it's time to start dinner. It's been fun catching up. The kiddos have said they will blog soon, as they said they would help with this to get credit. I seem to be the only one doing any.

One last bathroom picture

Well here's another picture of the bathroom. The tile is in and now you will all laugh at this, I can't remember which of the 12 undeveloped rolls of film the rest of the bathroom pictures are on. So I just grabbed three of them the other day and headed to Costco. Wouldn't you know that 1 was of Thanksgiving last year, 1 was our trip to Utah in August and the other was the kitchen demolition. Somewhere there are more pictures of the bathroom. It even finally got painted last summer. A good college aged friend did it while the kids and I were gone to the coast camping. Came home to a blue bathroom that I wasn't so sure about at first. I really didn't think that I could like it, but I just love it now and it has grown on me. I just need to get the fabric I've been collecting for that bathroom out and get it cut up into 6" inch squares. I want to make the shower curtain look like patchwork. I've been collecting really cool fat quarters of floral and other shabby chic type fabrics. It should look good when done. That's the big one, when done. Well gotta run and get dinner.