Ice Cream in Texas and swimming with the Dinasaurs

One of the things that you forget when you move from Texas to Minnesota, is that no matter how fast you try and eat a Dairy Queen ice cream cone in the heat of a Texan summer, you will get dripped on.  You can't lick fast enough without some drips cascading down your hands.  smile

We had such a good time in Texas.  The temps were moderate (at least for Texas), only in the mid 90's.  Several days it rained which rearranged some of our plans but we still saw fireworks on a mosquito infested night.  Anna found a unique way of trying to fend off the blood thirsty critters, she put her legs into the arms of her sweater, pulled the hood up and tucked her arms in and lasted oh mere moments before gasping for air.  But it made us laugh while we waited for the festivities to begin.

The drive to and from went well, 16 hours can be a chore, but the girls are great for the most part and it is freeway driving for me so easy enough.  I loathe to take 2 days as I don't want to lose any time that I could otherwise be spending with our friends. 

We drove to Glen Rose and crept through the animal preserve, Anna was brave and had the giraffes feeding off her hands, Emily decided to wait until next year to try that.  Emily however, fed the ostrich and that is not an easy feat to do without getting pecked.  After trolling through the animal presevere, we went to Dinasaur Valley and the kids played in the river and saw dinasaur tracks.  It was fun for all of us.

I promised to knit and while I did, I don't have a picture yet of what I worked on.  I worked on the tiger from the Cyd designed balloon animals.  I need to knit the ears to sew on and then embroider on the eyes before I will show him on the blog.  But it is an amazing feat of engineering I think how you twist and fold the critters together.  So watch for that in the next installments.

I have finished an UFO though.  Thank heavens. Here is the Inga hat, I like how it turned out, although Anna didn't like that it had a "poufy" top.  I think it is fine.  I still need to give it a good soak and block it but I'm happy with the end result.  I used left overs of yarn used to make Kyle's Anna's mittens last year. Anna's mittens were very cute and since I bought the yarn at the Yarn Harbor in Duluth I wanted to make sure I had enough yarn, so I overbought the amount I'd need.  But as you see it did not go to waste!

I also completed a new cowl and have 1 1/2 fingerless mitts done that match it.  It is a very simple ruched pattern for the cowl and the mitts are the Fetching pattern in Ravelry.

And finally, we can not have a garden at our house.  We live in a twin home with a home association.  They are very strict on rules on the outside of the homes.  And one of those rules is no gardens (except for the people who have the pond in their backyard, somehow they are exempted and can have gardens?  don't get me started).  So we have containers of flowers every summer on our patio, but no garden.  For Emily's birthday, my sister gave her a round fiber type basket that is made for vegetables to grow on patios.  Who knew?  So we planted carrots in the middle and ringed it with pumpkin seeds.  I was hoping we would get tasty carrots as that is Emily's favorite vegetable and at least 2 pumpkins for fall for the girls.  Well look at this. 

I fear that we will have slightly more than two pumpkins! In the center of the basket I counted 24 blossoms. TWENTY FOUR. and that does not count the at least equal amount of blossoms coming out on all the various tendrils hanging off the edge of the basket. I see the girls hauling their wagon full of pumpkins up and down the neighborhood streets selling them for a dollar! But it has been fun, say if anyone has any good pumpkin recipes, let me know!