more winterizing -- and presents!

we've been trying to get little odds and ends of outdoor projects finished around the house

over the past week we've done fence repair and putting away of lawn furniture and hoses

yesterday we got the last bag of gravel swept in between the new stone walkway that our son-in-law helped us put in this summer

its hard to tell really what we did because the leaves from the neighbor's tree are falling there too, but it's nice to know that there won't be a big mud hole out there when the snows come

and it looks really nice too



after the yard work early yesterday morning we took off to visit with my folks for a while

I took along some containers of frozen tuna casserole leftovers (for my dad) and some pictures of the family's newest arrived baby -- my cousin's daughter had a little boy recently

my mother had been saying for a while that she had beads that she would give me "some day"

yesterday was the day

there are 35 of these divided plastic boxes of beads that have been sorted by color and type

(she used to go to the second hand store and buy quart jars full of broken jewelry, etc., and take them all apart)

it's going to take me a while to inventory these!

she also gave me some paperwork on family history to go through and check on web sites -- that will take a little time too

and since I was in the car up to Denver and back, I did some knitting

this is the back and fronts of the smallest of the "sweaters for fencing" projects

I'm about 10 rows from having the back totally complete there too, then on to the sleeves

(sorry for the picture quality -- it was taken in available light at about 11 pm last night!)


it looks like today I'll get to spend some time working on those projects I still haven't taken any pictures of -- it's a good thing!!