I've told you about my students who have come to our college full of hope, promise of future leadership in their home countries, but short on English language experience. Each day we work together is a challenge. I know it is for me, and I'm sure it is for them. See post from earlier in September, "Giving It My All" for more information about the group.
Today, they began to make oral presentations to the class. The topic was "Five ways to make friends". They have been working on this for about 3 weeks. They've worked with the speech lab teacher, and she came to our class to video their presentations.
I asked for a volunteer to start. The young lady who jumped up to do her presentation first was one who had had that "deer in the headlights" look on her face when I first interviewed her in mid August. The only thing she could say was, "No English!" Now, here she was, eager to give an excellent presentation, very well prepared and presented, and very fluent in English. She was so excited when she was finished, so very happy because of a job well done.
By the time they were finished, I don't know who was prouder, myself or the speech teacher. These students were so relaxed, organized, well-rehearsed and naturals at standing up in front of a group and speaking. And their English was wonderful.
Just 6 short weeks ago, they could barely put two words together, and now they were making entire presentations in English.
I was so proud of them. I know why they were chosen for the honor of recieving a two year scholarship to the United States. They have excellent leadership qualities, and it showed clearly as they completed this assignment. They will be using these skills in presenting ideas to their countrymen when they return, to become young leaders in their countries in business or government.
Awesome! I'm bustin' my buttons proud of them!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
My first three baby quilts
Here are the three baby quilts I made in 2008. They barely cover a crib mattress, The one is displayed on a toddler bed, which uses a crib mattress.
Farm animals theme for the little farm boy in Iowa
Found the cutest fabric for this one, which was for my neighbor down the street. Jungle animals were the embroidery motif.
Trucks are the motif for this one. It was made for my neighbor next door, cute little PJ, who knows my name, my car, and all the colors of my flowers in the yard, at 18 months of age! What a cutie he is!
The designs for the embroidery are from Dakota Collectables "Cuddly Animal Quilts" and "Fun For Boys". I do my embroidery on a Janome 10000 machine, quilting on a Janome 6600.
Farm animals theme for the little farm boy in Iowa
Found the cutest fabric for this one, which was for my neighbor down the street. Jungle animals were the embroidery motif.
Trucks are the motif for this one. It was made for my neighbor next door, cute little PJ, who knows my name, my car, and all the colors of my flowers in the yard, at 18 months of age! What a cutie he is!The designs for the embroidery are from Dakota Collectables "Cuddly Animal Quilts" and "Fun For Boys". I do my embroidery on a Janome 10000 machine, quilting on a Janome 6600.
Soft Blankie
Here it is, the soft blankie I made for newest member of the family Jaden Isabella.
I've been planning this quilt since mid-summer, I remember buying the "rubber duckie" fabrics before the run of Joseph The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was finished, because I showed it to one of my quilt gurus when she came up from Mid-Missouri to see the show. Getting started came slowly because I was pretty tired of the four walls of my sewing room after sewing all those costumes, but now it has been together as a quilt top for a couple of weeks. I needed to wait until Jaden arrived to embroider the vital statistics on it!
The theme comes from Jaden's dad and mom's theme that they like, Rubber Duckies!
Now that Jaden is almost 2 weeks old, I figured it was about time I finished it.
I used my simple pattern of 6 x 9 rectangles for the blocks. I embroidered on 5 of the blocks, and the other four were patchwork. I wanted it bigger than the 3 baby quilts I made in early 2008 using this same pattern and sizing, so I put a wider border on this one. This one ended up being about 40" x 50".
I changed my mind about how to finish the corners of the border. Originally I was going to put a square block in there, but didn't like the look. I had already cut the side borders off even with the bottom of the quilt blocks, so I had to add something to fill in. I came up with a rather complicated miter system, which caused me a lot of grief, and isn't exactly as precise as I would have wanted it to be. But my local quilt guru advised me to just forge ahead, saying that after it was quilted, you wouldn't notice that it wasn't as exact as it should be. I guess she is right. She also gave me more advise--NEVER DO THAT AGAIN! (Will I listen, probably not!)
The whole quilt rather sings out the whole first verse of the Rubber Duckie song, (Use Ernie's voice as you sing this!) "Rubber Duckie, You're the one, You make bathtime, so much fun, (and on the border) Rubber Duckie, I'm awfully fond of you!"
Hope Jaden enjoys slobbering on it, rolling on it, cuddling in it, carrying it, sleeping with it, and singing that cute little song for many years to come!
Monday, September 21, 2009
A friendly kind of place
My Free T-Shirt! Notice they don't show red convertible sport cars as their potential client vehicles--so I was somewhat out of place while doing business here! No Coach purses or suburban ladies in this business!While visiting my friends in Small Town Missouri, my hostess noticed that my front tire had a crack in the tread. Upon inspecting it, we noticed that there seemed to be something hard in the center of the crack, perhaps a nail. I panicked, realizing that Small Town Missouri businesses usually were not open on the weekend, and I was afraid of driving on the interstate at night with a bad tire.
I had to make some hasty plan changes, and my friend, Coach C, recommended a new place in town that was a tire store. He described where it was, I knew the place, so I went to seek out help.
When I drove up to the place, THERE WAS A PARTY GOING ON RIGHT THERE (Singing "Celebration" in my mind!--get the groove on that?) Lots of cars, people running around, every kind of vehicle you can imagine was parked out there, but mostly pick-up trucks. You see, this is a working class community, full of hard-working folks, mostly small businessmen, farmers, ranchers, construction workers. Also, it is rural Missouri, so you see your share of "colorful" characters. I swore I saw ZZ Top's brother there, with a fine combed beard down to his belly button!
The party was because the business was celebrating their grand opening. They had breakfast--coffee and donuts, lunch--barbeque and beverages, free t-shirts, your name in the box for a drawing for an attendance prize--they were all but giving away the tires.
I told them of my dilema, and they said they would get to it after they helped 3 other customers. I say by watching the show unfold in front of me, and realized that they were doing a very nice business to go along with their generousity to their clients. One young man started working on my tire worked and worked for about 15 minutes, when he finally came in to tell me he couldn't find a leak in my tire. In the meantime, I had been offered breakfast, lunch, a free shirt, a potential prize, a clean bathroom, and a chance to wait in a nice facility. Now that's hometown hospitality for you! Then, the young man told me--"Ma'am, there isn't anything wrong with your tire, so I can't charge you anything, I didn't DO anything!" I tried to offer them something for their work--he did work on it for over 30 minutes, but he wouldn't take a cent.
You can see why I liked living and working in that community. The people who live there are good and generous souls, willing to give you a fair amount of work for the amount of money they charge for services. I've had some bad experiences with folks who were not qualified to do the work they said they could do, but for the most part, the folks that live there were good workers, and great people to deal with.
Try getting off on the by-ways someday--this business is located on old Route 66--and they are a fine bunch of people. I hope they don't give the whole store away and can keep their business going in this lousy economy. Thank you MY PLACE TIRES! Wish I could have given you some real business, but I'll recommend you to all my friends!
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Muddy Encounter
I think of myself as being a golfer. I do love the game, love to watch the pros on TV doing their thing. Occasionally, I do actually get out there and swing a club and let the golfballs fly myself!
The last time I played golf was 2006. There were a lot of months between then and Saturday, when I played again. This is how my whole golf career has gone, play a game here and there with many months or years in between.
I was the principal of a small Catholic School for 7-1/2 years. We opened the school in 1997. The parents' group decided in the second year of operation of that school that hosting a benefit golf tournament would be a good way to raise money for the school. Little Small Town Missouri had a very generous group of benefactors, who supported a variety of good causes, especially those involving children and education. So this golf tournament had been a very good source of support for our school over the years.
In 2006, I was preparing for the golf tournament weekend by going to the driving range to sharpen up my drives. On the night of my birthday that year, Sept. 7, I treated myself to a late night bucket of balls to top off a very nice evening of dinner out with my children. I was reving up and doing well when all of a sudden the fates changed the way the day was going. I'm usually fairly good at hitting balls, but occasionally I hit an errant shot. I launched one, it didn't go forward it went sideward, bounced off the sideboard, flew up to the cover over the driving bay, and the ball came down and clocked me on the forehead. In an instant, blood flowed, searing pain shot through my head and a lump the size of a golf-ball raised up on my forehead! This was a shot that left its marks on my face for weeks, as the bruising around my eyes sank all the way down my cheeks, the lump remained for a long time and the pain didn't go away! One very bad thing was that my daughter was getting married on Sept. 16 that year, and I had to use a lot of make-up to make my face presentable for being photographed as mother of the bride. I was still nursing the bruising and lump when the golf tournament came.
So with that experience in mind, I somehow wiggled out of commitments to play the next two years. The excuses were legitimate, because I had other commitments during the week-end when the golf tournament was held. But that painful experience of getting clocked by a golf ball remained in my mind, making me fearful to try golfing again.
But this year, I was free to play, and it sounded like a good idea, and I thought it would be fun! Memories of the bad experience were fading, and I had a "team", and our "coach" was ready for the challenge.
Coach C had his wife, D, on the team as well as a high school golf team recruit, who would play golf with anyone at a drop of the hat. The guys carried us, for the most part, but D and I didn't shame ourselves too badly. Not while we were swinging the clubs, at least!
This golf course is a 9 hole course, and somewhere out in the hinterlands (very far away from the club house), they built a restroom building. You can escape from most of the middle holes to make a dash in and out of the restroom. This is made all the more critical of a facility, because the beer babe/beer dude is constantly roving the grounds to provide beverages for the players.
So D and I decided to quickly use the facility while we were near, and we took our cart over, around the water hazard (many sacrificial balls of mine are in that pond!) and to the restroom. On our way, we hit a patch of muddy ground. The usually nimble golf cart got bogged down in the mud instead of flying over it. The more we tried to move it, the more mud it slung and dug the wheels in further and further. I tried rocking it forward and backward to no avail. So D got out and said, "I'll push". This sounded like both a good and a bad idea, but in this case, her small pushes seemed like they were going to free us from the goo! All of a sudden, with a mighty push, and a tromp on the accelerator, the cart zoomed ahead, throwing D off balance, and I looked back and she had done a face plant on the ground! I quickly jumped off, she was laughing hysterically, and she jumped up showing she was unhurt, to a standing ovation given by those on all the surrounding holes, who were watching our little clown act! We took a bow, and sheepishly headed off to take care of business!
Later, she reflected on the location of the muddy patch, just downstream from the restroom--was it the leachfield for the septic tank? That could only bring more and more giggles out of me, thinking of potential smart remarks about where we landed in our golf cart drama!
The one good thing about the whole thing is that 2 60+ ladies were not soiled from inside because of lauging too hard, we actually made it to the restroom, but not a moment too soon!
Our cart, golf bags, a couple of body parts were full of mud. The source of the mud will remain a mystery, we can only really hope that it was good clean mud, not a real connection to the nearby restroom! It was enterainment for everyone, and gave us a good story to tell of our 2009 golf tournament!
We were good, we came in at 1 under par. Too bad, if we had been one shot worse, we would have won money (bottom of A flight). But then, there is always next year! Hope we're not too old and feeble to play, because we may need another good laugh in a year's time!
The last time I played golf was 2006. There were a lot of months between then and Saturday, when I played again. This is how my whole golf career has gone, play a game here and there with many months or years in between.
I was the principal of a small Catholic School for 7-1/2 years. We opened the school in 1997. The parents' group decided in the second year of operation of that school that hosting a benefit golf tournament would be a good way to raise money for the school. Little Small Town Missouri had a very generous group of benefactors, who supported a variety of good causes, especially those involving children and education. So this golf tournament had been a very good source of support for our school over the years.
In 2006, I was preparing for the golf tournament weekend by going to the driving range to sharpen up my drives. On the night of my birthday that year, Sept. 7, I treated myself to a late night bucket of balls to top off a very nice evening of dinner out with my children. I was reving up and doing well when all of a sudden the fates changed the way the day was going. I'm usually fairly good at hitting balls, but occasionally I hit an errant shot. I launched one, it didn't go forward it went sideward, bounced off the sideboard, flew up to the cover over the driving bay, and the ball came down and clocked me on the forehead. In an instant, blood flowed, searing pain shot through my head and a lump the size of a golf-ball raised up on my forehead! This was a shot that left its marks on my face for weeks, as the bruising around my eyes sank all the way down my cheeks, the lump remained for a long time and the pain didn't go away! One very bad thing was that my daughter was getting married on Sept. 16 that year, and I had to use a lot of make-up to make my face presentable for being photographed as mother of the bride. I was still nursing the bruising and lump when the golf tournament came.
So with that experience in mind, I somehow wiggled out of commitments to play the next two years. The excuses were legitimate, because I had other commitments during the week-end when the golf tournament was held. But that painful experience of getting clocked by a golf ball remained in my mind, making me fearful to try golfing again.
But this year, I was free to play, and it sounded like a good idea, and I thought it would be fun! Memories of the bad experience were fading, and I had a "team", and our "coach" was ready for the challenge.
Coach C had his wife, D, on the team as well as a high school golf team recruit, who would play golf with anyone at a drop of the hat. The guys carried us, for the most part, but D and I didn't shame ourselves too badly. Not while we were swinging the clubs, at least!
This golf course is a 9 hole course, and somewhere out in the hinterlands (very far away from the club house), they built a restroom building. You can escape from most of the middle holes to make a dash in and out of the restroom. This is made all the more critical of a facility, because the beer babe/beer dude is constantly roving the grounds to provide beverages for the players.
So D and I decided to quickly use the facility while we were near, and we took our cart over, around the water hazard (many sacrificial balls of mine are in that pond!) and to the restroom. On our way, we hit a patch of muddy ground. The usually nimble golf cart got bogged down in the mud instead of flying over it. The more we tried to move it, the more mud it slung and dug the wheels in further and further. I tried rocking it forward and backward to no avail. So D got out and said, "I'll push". This sounded like both a good and a bad idea, but in this case, her small pushes seemed like they were going to free us from the goo! All of a sudden, with a mighty push, and a tromp on the accelerator, the cart zoomed ahead, throwing D off balance, and I looked back and she had done a face plant on the ground! I quickly jumped off, she was laughing hysterically, and she jumped up showing she was unhurt, to a standing ovation given by those on all the surrounding holes, who were watching our little clown act! We took a bow, and sheepishly headed off to take care of business!
Later, she reflected on the location of the muddy patch, just downstream from the restroom--was it the leachfield for the septic tank? That could only bring more and more giggles out of me, thinking of potential smart remarks about where we landed in our golf cart drama!
The one good thing about the whole thing is that 2 60+ ladies were not soiled from inside because of lauging too hard, we actually made it to the restroom, but not a moment too soon!
Our cart, golf bags, a couple of body parts were full of mud. The source of the mud will remain a mystery, we can only really hope that it was good clean mud, not a real connection to the nearby restroom! It was enterainment for everyone, and gave us a good story to tell of our 2009 golf tournament!
We were good, we came in at 1 under par. Too bad, if we had been one shot worse, we would have won money (bottom of A flight). But then, there is always next year! Hope we're not too old and feeble to play, because we may need another good laugh in a year's time!
Friday, September 18, 2009
The most precious gift
The most precious gift was just delivered yesterday. Sweet babygirl Jaden arrived yesterday at 2:22 p.m. Her mom, Sweet K and Skaterboy are the proud parents. Monkeygirl and Mr. Monkeygirl are the proud grandparents. So that makes me, SewWhat? a GREAT-GRANDMOTHER! Well, really a STEP Great Grandmother.
Little Jaden was the object of many admirers last night in her hospital room with her mom and dad. She slept peacefully as she was passed from grandparent to grandparent, uncle, neice, friends and GREAT-GRANDPARENTS!
The little mother and father must be the youngest members on the hospital floor to be new parents. She is 17 and he is 19. Kids themselves, they are struggling with the whole responsibility now in their arms, how to care for and raise their own child. Needless to say, they need a lot of love, support and prayers from everyone as they begin their journey.
Keep them in your prayers, we all will. We hope to have more pictures of our newest member of the family. Now I can get going on finishing the RUBBER DUCKIE quilt, built for little Jaden, just awaiting her arrival to get the vital statistics embroidered on her quilt. We love you, darling baby Jaden! And congratulations to Skaterboy and Sweet K on the arrival of your little bundle!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
A sewing prodigy
I had really intended it to be for Christmas, but my granddaughter caught me off-guard Monday night. You see, she and her mom and brother paid me a very surprise visit, and she spied the little electric sewing machine I had purchased for her on my dining room table. Before I knew it, she ran over, picked it up, and cried ecstatically "Oh Thank You Grandma for the sewing machine!" Too late to hide it for Christmas!
I fended off her attempts to free the sewing machine from the box (you know how that is, with wires, tape, and bands keeping the product from moving in the box all the way from China). So tonight when I babysat her and her brother, we unwrapped the machine. She sewed a couple of times with it. When she wanted to change the color of the thread, we found out the joys of little sewing machines with needle guards--threading them can really be a challenge. It took me at least 15 minutes to do it. No kid would ever have the patience to do it themselves!
Her brother took a turn at it also. The thing will actually sew--SOMETIMES, that is. It is something she seemed interested in, but I probably would have been better off by paying 15 more dollars and getting a small portable sewing machine, but one that isn't a toy.
She is interested in the process. I'm not sure how much patience she might have to actually sew something. But she seems fascinated to watch what I do. On Saturday, we were making her a "Glinda of OZ" dress from some very sparkly fabric, and she was by my side putting pins in, taking pins out, and watching. She does this with her mom in the kitchen, and can mix, pour, add ingredients to cakes and other recipes without spilling. So, she is learning domestic skills by watching, and who knows where this will all lead.
Her mom did the same thing with cooking. By the time she was six, she was tired of watching, and pushed me out of the way to do it herself. This little princess has pushed both of us aside more than once in the kitchen. Now, I hope I can make her do the same thing with the sewing machine--and really become a sewing prodigy!
I fended off her attempts to free the sewing machine from the box (you know how that is, with wires, tape, and bands keeping the product from moving in the box all the way from China). So tonight when I babysat her and her brother, we unwrapped the machine. She sewed a couple of times with it. When she wanted to change the color of the thread, we found out the joys of little sewing machines with needle guards--threading them can really be a challenge. It took me at least 15 minutes to do it. No kid would ever have the patience to do it themselves!
Her brother took a turn at it also. The thing will actually sew--SOMETIMES, that is. It is something she seemed interested in, but I probably would have been better off by paying 15 more dollars and getting a small portable sewing machine, but one that isn't a toy.
She is interested in the process. I'm not sure how much patience she might have to actually sew something. But she seems fascinated to watch what I do. On Saturday, we were making her a "Glinda of OZ" dress from some very sparkly fabric, and she was by my side putting pins in, taking pins out, and watching. She does this with her mom in the kitchen, and can mix, pour, add ingredients to cakes and other recipes without spilling. So, she is learning domestic skills by watching, and who knows where this will all lead.
Her mom did the same thing with cooking. By the time she was six, she was tired of watching, and pushed me out of the way to do it herself. This little princess has pushed both of us aside more than once in the kitchen. Now, I hope I can make her do the same thing with the sewing machine--and really become a sewing prodigy!
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