Settling Back In

I had a blast with all of my family in town this past week, but man did it wear me out. I actually came down with a bit of a cold at the end of the week, and am finally starting to feel better from that thank goodness.


Like I said, it was a great visit. There were some aspects of it that were made (I felt) unnecessarily complicated, but isn't that how families work most of the time anyway?

Somehow, I came away from this week with a new addiction: Angry Birds

For those not in the know, that's a mobile phone game. There are a couple of different free versions available and I now have them all on my phone. I had been hearing about this game for quite some time, but managed to stay blissfully unexposed until last week. My mother was curious about my husband's iPad and while she was playing with it, she saw the Angry Birds app and asked what it was. I tried to explain but, as I said, I only knew the vague details.

So she fired it up and ended up spending a good two or three hours playing it. After watching her play for a while, I wanted to try and so I went ahead and downloaded it on my iPhone. Mom ended up downloading the game on her phone as well. We spent more time than I care to admit playing the game throughout our visit.

Later on in the week, my dad was trying to distract my seven year old nephew and handed the kid his brand new iPhone, firing up what else but the Angry Birds app. I realized my nephew was playing a different version than the one I had, and that was when I went to my app store and got the other two free versions, one a promotional version for the movie Rio (where instead of trying to take out cheeky piggies you try to free captured birds--I like that one the best I think) and one for different holiday seasons. The holiday one is hard, but the challenge is kind of what makes this game fun. So. Yeah. Totally addicted to Angry Birds now.

Here are a few photo highlights from the visit:

My nephew and sister.

Baby Girl with her cousin. She absolutely adored him.

My nephew, stepdad, mom, me, Hubby, and Baby Girl.

Hubby, me, my nephew, dad, stepmom, and Baby Girl.

Baby Girl befriends a penguin at the zoo.

Baby Girl and my nephew posing (sort of)
with the elephant statue at the zoo.

Yeah, I am pretty sure they are playing Angry Birds there.

In addition to all of the visiting and running around and getting addicted to random mobile games, I was also mildly productive. I did get this done:

Soft Cascades by Cori 2011.

Pattern: Diagonal Box Stitch Afghan by Sandra Petit
Yarn: Bernat Baby Sport Solid in Yellow, Mint (half skein of each), and White (two-thirds a skein), and Bernat Softee Baby in Lemon and Mint (a third skein of each).
Hook: G

I am actually crazy happy with how this baby blanket turned out, even though it definitely has some flaws. The biggest of which is that I ran out of the yellow and green yarn about two-thirds of the way through the project (which is what I get for using remnant yarn) and couldn't find the same yarn to finish, so had to substitute some which was not quite the same. It still looks pretty awesome though. Also, lesson learned.

One more baby blanket to go and then I have a quick amigurumi pattern I want to whip up before I dive into the next round of baby blankets. Then I think I have a wedding blanket to make. Sigh. Why does this happen every year? People I know need to stop having babies and/or getting married. I can't keep up. One of these days I am gonna get to work on that blanket stockpile I keep joking about. For reals.

Well, that's all I've got for you today folks. Have a great one!