The husband has fallen in love with home canned beans – pinto, black, red, white – whichever is in a jar that he can pop off the lid and pour over potatoes or rice or ????.  Variety is good.   I had never canned these beans before, just always cooked them when I wanted to use them.   This  year after reading several accounts of others canning them, I tried some.   So now that he can bake a potato and pour beans of some type over it, I think I can run away.    All kidding aside,  I spent most of today in the kitchen instead of the garden weeding.     I cooked and canned 40 pints of red beans and  black beans.  Tomorrow, perhaps garbanzos and pintos, though apparently it would be welcome if there were jars of split pea soup and lentil soup.    Hmmmmmmm.    Maybe this isn’t such a bad idea – more sewing time this winter, right?

Their are still 10 pints in the canner.

The kettle in the background has beans soaking in it overnight so I’ll be ready to go early

Yesterday I was able to spend some time in the sewing room.  This scarf is paper pieced, which I’m rather slow with, but it turned out good.   It still needs to be appliqued onto the background.  Whew, just about finished in time for end of this month.     I have one more BOM that hasn’t been done and unless I get too tired weeding and canning, on Sunday, will just have to wait until next month – which can you believe starts Monday.

From the looks of the wash this morning, I really was on vacation.   However all that has changed now and we had no workmen in the house today.    I think I’m ready to go again.

These are the 10 pillowcases I was able to finish today.   That brings the total up to 50.   Yes, I still have to imbed the serger thread at the beginning of the seam, but I have a feeling that might get done in November or early Dec.    I still have several other items trying to get in the Christmas queue.   That’s why I’m starting now on getting these done.  I would really like to move these out of the sewing room and into the giving closet.

We left the house this morning, made an hour drive to pick up our other two grandsons and then to the Science Center an hour from there.   Traffic was horrendous, but the boys were excited to go to the center, so were quite patient.  We started with lunch, where their uncle Darrin met us.   This way  we wouldn’t have to interrupt the fun times.   There were so many things to see and do.

We started with the water experiments outside – no photos as I still haven’t learned how to get them in bright sunlight (and the day was in the 80s).  They enjoyed walking up the inside of a round tub which caused the water wheel outside to go around.`  Basically they became the power.

The butterfly house (where Jennifer joined us) was requested so we went there fairly soon.   Unfortunately not a single butterfly landed on any one of us.  But the boys tried to intice them.   These butterflies are enjoying pineapple.   That big eye is really camaflouge down near the bottom of the wing.

From there we enjoyed naked rats from Africa, other insects, spiders, scorpions, the works. And off to the dinosaurs.  (You didn’t think 9 and 10 year old boys would skip past those, did you?)  The room was quite dark, but each of the dinos moved.  And some could be moved with levers that you open and close a mouth, move an eye forward or backward so dino could see better.

There was a very enjoyable section on food where they could choose a food and put it in a slot on a machine and it told them the nutritional data.  They could then keep adding or subtracting until they had a nutritious meal.   In the same area they had this wall display to show the size of servings.

and this recipe on a 6′ tall board.

This Gemini capsule was fun as they could sit in and pretend to fly it.

From there we went to a room with gears, transmissions, pulleys, etc, with lots of items to investigate.

Then back outside for more water fun and learning.   There was so much to see and do,  It may have been a blessing that I wasn’t able to get the camera functioning outside.

Today the tile has been finished!.   The painting is still to be done and the shower curtain rod, etc. will be done shortly.   But I am so very happy this portion is done.  The bathroom is once again usable.

As you can see, they ordered enough tile to go up to the window, so even though that wasn’t the original plan, that’s what we have.

Christian arrived with his mother today and we spent a bit of time at Lake Tapps.  In the first photo, you can see the marvelous day we had and in the second, you will see in the far distance Mt. Rainier.

We picnicked at our youngest daughter and husband’s house by Lake Washington and then went in the boat for some wonderful relaxation.     I took several photos, but they look like this:

Obviously, my setting was wrong for all that sun.    We did finally get a couple duck photos.   Very few people were on the south end of the lake, so we virtually had it to ourselves.    The weather was in the mid 80s and we totally enjoyed in and out of the water relaxation.