Hearts Full of Joy

feeling fit

i am in a fitness groove. hopefully moving won't throw off this groove. i had my third ballet class today, and have two more this week - loving it! and i am also loving, in approximately this order:

 1. jogging with lexi & tashi - so much funner than doing it alone!

2. the new york city ballet workout. if you can't find a ballet class, this is the next best thing.

3.tamilee web: i want that body - two different 15 mintue workouts each for abs, buns, and arms

4. best of tamilee web - again, great workouts for abs, buns, and arms. this is a brand new one, and i'm enjoying it because i have done #3 so many times and needed something new.

5. island girl hula cardio dance workout - when you want the beach, but can't be there. tashi & i enjoy doing this one together.

i also have a belly dancing workout that i want to try, but haven't yet.

it feels so amazing to be getting into better shape. gracie is a year old, and i suddenly have a lot more energy a year after giving birth. my pregnancies are so rough on me, it takes a long time for me to bounce back. a year from now, i'll be feeling so much better than i am now. i did that for seven years after tashi was born. every year i would say, "i feel so much better than i did a year ago, i had forgotten that i had ever felt this good." honestly. today, as i was running kids all over, i had a flashback to how much energy it takes for me to do something like fastening my seatbelt when i am pregnant. i throw up the ENTIRE time, and with gracie i would break all the blood vessels in my face from voilent vomiting about once a week. i also threaten pre-term labor, so have bed rest, and i am so low energy i can barely move. but i'm not complaining, the results (yummy babies) are completely worth it. and i would love to be pregnant again. honestly. (so yes, adoption was a great option for me, since i LOVE babies and children, and i got two delicious bonus babies, pregnancy-free)

moving on

we're moving. in less than three weeks. and life is disrupted. but disrupted in a fun way. i wake up every morning with an tickle-y feeling of anticipation. it's exciting, it's exhilarating, and just crazy. so much to do, but i'm excited to do it. we're moving halfway across the united states, but it doesn't seem so far after moving four times across the pacific ocean.

i am also involved in planning four reunions before we leave: 2 family reunions, a reunion for our english ward in japan, and my high school reunion - 20 years..... yikes! (i realize that i should be feeling old, but i'm not. i suppose it's denial. or maybe it's having a baby. hmmmm, i like it, whatever it is.) i'm so happy that i get to see and re-connect with people that i love at these reunions before we move.

it's done!

whew!  i'm thrilled to report that my quilt restoration project is complete. the pattern of this antique/vintage quilt is called "star of the east". i replaced over 100 little pieces of this quilt which had been well loved since its birth in 1940. the owner of this quilt (my client) is 68 years old, and it was made by his grandmother when she was 79.

many of the pieces had worn away, and some had deteriorated because of the dyes used, which is common. all but two of the printed fabrics that i replaced them with were authentic vintage/antique fabrics, many feedsack, from the era of this quilt. the two pieces of fabric that were not vintage were identical reproductions of a fabric that was in the quilt - a cute bunny print that tashi had in her collection in both blue and orange, and graciously shared with me. i also replaced some of the solid pink sashing, some of the yellow backing, and the binding. finding a solid yellow fabric that would match the backing and binding was one of the trickiest challenges i encountered. i lost count of how many fabric stores i tried (thank you sarah!). i finally found success in a tiny little quilt shop that i decided to pop into 2 minutes before it closed, as a last try. click here & scroll dowon to see this work in progress.

my restoration consisted of four steps: 1. removing the damaged fabrics, and the quilting stitches in them. 2. replacing the fabric. 3. re-quilting the areas where any replacing had been done. 4. putting a new binding on. the original binding had been made by turning the backing fabric to the front and stitching it by machine. it was almost worn away. so i removed what was left of it and added a completely separate binding. i have been working on this since february.

the before and after photos (click on the photos to see the details enlarge):

my next restoration project, the quilt that caught fire during the night, and nearly caused our demise (seriously). i am going to remake this into a completely different quilt (i never liked the original, but i do love the seashell kaleidoscope blocks, and want to put them in a setting that shows them off):

dream come true

this week i fulfilled a dream. it was downsized from my original dream, but still a dream of 10 years or more.

as a child, my original dream was to dance ballet professionally. i was passionate about it. i was dedicated. i was willing to do anything to accomplish it...almost anything. i wasn't willing to move away from home, which is what it would have required. in the tiny town where i grew up (and live now), there were no professional ballet teachers. i took the ballet classes that were offered here, and spent summer in the "big city" with my grandparents where as a 10 year old, i took the bus downtown everyday by myself for ballet classes. i loved it. it made me happy. my dad built me a ballet bar at home, and i practiced what i learned in the big city as much as possible, but without a good teacher, i just couldn't progress. so by my 14th birthday i had surrendered my dream.

the downsized version of my dream has been to take ballet classes as an adult. but for 10 years i haven't been able to find adult ballet classes to join. adult ballet classes are big in japan, but they were all so serious, intense, far away and expensive.

now there is a good ballet teacher in our tiny town. and i have been wanting to join her classes, but she doesn't have an adult class. this week i took mia to her first cay of summer ballet camp, and sat down and watched as they stretched and warmed up. and i yearned to participate. so i did. there are three little girls, two young teenagers, and me. and tashi joined us on our second day. i LOVED it! yes, i felt fat and awkward, and a little bit silly. but it was worth it. so worth it. it felt so good to be moving my body that way again. i have been sore all week, and that has felt good too. mia, tashi, and i will continue our ballet camp, several times a week, for the next several weeks, and i am in heaven.

 the san fransisco ballet - i wish i looked like this. now that i have these photos posted, i realize how ridiculously far i am from looking like this, but a girl can keep dreaming.

summertime

three weeks into our summer vacation, and here's the ups & downs of it:

HIGHS:

1. kittens

they are loved, particularly by gracie! these photos were taken on their first day out on the grass.

2. hair cuts - see photos of lex & tash

3. new daily chore program, which i am LOVING! so much more is getting done around here.

4. gracie's  birthday

5. time to quilt

6. visiting family

7. swimming & tumbling lesson for noah & mia

8. morning jogs with my girls - SO FUN!

LOWS:

1. brock in japan for 2 weeks

2. immunizations

3. NASTY stomach virus that hit both noah & gracie - i literally did nothing but holding sick kids for over a week. i enjoyed the holding part - i love my cuddles, but not the terribly sick part.

sick gracie, with temp of 104

with mia

sleeping on me, photo by mia

being "witchy"

with 5 females at our house, 2 of them in their teens, some "witchiness" is inevitable..... it happens, and this photo proves it. so, lest you think that my girls just sit around and quilt all day (after my last posting)......
towards the end of the track season, lexi - who has always had a flamboyant sense of fashion, came home from a track meet wearing her basketball shorts with this shoe & sock combo. for real. the socks are from japan. the shoes, in purple and gray, from american eagle - i bought her one pair for christmas, and she bought the second pair in the after christmas sales.. this was topped off my a ridiculously funky hairdo. i didn't get a photo of her in time, but not to worry, the shoes and socks were left behind (as always) when she retired to bed, waiting to be photographed.  she didn't appreciate me telling her that she looked like the wicked witch of the west, but really.....

thankfully, there are many non-witchy moments too

lexi took this photo of her & tashi with cousins, using the timer on her camera, and then edited it. i love it.

ever since typepad "improved" its photo uploading and formatting, the quality of the photos i upload has been compromised, you can see where it started, with my post on track, and compare the posts before to the posts after. i would suspect my monitor as the problem, but the photos i upload to facebook look great.

my quilters

lexi & tashi have been quilting again, now that school is out, and that has been pure fun for me. they've had their yummy fabric stashes out, and we have sat and talked while sewing. yesterday i asked if i could photograph their current efforts. most are hand pieced and all are their own ideas.

this first is natasha's impossibly tiny grandmother's flower garden quilt (lower left). those little hexagons are about 3/8 inch when sewn. lexi and i tried to persuade her to make them bigger, telling her it would take forever, but she was determined. ~hand pieced~

this is alexa's flower garden quilt - bigger than tashi's but still small scale. the solid yellow hexagons are from a vintage feedsack she begged off me. the block on the very bottom is upside down to show how perfect it looks on the back. ~hand pieced~

this was a kim diehl pattern that was designed for a rustic country look. lexi is making it her way. each little block is about 1 1/2 inches - tiny! ~hand & machine pieced~

this is a "kansas twister" pattern my judie rothermel. lexi has more colors planned, but this is what she's made so far. ~hand pieced~

lexi is making this from a charm pack of the "flirtations" fabric line by sandy gervais. ~machine pieced~

this morning i was returning these quilt projects to lexi and tashi's room, and found more fabric and quilts in progress in every corner of their room. so i grabbed my camera and snapped away.

it warms my heart that my girls love to quilt, and do it on their own, without my my help..... and do it very well. they are honestly some of the best quilters i know. and it makes me very happy that we can all sit and quilt, talk, and laugh together. i'm so glad that they love fabric and have an appreciation of needle arts and homemaking skills. and even though i truly love lexi's friends, i'm glad that they have been out of town recently, because tashi and i have been able to enjoy more lexi time.

let's face it

it's so easy to waste time on the internet. and i hate that. i am almost phobic of wasting any time on my computer. i check my email as quickly as possible, i try to avoid looking at anything that will get me too interested, and suck me in. lexi, brock, & tashi love facebook, and highly recommend it. i have held out, not wanting to join it for the same reason that i didn't want to blog....i didn't see how i could justify the time. last week that changed. lexi created a facebook account for me. and i was right. i couldn't justify the time. i have spent FAR too much time on it the past week. but just like blogging, i LOVE it! SO FUN! the best part is connecting with friends that i have been out of touch with for a while. i highly recommend it to all my friends. i want to be your friends on facebook ~ especially if you have time to waste, but even if you don't :)

missing japan...well maybe

i miss japan, i do. at least most of it. these first two videos are here to remind me that there are things that i don't miss. we lived on the train line in the first video, the denentoshi-sen, for our first two years in japan. we didn't own a car, so it was our main means of transportation. brock took it to work every morning, we all took it to church. we took it anytime we went further than our own neighborhood. this video is for real.... the second video is tokyo summerland, a water park that we visited once, and only once (heather & family were there that day too). this is also for real... and the last video is just plain silly, and very enjoyable if you have spent time in japan. it is not for real, but is very good. you have to wait through a commercial before it starts. thanks to two friends (daisie & aimee) who shared japan with me for also sharing this video with me...