Tuesday-11:45am

Good Morning!  Grab a cuppa.  I have a week's worth of pictures to show you...and a video!  ;)

I happened to be awake for a couple of hours at dawn one of the days I was so sick last week...

...and caught this gorgeous sunrise.

You only have a few minutes...

...and the wild display is gone.

Karma's been thrilled to have her own spot on her own chair again.  [She even stayed put in her bed (pretending to be invisible) the entire time McFamily was here on Sunday.]

My FriXion pen and highlighter sets actually came last Monday but I never even made it down to the mail until Wednesday, so you know how sick I was.

They have a new home (along with my Sharpie Pens that don't bleed through) in one of the cool pots Leah made for me in her pottery class.

I was just starting to feel more human so I had to experiment with them, of course.  I grabbed some scratch paper (will try better paper later) and used the blue FriXion pen and all the highlighters.

They really do erase well.  I could have even done a more thorough job.

Then I took the hair dryer I use for drying art pages...and they basically did kind of disappear.  The darker highlighters showed more.  I was still sick so I didn't have the patience to do this for very long, either--LOL!

Then I stuck the paper into the freezer for just a few minutes and they were already coming back!  Pretty cool!!

But the purple highlighter is worthless as a highlighter because it is so dark I can't even read through it.  The blue one is almost too dark, too.  The other four lighter ones work great though.
****
On Friday...a most amazing thing!  All four big packages from Amazon this month actually arrived on the same day.  Two from FedEx and two that UPS dumped off at the post office.

My new sewing machine arrived and the carrying case!

 Haven't even taken it out of the box yet, though.  Leah told me to wait until they tried to stabilize my poor table.

Ian's toys came!  This is a musical soft toy that can be hung above him or it can sit on the ground.  It can either play single notes or songs.  The flowers light up when you touch them and they play!  Really cool!  Ian loved it!  Doesn't know how to hit/poke the flowers yet to get it to play but Dagan and I entertained him for some time with it.

And a teething toy.

Okay--I ordered a "pour over" cup because I could have fresh coffee over at Dagan and Leah's any time I wanted instead of hauling a big thermos back and forth.  I only heard about this technique online a few weeks ago.

This one is a Melitta cup and came with a few sample filters.

I bought a new red thermos cup, too, to keep over at their place, right?

Well, the cup is slightly malformed on the bottom.  Not enough to send it back but enough to make it slightly tippy.  Fine for me here, but I wouldn't be comfortable using it around a toddler.  So the new red cup stays here with me--TaDa!!  

And I am so totally won over by "pour over" coffee...well, it surprised me how much better it tastes.  Of course, when you have a very old, crusty coffee pot that doesn't even want to clean well anymore (but it still works so how can a person get rid of it, you know?) it probably tastes especially fresh and clean and delightful.  I am totally won over!!  I haven't brewed a pot of coffee since my first pour over cup.  No lie!
****
 McFamily was here on Sunday and did so much for me!  But first, I have to show you!!  Gramma got to give Ian a bottle!!  They finally sent Leah the right breast pump.  Ian isn't sure about this bottle business.  It took a little convincing, but he finally went along with the craziness.  (This was only his third time taking a bottle.)

"This makes no sense at all.  Mom is standing right over there.  This is just wrong.  How can this be?"

After he finally settled into it, he was fascinated by the fact that he could look all around while he was eating.  New experiences, eh?  LOL!
****
Leah's idea for stabilizing the table will work!!  When they left...here's the dismantled table upended...

...chairs everywhere...and a Karma realizing she didn't have to be invisible anymore.  [She was super stiff from hiding in the exact same position for like four hours--LOL!  She could hardly get out of her bed.  I could totally relate.]

They got the keyboard drawer on the desk.  I am so glad I changed my mind.  This works perfectly as tuck-away storage for my planner!!  

The floor is slanted on that side of the room and the two shims they had didn't get the desk high enough to keep the file drawer from sliding open.  They have some more shims someplace, they said.  After they locate them, they will come back and tilt it back some more.  Meanwhile I still have to keep something in front of the file drawer to keep it shut.
****
I had mostly emptied the hutch so they could move the desk about.

So, Monday/yesterday...I could get better pics of the table base.

We discovered that both the base legs are cracked in multiple places.  See the three smaller cracks on this base leg?

Well, the other one with the huge crack also had two or three other smaller cracks.  This is the metal strapping thing that Leah is using to tighten around the base once they got the brace legs off.  This was a two-man job, for sure.

I didn't get a before on this bad one with the big crack, but it is obviously better already...and it can still be tightened up a little more, too.

The plan is to put one strap above and one below those holes where the brace legs will bolt back on.

It will be so nice to have my craft table back!  Well, it will mostly be a sewing table for a while, eh?  ;)  We're hoping this will keep her held together for years to come.  And I am banned from moving her by myself.  She will always have to be lifted up and set down to be moved...never hip pushed about ever again.  I promised.

I got everything back in the hutch.  

 I do so love my new desk!  Like I have said, it has more storage than my bigger one did.  More cubby holes and shelves and...I just love it.  Moreso than I ever expected I would.  Oh, and I love my old desk chair with the arms removed.  (Karma doesn't--at all--because you know how she likes to sit sideways in chairs with her front feet over the chair arms.)

I'm also crazy about my new, slightly unstable, red thermal mug!  All you ladies over at T-Stands For Tuesday will now be seeing a lot of this new beauty.  ;) ;)

I know...with the colored thermos cups that the red color can wear, chip, or peel...but I just love it!  I'll have to be extra kind to her.
****
Dagan's out of town for work this week, so the table won't be put together before he's back.  I plan a visit with Leah and Ian tonight after Caroline leaves.  Two weeks was just so long!
****
I shall leave you with the video Leah took of Ian at 3 months (a couple weeks ago).  She helped me figure out how to get a video from her drop box to my youtube when she was here, too--so we're all set from now on.  I LOVE this video.  This is the happy little guy sitting in his bumbo seat who has stolen our hearts.  

****

Happy Tuesday!!

****

"If it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts"  

Leo Tolstoy