Catching up time!

I feel like I've been AWOL for ages!  But it's partly due to this crowd!

This was taken yesterday at our social club's annual Garden Party.  It was the first time we had all 3 grandchildren and their parents together so of course there had to be a family picture.
Nathan is on the left with his Mummies, then Rory with his parents, Hubby, and then Noah and parents and then me.  It was so lovely to have them all together and Noah, Matt and Amy stayed with us last night and he was a really quiet boy.

The start of the month was dominated by Nathan - with a few nights in hospital.  He's fine now and I'm back to my regular 2 days per week looking after him.

From the 8th July we had Rory's other grandparents staying with us for 10 days.  They were so excited to meet him and spent as much time as possible with Rory, Michael and Liz.  I know it was very hard for them to leave but they had sensibly planned a couple of nights in Iceland on their way back to Vermont to distract them.  They're now counting down the days to Thanksgiving when we will visit them with Rory Michael and Liz.  I can't imaging not seeing him for that long.

Preparing for their visit and then hosting them kept me busy and then I had a sewing job to get finished for the garden party.  My SIL who is a committee member, had originally bought material which was cut into table runners but they had never been hemmed properly.  Last year after the party I offered to take all the runners, wash them and then hem them.  Of course I had time!

I'm fortunate to have a sewing machine that is set into a table.  But it's not in the best location.

Currently it's in my bedroom and I've been intending to move it into a room that was a bedroom but I'm now trying to make into a sewing room/office for me.  Except things kept getting in the way.  First there was getting the room redecorated.  Then the kids were storing stuff in there.  Long story short, the sewing machine hadn't been moved, I hadn't sewn the runners.  Soooo on Monday I began the task.  My sewing machine objected.  It needed oiling.  I didn't have any oil.  I had to make a trip to the shopping mall.  With the sewing machine going and fans on all over the house (it's been very hot here) the fuses kept blowing.  Eventually I had to put a new plug on the machine.  That seemed to do the trick.  I was just panicking in case the drive belt went.  (I now have a spare but it didn't arrive until after I'd finished the sewing.)  Anyway the job got done but the moral of the story is of course not to leave everything to the last minute!

The garden party was a huge success and the dry weather continued.  It has been so dry that we have had grass fires.  This picture is of the grassland opposite our house.

It's been 10 years since we had a bad fire like this but I was just surprised it hadn't already happened - the grass is so dry and we've had a really long hot spell with no rain.  It was scary to watch it travel across the space so rapidly and it caused chaos with road closures.  It took days to damp it down enough to prevent it reigniting. More details here

But things are back to normal now and I'm looking forward to a few uneventful weeks before we head off for our big family holiday next month.  And to catching up with your blogs which I've neglected over the past couple of weeks.  It's definitely catching up time!