Summer vacation with our grand daughter is over

Grand daughter Ariel went back to Georgia a few days ago.  Her mama, my step daughter Tammy, and her partner Rickie got onto the homestead on Monday afternoon.  We had a great visit, ate well, and shared a lot of laughs.  It was wonderful to have them here visiting.  I will miss Ariel, we had a fun summer together.  But, school for her starts on August 8th... so it was time to head for home.

I haven't been posting while she was here.  I wanted to focus my time on her, not on my writing.  I enjoy blogging, although I'm not sure anyone else is enjoying reading it!

I'm slowly learning how to use this Android tablet.  There are so many apps out there.  It's very confusing to me.  I've been using a "personal computer" since those early TRS-80 days back at the Naval War College.  That was in 1981 through 1984.  I had to learn Basic and Fortran.  And C.  I was helping write code to analyse battle damage assessment.  And we were writing it from scratch.  I even had to learn to use "the law of co-signs" before I could write a small program to use it.  I remember that I didn't even know WHAT a co-sign WAS!  But my boss said,"write a subroutine to use the law of co-signs", and so I did.  I guess if I could learn that, I can learn to use this tablet!

Ariel and I spent a lot of time cooking and crafting while she was here.  She learned how to make potato salad, egg salad, strawberry shortcake (the old fashioned kind) from scratch,  and pineapple upside down cake.  She also completed a small plastic canvas needlepoint purse.  She even lined it, put in pockets and embellished to edging.  She used a long piece of flat kumi himo I'd woven as the strap.  We had a fun "girls day" sundying party with Gena Stout and Beth Daniels.  We dyed silk scarves.  Ariel and I also did several kumi himo projects together.

She took her purse, bracelets and scarf to the County Fair.  She did very well, 4 Blue ribbons (First place) and 1 Red (Second place).  Her purse was also under consideration as Best of Show.  That's pretty impressive for a first timer.