Precious Moments -- Indeed!

As the photo above illustrates -- Sarah says, "Wow! Has this been a FUN week!" Sarah's Grandma "Mimi" and Grandpa "Papa" have been visiting and just left this morning. We had a wonderful visit.

Sarah and Mimi both like to knit so the girls pulled out their projects and did a bit of knitting together. Sarah is making a pink and white (can you believe it -- PINK!) scarf and Mimi is working on a scarf as well as a hat.


Papa and Kevin didn't have much knitting they needed to do, so they headed outside for more "manly" projects like putting in our garden! They did such a great job and now we hope to have loads of fresh veggies soon! I can't wait to try the seven or so different kinds of tomatoes they put in. There are a couple heirloom tomatoes and a "Turkish" tomato plant that we picked up at the farmer's market. At the farmer's market, we also bought chocolate-mint and lemon-mint plants and Sarah has already enjoyed an iced tea with lemon-mint leaves!


It's not uncommon while we are out for Sarah to be given a little extra "attention" from time to time and the farmer's market was no different. The man who sold us the tomato and mint plants put together an "edible bouquet" of fragrant and beautiful flowers and herbs and handed it to Sarah -- "for a beautiful young girl" he said. She didn't' quite know what to make of the gesture and kept asking us why the man had been so nice and had given her the flowers.

Mimi, Sarah and I took a little trip to the Precious Moments Chapel and Museum. Sarah was excited to go as she's been drawing Precious Moments figures for awhile now. In China she had bought a page of Precious Moments stickers where each sticker is about one inch tall by one inch wide. She looks at a sticker and then reproduces it on a regular 8-1/2 by 11 inch piece of paper. She was doing some of these at school and the other students thought she was enlarging the sticker with some kind of machine and then tracing the outline -- but in reality she just looks at the sticker and then can draw it.

For having had no art training at all, we think her drawings are unbelievable and just gorgeous. While she was in school, she took a three-ring notebook full of blank white paper and would draw when she had extra time. The first photo below is one she drew for Kevin and she even put his name on the sling-shot in the boy's back pocket. And they look just like the stickers. You can't see it in the photos, but she's even used different shades of colored pencils to match the colors in the stickers.



And here she is enjoying the chapel paintings at the Precious Moments Park. She also used the trip as an excuse to wear one of her dresses, jewelry, etc!! She LOVES to get all dressed up!

Speaking of getting all dressed up, is any visit by your grandparents complete without asking your grandpa to wear earrings?!? (And then taking a photo of it!). Sarah had pulled out the small jewelry box I have from my great-grandmother (Papa's grandmother) which has old costume jewelry in it. She took two earrings out to Papa and asked him if he remembered them or not. To "jog" his memory, she put the earring on him and he was a good sport and went along with it! He looks so good in rhinestones and faux pearls!