An autumn ride up a canyon

This morning we took a bike ride with some friends up a canyon near one of the reservoirs in the area. The weather was great- cool, but not too cold or too hot, the sky was blue-er than I've seen it in awhile, the leaves were changing colors, leaving splashes of color up and down the hillsides. We even saw some mountain goats and/or bighorn sheep. (is there a difference between the two?) The ride up and back was about 12 and a half miles, and while it wasn't real steep, it wasn't super easy, either. There is definitely a difference between riding on the indoor trainer and riding outdoors, pulling a trailer with a toddler. It was a good ride, though and we had a lot of fun.

On the way home, we stopped by REI to get Little Miss Sunshine's coat for the coming winter. REI members get 20% off a regular priced item this week, and since I didn't want to wait till December or January for coats to go on sale (she might get a bit cold between now and then), I went ahead and got it today.

When we got home, I finally finished the third quilt. I used buttons at the corners of each square. The last one I'm working on (the one I started first) has strips of fabric between each square, but I ran out of patience after that one and just sewed all the squares directly together, which kind of makes for a busy quilt, but that's the way it goes.



I really like the star buttons I used on this one.






I used plain blue buttons on this one.







The fabric on this one's kind of drab, and while it does have blue in the plaid, it's hard to see, so the blue binding doesn't quite go with it. Oh well. I do like the wood buttons I used, though.




In the process of making these quilts, I also made 2 doll quilts and 3 doll pillows for LMS.















Here's nanny (LMS's lambie) with her pillows and one of her blankets in the doll cradle my dad made me when I was little.






The other day my Army Guy got an email from the college he's going to. They changed the way they calculate credits, and he now has more credits from some of the upper level classes he took at another school. As a result, he now has enough credits to graduate with his bachelor's degree. Yay! Unfortunately, he has to finish the class he's currently taking and one other in order to hit the minimum credits necessary to avoid a hefty fee at graduation and to finish the certificate program that will hopefully help him get a good job.

In other news, I managed to get my Army Guy hooked on the Twilight series! He had a little bit of time in between classes, so I sent him the first book, and he couldn't put it down. He called me one day to ask me to send him the rest of the books. He made it through them all, and we're now looking forward to watching the movie when it comes out in November (when we're in Hawaii!). This isn't the first time I got him hooked on a series. He didn't read a lot when he was a kid, so it was a bit of a struggle to get him reading on a regular basis. I've managed to get him hooked on the Harry Potter books, the Tennis Shoes books, Dan Brown's books, and Christopher Paolini's books. I have to say, I'm quite proud of myself.