The Good and the Ugly

I'm not discussing the big bad that happened over the holiday weekend just yet.  It's a long story for another post.  For now, I'll give a brief recap of the "good" of my Christmas holiday.  My husband and two boys drove to Nashville to have Christmas early with my mom and then we drove on to Missouri on Christmas Eve so we could celebrate with his family.

We went to this ice sculpture exhibit in Nashville.  My oldest is getting so big!  He loved the flannel sock monkey scarf I made him (the night before our trip)!

The sculptures were all from the movie Madagascar.  It was neat, but cold!

My youngest got so cold by the end he was screaming and crying so my husband took him out of the exhibit.

After handing my youngest off to hubby, I dashed around the corner of this ice slide to capture this pic of my oldest going down the slide.  In my haste, I slipped and fell hard and ended up with this:

A broken foot.  This is about a week after the fact.  I didn't know it was broken until we got back home--8 days after it happened.  I didn't go to the hospital earlier because hubby said there wasn't anything they could do but give me a boot.  This is true, but he failed to mention how much better walking would be with the boot!  Needless to say, walking was painful over the holidays.  This picture is AFTER the horrible swelling subsided some.  Pretty, huh? :)  Thankfully, it's not my driving or sewing foot!

We also ate at one of our favorite restaurants, Cheesecake Factory.  I know it's a chain and there are lots of local Nashville places with great food, but I can't help it, I love it!

My kid loves being silly.....and so does his dad.

Christmas morning, first peek!

My youngest gave his great-grandmother a hug before he even looked at his presents!  Love that kid!

My oldest seemed stunned that Santa actually came.  I think he was still half asleep.

Cheeseball loved his remote control car

Still stunned.

He always makes time to say "cheese" for Mama!

Driving down the great-grandparents' long driveway.  He loved it!

Dogs-are-us!  We are definitely a dog family!

Riding the lawn mower was great fun too!

Now for the fun part!  While discussing our drive back my husband asked if I wanted to stop at one of the fabric places we saw advertised on the drive up.  Uh, sure!  I hadn't been paying too much attention to the fabric signs because I was sewing (I'll show that project soon!).  Then he said he thought he saw a sign near Paducah.  Wait!  What?!?!?  Did you just say Paducah?  My head whipped around and I shrieked, "WE DRIVE THROUGH PADUCAH?!?!?!?"  OMG.  So, being full of the Christmas spirit and being a generally fantastic guy, my hubby allows us to take an hour mid drive for me to scope it out!

Geez.  This place is huge!  This does not include the warehouse in the back for the online store!

This was their "sale" table.  All prints were $5.98/yard and solids were 3.98!  I spent all my time and money here because, sadly, the price per yard of the regular bolts was $11-12.  That price is just a bit too high for me to justify when I can get the exact same thing for soooo much less on their own website!  Kinda stinks.  It's still fun too look!

The Kona was a normal price though.  There were about 5 full rows (both sides full) of solids!  Crazy cool!

There were 3 walls of patterns like this!  Any and every pattern imaginable!

Kiddos were acting nuts!

Evil people!  This is part of the online stock (I think).  There was as much on the shelves in the warehouse as was out on the floor, but I couldn't even browse!!!  boo!

Boxes and boxes of precuts!  Overall, it was a fun trip (minus the broken foot and the unspeakable bad). I'll leave you with a mosaic of all but one of the quilts I made in 2011.  Happy New Year everyone!