Fun with the granddaughter....

We were lucky enough to have our granddaughter, 9-year-old Jessi, with us for three separate visits this summer.  She is a joy to have here......very cooperative and interested in doing a lot of things......cooking, baking, crafting, quilting, playing board and card games, reading, and started to learn counted cross-stitch. We also took her to Chincoteague, Virginia, for a 3-night stay......the setting for the wonderful, classic children's book "Misty of Chincoteague".  We are fortunate that it is little more than an hour drive for us from here. Of course, we also visited the nearby Rehoboth Beach boardwalk and did lots of swimming in the pool here and in both the indoor and outdoor pools in Chincoteague.  Below are just a handful of the many photos taken this summer with Jessi (in no particular order). I think if you click on them, they will show up enlarged and in greater detail if you wish to seem them that way.

She loved decorating the cupcakes she helped make.  She loves using lots of sprinkles....I think it's a "kid thing".
 

She went fishing for the first time in the "catch and release" lake in our community. She was a bit timid at first, but by the end of the third visit, she would bait her own hook, reel in the fish, take it off the hook, hold it and toss it back into the water.  She had lots of fun.  The lake is well-stocked and over the course of three times of fishing, she caught 70 fish!  (Of course, sometimes she might have been catching the same one multiple times!)

She was trying to make a "fish face" in that photo.

We went shopping and she picked that outfit for the first day of school.

 We spent some time at the NASA Wallop's Island Flight Facility that is by Chincoteague.  She ate freeze-dried ice cream there (like the astronauts eat) and wasn't too impressed with it.

We were shocked when we checked into the hotel in Chincoteague and discovered they had upgraded us to their Presidential Suite.....jacuzzi tub, fireplace, wraparound balcony with a beautiful view overlooking the water, etc.  We cautioned Jessi that this was, most likely, a once-in-a-lifetime happening so she shouldn't expect it every time she travels.  LOL

She enjoyed using the jacuzzi tub one night with a glass of lemonade close by with the gas fireplace going and watching one of her favorite shows on the Disney Channel.  What a nice way to relax after a long day of sightseeing!

We got to see many ponies...some at the Chincoteague Pony Centre and some in the wild.  We saw the pony show at the Centre and sat in front row seats..not realizing that would result in horse poop  flying in our direction. We had some good laughs over that.

We visited the nature centers at the Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge.  They had many interesting things to hold and touch...some living and some not....and many wonderful interactive displays.  Jessi was too afraid to hold the horseshoe crab, so she got Grampy to do it.  (She did hold a large whelk that was pretty slimy-looking when it poked itself out of the shell.)  We went on the beach for awhile there.

That is the Bed & Breakfast where Marguerite Henry wrote "Misty of Chincoteague".

The most exciting parts of the summer for me, though, were when we went shopping for her to choose fabric to make a quilt for herself and when she worked on it

.  She has sewn with me the past two summers and I felt she was ready for this...and she was.  We decided on a string block quilt. She chose two main fabrics and culled the rest of the strips from my stash.  I did the cutting and ironing as I felt that was safer for her at this age.  She did the pinning and sewing with me sitting right beside her for help and encouragement. She had nearly 100% of her seams line up perfectly, too.  This is the top all finished. I am so proud of Jessi and she is proud, too.  She did a wonderful job!  Don't you agree?  My good friend, Michelle, will quilt this for her.  It is on its way now to her in Wyoming.