Little Bits of Lots of Things

I keep waiting for one of those lazy days of summer where the kids will magically entertain themselves and I can sew the day away in my jammies. I could be waiting for years before such a thing happens. Until then, I'm carving out little bits of time after the kids are asleep to move my projects along one step at a time.
We started today with a free movie. On the way home, we had to stop at Target so that Anna could use a gift card she got for her birthday (thanks Aunt Barb!). We also picked out a puzzle to work on together. We worked on that together after lunch. Before the dishes were done, we started negotiations for a sleepover and tried to get in summer reading and a few chores. By then it was time to drop Anna off for the sleepover. Ryan and Sydney wanted to pick up a movie and then we stopped for an early dinner. I did manage to drag the kids through Books-a-Million in the midst of all of that where I found my very own copy of Quiltmaker with the Christmas Lights mystery quilt! I read through that while the kids did baths and such and then we watched the movie while working on the puzzle some more.
They were nestled all snug in their beds by 8, when I zoomed through blogs and e-mail and got in a little machine time. I got the Sock Monkey blocks finished off! This is going to be the sample for the happy blocks pattern that I am using for the Girl Scout service project. I've got about three quilts worth of blocks cut and kitted up so far. I need to finish writing up the directions to go with those. They are based on the pattern at Mary Quilts (sorry, can't do the link, bloglines seems to be broken). I don't think I mentioned that I got a community service award at the last Girl Scout leader meeting of the year. Myra, the leader of the troop who is organizing the service project, and Ashyln, who runs the service unit, both wrote really nice letters about the service project and the quilts I had donated. It came with a pin and a lovely bunch of fresh flowers. I got the yellow HST blocks done for the Christmas mystery and have the black HST blocks ready to cut out. I still need to square up the split squares, but they do look all bright and cheery together.
We're supposed to head out to the theme parks again in the morning, so I should really get to bed early tonight. The kids have each taken a turn to sleep downstairs one of the nights that Dad is out of town. I've got Sydney tonight so I'll be fighting for the covers for sure. It's amazing how strong she can be from the depths of sleep.