Road?  Did someone say Road?  I found this in my mailbox this morning, and after jumping around my room and being a goofball for a while, the happiness over this news of my acceptance into Road to California 2016 has settled into a happy smile on my face.  Not to mention the realization that lightning has struck me, twice, with this acceptance–both last year and this year.

My husband and I left for Las Vegas last week for a scientific conference of his, but we decided to stay a couple of night on the famed Vegas Strip.  I liked the Bellagio Fountains, and certainly you can enjoy the wild and crazy neon/light/building attractions, but generally, overall, I’ll probably never go back.  But it was good to do it once, I guess.

This is what I did like (from left to right): 1) a James Turrell installation in the back of the Aria, near the elevators (see below), Claes Oldenberg’s famous sculpture Typewriter Eraser, and the Dale Chihuly installation in the ceiling of the Bellagio of blown glass flowers.

Here’s a long view of the Turrell.  The white tube casts different colors (which you can see above), filling the room with light.  I love Turrell’s installations, given that I am completely enamored of color in quilting, too.

Our daughter and her three children joined us on our last day, and yes, we ate lunch at Shake Shack (we stayed in the New York, New York hotel, and I thought posing them in front of the fake Brooklyn Bridge was appropriate).

Then I flew up to Salt Lake City, where I saw one of my favorite buildings, and we celebrated my father’s 90th birthday, shown below with my brother Scott.  

But I couldn’t leave Utah without hitting at least two shops: Elaine’s Quilt Block (a favorite) and a new one to me: Pine Needles, which I fell in love with.  I’ll be back!

And now I need to buckle down with the quilting, the figuring out where to put the stuff I bought from the quilt shops, to remake the center of my latest hexie Rosette #5, because even though I probably got the memo that the pieces were too big and I should figure out the right ones. . . I didn’t.  So now it’s un-sew and re-cut and re-sew. But why do anything average?