kitty steps, kitty tree, 3rd patriotic finished quilting

I SKYPE’d with Janice for about 1-1/2 hours Wednesday morning (3/21) while Michael ran to the bank, the grocery store and CVS before having breakfast.  Joanne & Larry stopped down shortly afterwards to bring our ‘kitty steps’.  Elsie (our former cat) used to eat on top of the dryer.  She was a free feeder, meaning we left food out all of the time and she ate when she wanted to.  We left it on top of the dryer because if we left it on the floor, Cookie would just eat all of it.  And Elsie never had a problem leaping to the top of the dryer.  Well, of course Lucy & Ethel are too small to do that, so we asked our ‘jack of all wood trades, willing to build anything we need’ friend Larry if he could make some steps to get up to the top.  What you need to know about Larry is that there are never even 24 hours between the ‘ask’ and the ‘delivery’!  Joanne & Larry came yesterday to take some measurements, and arrived back this AM with the finished product:  

This is so NOT what I envisioned…and so much BETTER than what I thought that I am thrilled!!!  We tested it out at dinnertime…when I figured Lucy & Ethel would be hungry and motivated to get to the food…we had to help them up to the top to show them the way…but they came down all by themselves.  At bedtime when I put out a little dry food for overnight, they slowly came up the stairs.  (By this morning, Thursday, they are running up and down them like they’ve been doing it their entire lives!!!)

Michael spent most of the rest of the day building a GINORMOUS cat tree for the basement:  

The kitties were very interested at first:

But eventually just settled down to sleep while all of the work was going on:

I continued to quilt on the third patriotic quilt and work on butterflies for the convergence quilt:  

Aren't those beautiful???  Cathy had one on a purse at Monday's embroidery club meeting and I came right home and ordered it!  I called her several times to pick her brain about stuff, and finally started stitching out.  Each wing takes about 45 minutes from start to finish....and takes a tremendous amount of thread...but I LOVE them!!!

I picked up our taxes in the afternoon, and came home to SKYPE with Mary Jo for a long time before dinner.  We had Chinese for dinner and I worked for about an hour afterwards before heading upstairs.  By then I had finished quilting the third patriotic and started to take it off of the frame.

I only have one new quick video of the babies: