Meet My New Friends

Thanks to our tax return, I've made some new friends recently.  The above picture is my new friend, Kaladin.  My dad introduced us when he and his wife, Laurie, came for a visit in March.  And, Kaladin has been such an enormous help to me!  It has been wonderful knowing that he's always there for me, and I don't necessarily have to worry about sharing him (although, I do sometimes, I'm not that selfish).  I think I love that no one in my family understands Kaladin as much as I do.  It makes it so convenient to get my work done.

This is my friend, Margaret.  But, I call her Meg.  She is a workhorse!  And yet, she can make some of the prettiest things.  I just love her to death!  Originally she was at a store when I first saw her, but the store wanted me to pay way more than I wanted, just to be her friend!  Then, I met a friend from Craig's List who introduced me to Meg for a fraction of what the store wanted.  I said, "Hello, Meg.  Nice to meet you.  Would you like to come home with me?"  She helped me make Eliza's costume, and the sandwich bags.  I have plenty of other projects I just know she will want to help me make ... I think maybe a new strap for Molly is in the works soon.

And, finally, meet my newest friend, Molly.  We have lots of years of fun ahead of us.  I can't wait to start inviting her to all the fun things the children do.  I just know she will do a great job helping me to document them.

There they are!  My newest friends.  Man, I love tax returns!

**The names of my new friends, explained:
I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but my siblings and I have a tradition of naming our new "toys."  I think my older brother and younger sister are more consistent with it than my older sister.  At least, I don't recall my older sister mentioning the names of any of her toys.  My brother and younger sister have named their cars, computers, phones, cameras, etc.  I think you get the idea.  Our children named our van "Big Red."  But, other than that, I have named all of my "toys" as well.  Remember I named my Bosch, Boschy.  So original, right?

Most often, I like to name my "toys" after characters from books that I really like.  For example, my phone's name is Peeta.  My piano's name is Edward.  Sometimes I try to name the "toy" based on the character of the book: Edward in Twilight plays the piano, hence the name of my piano.  My Bernina sewing machine is named after Margaret and goes by Meg, just like the character in Little Women.  She also is a workhorse like the character, who likes pretty things.  My MacBook's name is based on a character from Brandon Sanderson's new book The Way of Kings, named Kaladin.  There is no reasoning behind this other than it just "felt" right.  And, Molly got her name because I really like the character Molly from the book Wives and Daughters; I'd just been waiting to give the name to something.

Anyway, there's the story!