A Week Away

Last week I was away. I played. A lot. And by playing I mean lots of shopping, eating out, and talking with friends.

I drove down to Columbia, Missouri. All by myself. In one day. I was impressed with myself since I usually can only stand to drive about two hours when Hubby and I are on the road together. I listened to music and sang really loud, stopped to eat some ribs at my favorite BBQ place and listened to some CDs of Beth Moore. (The CDs were of her teaching at a weekend conference.) I got super tired when I was only two hours from my destination but just couldn't stop then.

The reason for my trip was to spend the week visiting with some friends who are missionaries in Budapest. They are in the states for the summer.  An added bonus was having my daughter meet me for a few days! Our friends have a daughter who is only 6 days younger than Megan and it had been a long time since those girls had seen each other. We also celebrated the first birthday of our friends' grandson.

This little guy looks so much like I remember his mama when she and my girl were babies. I couldn't decide if I felt old, or just happy to spend some time with friends we have known for 24 years. Both.

Aside from seeing our friends, I felt so blessed to be able to spend a couple of days with Megan. She and I had fun shopping (I love to shop with her...she looks adorable in everything she tries on), eating out and talking, talking, talking. Bliss. So thankful. She's grown in to a pretty terrific young woman. I like her. A lot.

Did I take any pictures of my friends? Nope. Silly me. Just pictures of the adorable baby.

 And of course I took pictures of food.

My friend and I went out for Sushi. I had never had Sushi before. This was very yummy! But I think it wasn't "normal" Sushi, so I'm not so sure how brave I will be to try it again.

Another highlight for me was shopping in three different quilt shops. So much fun to wander around. I had a long list of things I wanted for some projects I am working on and managed to get those and some extras because the fabric was so pretty and hard to resist. My sister-in-law told me about a quilt shop in Missouri (Missouri Star Quilt Company) that has lots of YouTube tutorials. Yes, I have spent a lot of afternoons watching video after video. On my trip back north, I changed my route so I could stop by the shop! It was a great shop and I'll have to stop again because the day after I stopped, they moved into a bigger building. And I need to meet the woman who does all the videos.

Hubby and I decided to meet in Des Moines for the holiday weekend. I was so excited to see him I actually did a real live happy dance when he got to the hotel we were staying at. :)  We spent Saturday at an Iowa history museum a botanical garden and even got to see a movie.

This collage I like to call Exotic Flowers and Plants of Des Moines:

 At the museum gift shop I saw this display of a children's show I watched when I visited my grandparents in the summer time:

Fun memories!

A pretty picture of the Iowa Capitol Building.

So, now I'm back home and all caught up on the laundry. Back to "normal" life. Sigh.

Gotta head to my sewing room to tackle some of those projects I bought materials for!

Good Fortune

I've been having so much fun with making some small quilts. I found a cute pattern to make a little quilt that is used as a car seat cover for babies. I finished my first one! Only I made a boo-boo.... I arranged the blocks wrong and ended up making a square quilt instead of rectangle. Oops.

The fabric line I used is called "Good Fortune". I love the Asian flair it has.

But I love how it turned out anyway. It will be a sweet tummy-time quilt for a sweet baby girl.

I have two more quilt tops finished out of different fabric. (And they are rectangles!!!) I just need to sandwich them and quilt them and bind them. I'll make sure to post pictures when I finish them.

The Music Quest

When we made this last move (two years ago), we did not sort through anything before the movers packed up our stuff. So on this end, we sorted through e v e r y t h i n g before it got put away. We threw a ton of stuff away, gave some things to our kids and a lot to charity. We even had a curb-side yard sale. For that we put some bigger things on the front lawn with a price tag on them. We had an old rug, some old lawn chairs, some giant speakers, coffee table and end table, twin size mattress set. I think we made around $200 from all that stuff.

The last thing we needed to tackle in our sort-through-everything-goal was to go through all of our cassette tapes. We had some pre-recorded cassettes, but most were recorded from vinyl records. We had 150 different albums on those cassettes. So, for the last year, we have been listening to these cassettes in the car on road trips. Some of the tapes made us laugh out loud because the music was horrid. Some brought back sweet memories. There was awful early 80s Christian music, great early 80s Christian music, Burl Ives singing cheesy children's songs, Bill Cosby, Olivia Newton John (yikes), all sorts of types of music. After listening to a tape, we would vote on if we liked it or not. Hubby made a list. Well, a spread sheet, actually, because if you knew Hubby, a spread sheet would be the logical thing to do.

Last road trip, we finished (!) listening to those tapes! So about two weeks ago, armed with his Spread Sheet, Hubby spent one Sunday afternoon on Amazon and ordered 40-some CDs of the albums we liked. He wasn't able to find all of them. The prices ranged from 19 cents to $150. (He didn't pay $150 for any, by the way)  Later that week I found this in the front door that the mailman had left:

And that was only half of them. I don't think the mailman liked us very much that week.

My Heritage

I spend a lot of afternoons sewing and watching a couple of episodes of The Waltons. I really enjoy the portrayal of family in that show. I've often wondered what it would have been like to grow up with my grandparents living in the same house. My maternal grandparents were Swedish. Both of their mothers came to the US from Sweden when they were young girls. My maternal grandmother died when I was only 2 1/2. I've always wished I knew her. I have a few of her quilting things. Some fabric, unfinished blocks and cardboard templates.

Sometimes I take them out and wonder about the hands that made them. I hope she'd be pleased that I quilt like she did.

My maternal grandpa passed away when I was in college. (I wrote more about him in this post.)

Even though I am only 2 1/2 in this picture, this is exactly how I remembered my grandpa looking even years later. This was taken at the first Christmas after my grandma died. I think Grandpa looks sad.

Me, my Swedish grandpa, and my brother.

I still have some birthday cards my grandpa sent me. He had a spectacular signature.

My paternal grandparents were a big part of my life. They would come to visit often and I would spend a week or so in the summer time with them. I have great memories of those times. They would let me eat sliced tomatoes with sugar (sounds icky to me now). I remember watching The Floppy Show while I ate lunch. I was allowed to eat on a TV tray on the edge of the linoleum of the kitchen (never on the carpet). They took me to the Iowa State Fair. I went to the county fair with them, ate my grandma's amazing fried chicken and homemade rolls (I wish I would have asked her to teach me how to make both of those).  We sat downtown the evening the stores stayed open late and watched the people go by. I'd be introduced to their friends as their son's baby (and be so embarrassed.) Grandma used to love to put her arm around me or link arms with me as we walked some where. That embarrassed me too. Only now I'd love to feel that soft, old hand in mine.

(Yep, that's me in between my grandparents. I think I am 14 or 15 in that photo.)

My grandparents lived only about 15 miles from where I went to college and I got to see them often. I would clean house for them and they would let me do my laundry for free.

This is at their 50th Wedding Anniversary. Grandma's hair was always so perfect. They were married for over 60 years.

Grandpa died right after I graduated from college and not long before I got married. He was a funny man. He loved to tell jokes and make us grandkids laugh. I miss the smell of whatever it was he put in his hair. Grandpa used to sneak money to us grandkids. He would hand me a quarter, a five dollar bill, a dollar, and whisper, "Don't tell Grandma." (I'm not sure why he thought Grandma shouldn't know. I'm sure she did.) At Grandpa's funeral, my brother stuck a quarter into the pocket of Grandpa's suit coat pocket and whispered, "Don't tell Grandma." Yep. That brought the tears.

Grandma lived to be 96. I'm glad she knew my kids.

Me, Caleb (about 18 months old), Grandma (89) and my dad.

I have sweet memories of the letters she would write to me. Instead of writing a smiley face :) or writing LOL or writing hahahaha, she would often intersperse a ha. That's it. ha. Always a lower case letter and always a period after it. Grandma would call me periodically, even after I was married, and start the conversation with, "What do you know?" When Grandma talked on the phone she would sit with pencil in hand and doodle. They were quite detailed doodles. I loved to look for them when I visited her house. Grandma loved Jesus. She told me once that she was looking forward to being in heaven but was frightened of the process of getting there. I found a letter I had written to her. (If you click on these, you should be able to read them better.)

This side of the letter are the words to the song Another Time, Another Place. It was sung by Sandi Patti.

Even though I was the youngest of eleven grandchildren, I felt like Grandma took time to have a relationship with me even after I married and had my own kids. I miss that about her. I want to learn from her example when someday I am a grandma.

The Monday Review

This past weekend, we had company. Real live company. Hubby's sister and family spent the weekend with us. It was fun to cook for more than two people for a change. Hubby had a lot of fun playing games with our sweet niece. She has a few more competitive bones in her body than I do, so he was very happy. We also watched a couple of movies, couldn't get the Wii to work (faulty disc), made homemade ice cream and Chinese food, talked quilting and even got a couple of hugs from my sweet niece.

But if you come visit us, beware. You also have to work...

(My sister-in-law, niece and hubby)
(We really didn't force them...)

(really)

Mother's Day.

Today is the day that I thank God for letting me be a Mom. Motherhood is the single thing I have done that I am the proudest of. How blessed am I to have gotten to give birth to and raise two of the most amazing grown up people I know? Why did God see fit to be so extravagant in His blessings toward me with those two little people who called me Mommy? How blessed am I that my children are alive for me to talk to whenever I want?

This weekend I've thought of two women I know who have experienced the unfathomable grief of loosing a daughter to death.

One is a woman who is experiencing her first Mother's Day without her first-born. My childhood friend passed away last November. This week when I was buying card for my mother and mother-in-law, I picked one up for her. I cried at the thought of her pain this Sunday. I prayed she'd feel a little loved through that card. Then there are my friend's two kids she left behind at the ages of 18 and 20. No mom to wish a Happy Mother's Day to.

The other woman is a friend who lost her (only child) daughter (age 20) in a car accident four years ago. Every time I talk to her on the phone (which is not often enough) she talks about her beloved daughter. When would you ever stop being someone's Mom?

Then there is the family I know who are likely celebrating their last Mother's Day with their very sick mom.

So this Mother's Day please join me in praying for those who will find this to be a painful day. Give them an extra hug. You gotta know they are so very aware of the hole in their hearts.

Be sensitive. Be compassionate.

Hi There

Well. That was a long blog break, huh?

I guess I just hit a dry spell there for a while. I find it hard to write on this blog when not much is going on in my life. I have also noticed that when each new season begins and we still live in the same place, is really hard on me. I am so ready to live some where else.

 Enough whining though.

Today's blog-post is brought to you by insomnia. I woke up a bit before 5am. I tried to go back to sleep, but to no avail. So about 6:15 I drug myself out of bed, played a little Solitaire on my phone and read my Bible. Then I got rolling on my to-do list. We are having company this weekend, so the list was lengthy. Believe it or not, I finished everything on my list by 1pm. Crazy.  So, because of the insomnia, I have some time to write today. Not that I have been so busy that I haven't had time.  But, well, the point is, I'm writing.

Since the beginning of March, I have been sewing...making quilts. I have finished four receiving blankets and three quilt tops. (!) One quilt top is quilted and waiting for me to finish the binding. When I get that done I will make sure to post a picture. I like how it turned out. :)

A couple of weeks ago, I ran out of thread. Quite tragic when I have to drive 25-50 miles to find some place that sells good quality thread. So one Saturday I talked Hubby into driving 50 miles so we could go out for lunch and I could go to a quilt shop and buy some thread. So exciting, I know. That hubby of mine is a trooper. I just love him.

While we were in that little town, we went looking through a couple of antique stores. We have become very interested in browsing through antique stores. Sometimes we find neat things. Mostly we just look and love finding something that reminds us of a toy we had as a child, or something our grandmothers had in their homes. This is one of the antique stores we stumbled upon:

We have driven by this multiple times as we drove through this town, but have never stopped. I was more interested in looking at the building. I believe it used to be an old gas station. It was quite cool.

Speaking of sewing... (I was...check back a paragraph or two) I made an upgrade in my sewing room. For years I have had this $10 lovely for a chair:

Yeah. I know. Not the most comfortable looking thing. Nor the most comfortable thing to sit in.

A couple of months ago, while visiting my in-laws, my sister-in-law and I went to a quilt shop (a quilt shop I dream about, it was so awesome) and I found a new chair!

This one adjusts all over the place and I absolutely LOVE the red color.

Well, that about wraps up this post. (Now you might understand why I haven't written much.)