Time Goes By!

Mercy, how quickly the days go by!  It's been fall, fall, fall here for the last few weeks and I'm loving it so much.  If the leaves were turning and falling I would swear it was late October instead of September.  Of course  a few have, but mostly all are still green so the actual fall colors are still to come.  

Bruder Bear and Karen were here for a few days last week and we had such a good visit.  They'd been on a round robin of visits with family and were glad to land here for a few lazy days.  We enjoyed dinner out at our favorite Mexican restaurant one night and I made a huge pot of Taco Soup the day they arrived so we got our Tex-Mex fill!  (Yes, there are a lot of cans in this soup but I did use my own pressure cooked pinto beans (1 1/2 cups drained and frozen equal one 16 ounce can), and I use lower sodium cans of the other beans and corn along with a low sodium or homemade taco seasoning.)  When you're feeding a crowd, this recipe rocks.  

I finished the yellow and blue baby quilt and I'm so in love with it that it's graced the top of the love seat for days.  It's just a happy quilt!

I was really feeling fallish yesterday and decided it was a good soup and bread day so I made the Swedish limpa rye bread from Foodie with Family and the wild rice chicken soup from Pressure Cooking Today.  I first discovered this tasty combination when Bruder Bear came up last fall and it's a winner.  Needless to say we're having repeats tonight and the second loaf is in the freezer for some other day(s).  

This morning Dan helped out with a community service day the boys' school was having and took his chain saws to help clear out overgrown shrubs and trees in a local park.  I think I mentioned that daughter Ann is teaching there and her estimation was that the school had saved the town at least $15,000 in labor costs.  Dan said it was amazing how hard those kids worked, even the tiniest ones.  ♥

The Last Official Night of Summer

No, the calendar doesn't list this date as that, but in my mind, summer officially ends with Labor Day.  I was just down the hall, opening windows to let the cool evening air in after a warmish (over 75) day and as I did, I heard the sprinklers in the front yard making their sounds as the day grew dark.  Such a timeless sound.  And then I thought, summer's over.  School is back in session, the days are noticeably shorter.  My favorite time of the year is here.  Fall through the holidays.  Yes!!

I tried to take a picture or two, but I guess I'm finally going to have to read the instructions to our camera. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to turn the flash off! I wanted one of the dusky evening and the cursed flash kept making everything too bright.  I hate to read instructions...  So no pictures for this post.  Just thoughts.

I hear crickets chirping, and there's the sliver of the moon in the southwestern sky.  This has been the most lovely summer I can remember in a long time.  Almost perfect weather, quiet days, some good books (and a number of rereads which is always like visiting with old and dear friends), and time with family.  

Yesterday was a busy day, for a Sunday.  Our youth pastor, dearly loved by all of us, is leaving and moving with his wife and little daughter to southern California to become an associate pastor in a start-up church in the LA complex.  He is a giant of a man, a Tongan, with a giant-sized heart and he has done so much for the young people in our church.  We had a farewell potluck and send-off last night and it was hard.  But when the Lord leads, we must follow.

Cameron had no problem with jet lag (oh to be nineteen!) and started his first day of college just forty some hours after he landed.  We've gotten to see him several times and he's obligingly allowed his Grammy to hug him each time.  So good to have him back!!  

The baby quilt is loaded on my long-arm and hopefully tomorrow I'll get started on the actual quilting.  It shouldn't take too long.  

And that's it for the last official day of summer, 2019.  ♥

Quilting and Other (BIG) News

I finally remembered to take the camera down to my sewing room to get a snap or two of the baby quilt I've been working on.  I'm quite smitten with it and think I'll be able to use this pattern many more times.  

The pattern (purchased from The Fat Quarter Shop)

And here's my version.  I thought I'd used two different fabrics for the large pieces as they show in the pattern, but in the end used the same for all of them.  

My modified version

Only fat quarters are needed for the colored portions, so the opportunities are endless for recreating this over and over with very different looks.  

Meanwhile, this grammy is beside herself with excitement as Cameron has landed in Seattle and will shortly be winging his way to Spokane and his mom and dad and brothers!!  As Ann texted me, there isn't a smiling emoji big enough to express her (and our!) feelings about this day.  ♥♥♥

Musings

The calendar says it's the middle of August, but there's a touch of fall in the air.  It seems that the few last years, fall arrives about now.  The days are warm, high 70s maybe 82, and the nights are cool.  So much for the "hot August nights" of my youth.  And believe me, I'm not complaining!  I'm loving each and every day.  

I took a little tour of my pots of flowers a bit ago and snapped a couple of pictures.  I'm so not a gardener, but I do enjoy my pots and remember to water them every day or so.  Dan puts them together every May, and I keep them going until fall when we store them in our sun room for the winter months.  

Corner of the deck

One of these on each side of the garage

Front porch

From the looks of these photos, we like red!  Whenever I drive up, I love to see the color all across the front.  

And speaking of driving, I had a fun morning at a coffee shop with three other ladies of the neighborhood celebrating the recent retirement of one of them.  Now we're all retired and think maybe we need to do this more often!  We all marveled that we'd reached this point when we think we're just a bunch of spring chickies.  No complaints, however!

A new baby quilt is in the works and I'll try to post some pictures in a day or so.  ♥

Kidney Stones?!?

For those of you fortunate enough to have never experienced a kidney stone, count your blessings.  I had my first one back about 1980 and had no idea what was happening, only that I was in extreme pain.  And it didn't help a bit at the ER when the nurse said they couldn't give me anything for it because the pain was their only clue as to what was going on.  Well!!  (We don't live near that hospital anymore, thank goodness!)

My second go around was in 2005.  I woke up in the middle of the night in pain and finally woke Dan up to take me to the ER.  On the way there, I said to him that this was reminiscent of that long ago day and I thought I knew what was going on.  Bingo!!  It passed and I was thankful, but exactly four weeks later the same thing happened.  After a week of drugs and no relief, it was determined that this one was too big to pass and so surgery to retrieve it was required.  They decided the one four weeks previous was probably a piece that broke off this giant one.  

I had another a few years ago and then again yesterday.  Last night about eight I told Dan I'd had all the fun I could stand so off to the ER we went again. I'm so thankful to live in a town with a hospital with such a great staff.  Everyone there was so kind and helpful. They did a CT scan and the good news is that there don't seem to be any more biggies lurking around, and this one passed this morning.  I'm hoping for a lifetime reprieve!!!

Meanwhile, I wonder what people did in the "olden days?"  I can't even bear to think about it.  

Cousins and Aunts!

Monday Ann and Daniel and I took a little trip and had a wonderful afternoon of visiting with my two nieces and their little ones.  Jennifer had driven out from Oklahoma with her two, Grant (8) and James (4) and were at Kirsten's.  Kirsten has recently moved to a new town with her husband, Tim, and little Taylor (18 months), so we were excited to not only see Jenny and the boys, but also to see Kirsten's new house. 

We left as soon as Daniel's swim lessons were over and in a little less than two hours we made a quick stop at a Wendy's and then programmed the GPS with Kirsten's new address.  It did not fail and led us right to her door. Amazing!!!  

The boys took right off from their last visit and spent all afternoon in the yard, running and playing and investigating trees and bugs.  We big people, along with little Taylor, spent the afternoon visiting and catching up with our lives since our last meeting.  So glad we get to see them all at least once a year!

We decided pizza out would be the perfect ending to our day and drove to a local neighborhood place and devoured several yummy pizzas--pepperoni and cheese for the boys, of course, and several "adult" pizzas including a pesto one that was especially delicious, along with an amazing pesto macaroni and cheese for Taylor (she ate it by the fistfuls!!).  The weather was perfect and the pizza shop had large garage doors in the front that were open to let in the lovely late afternoon air. There was grass out front and playing out there kept the boys busy until the food arrived.  

Before we all parted, I captured this photo of gang.  

Such a great day!!  ♥

Cameron Update

It gives me great joy to say that four weeks from today Cameron will be back!!  It's been a long five months with one more to go.  He's having an amazing time and has learned so much.  He's learned to live without so many of things we take for granted--running water, hot showers (for him, it's a bucket over the head), meat (they eat potatoes, beans, and cooked bananas), and so on.  He's really looking forward to throwing his clothes in the washer!!  

After five weeks in the bush of Kenya he is back in Rwanda's northern province, not far from Uganda in the area known for Gorillas in the Mist. 

Here are a couple of the photos he's sent us. The first is a gorgeous picture of a sunrise in Kenya.

This next one is of Cam with some children at a school they visited.  Everywhere he goes, the kids are drawn to the Mzungu, the white guy.

He's seen giraffes and zebras in the wild.  Seeing the giraffes was the hardest, and finally on his last morning in Kenya, several of them got up early and went out to be rewarded with a sighting.  Cam was thrilled.  

For this Grammy, the next four weeks can't go fast enough!!  ♥