BIG family day !

My son-in-love, Tim, is career army, and for 13 years now, between 3 deployments, many moves, and being a husband and father of three, he has been squeezing in classes toward getting his college education.

My daughter, while being wife and mommy, and holding down full time teaching positions, has devoted as much time as she could to being his tower of strength throughout this process.

Today, she proudly watched the reward of Tim's very great effort, and her own.  Tim received his Associates degree !

And his mom got to fly in from Oklahoma to be there for the big day and to spend a week with the family.

WHICH was also important because of the fact that my youngest grandson celebrated his 8th birthday today !  That's the baby of the family and he's not a baby anymore !  I don't have birthday celebration photos yet, but maybe I can update with them later.

Sadly, my computer won't let me download the rest of the photos that I want to share.  

Anyway, it was a blessed day all around.  I wish I could have spent it with them.

Instead, I drove to the local medical center first thing this morning to try and get some relief from this SNOTTY nose and cough I've had for a week.  I've self-medicated all week, but when the cough was very painful in the middle of the night, I knew that I wanted x-rays.  Good news is that a bit of bronchitis is all that showed from the lung shots,......NO PNEUMONIA , praise God !   So, I got a antibiotic/steroid cocktail shot in the hip.,,,,,,,,,which nearly rendered me one-legged for about 15 minutes.......and a couple of prescriptions.  I felt good enough this afternoon, after a 2 hour nap, that I strapped on a mask (to guard against all the dust and pollen) and managed to get the backyard mowed FINALLY.   

So, it's back to work tomorrow, if the world doesn't come to an end tonight, and hopefully I won't be soaking through 3 hankies and a WHOLE LOT of tissue.

Be careful what you ask for !

YOU JUST MIGHT GET IT !

I got the job at Walmart ! 

  And it's WEARING ME OUT !

Seriously, though, I'm VERY happy to have the job

I applied for,

 but it is taking some serious getting

used to ! 

  Everybody I'm working with is much 

younger than me,

 and I am having to hustle to pull

my own weight .

Tonight, I am aching and weary, 

but celebrating the fact that

tomorrow is my DAY OFF!

I don't see myself having a lot of time

or energy for quilting anytime soon.

Just trying to keep up with the mowing

will be enough for now.

BUT THERE'S ALWAYS WINTERTIME !

GOD BLESS YOU ALL !

HE'S AWFULLY GOOD TO ME!

ALMOST one step closer !

The lady from Walmart called today and asked if I could come in for ORIENTATION this coming Friday morning at 8 a.m.-----------YES MA'AM !, LORD willing, I WILL BE THERE !

So, for me, that means that it's time to look around and see what needs doing NOW,  before my 'free' time becomes greatly limited.  Today, that meant sweeping out the shed and restoring it to a semblance of order, and then mowing the scrabbly areas of the backyard and most of the front yard.

But before mowing the front, I got my 6 tomato plants put into the area of my garden that I re-tilled this week.

THEN when I mowed the front yard, I used the grasscatcher, and spread the clippings around each tomato plant in hopes of keeping the weeds down.  I've never tried this method at the BEGINNING of the planting season, so I hope I have success.  Last year, I only used clippings during the drought season to keep in the moisture when I watered the garden areas.

Vintage Amy Butler/Happy Quilt

At the end of last year, I came across this blog post, featuring the following quilts,

 and I was mesmerized by the sheer joy and laughter it brought about in me.  I shared the photos with my daughter, telling her that I just had to make one like it someday.  How could you not be happy with such a quilt within your view?

Well, my friend, JodieAnn, started sending boxes of fabrics to me that she was clearing out of her sewing room, and, then, as many of you know, my husband passed away from his Mantle Cell Lymphoma.  In the following hard days after his passing, the pretty fabrics reminded me to revisit the idea of a quilt to make me smile, or even, heaven help me, laugh again, somehow.

So, bits at a time, I started free--piecing this little quilt.  Over the last month and a half, I have gotten it pieced, and yesterday I got a chance to machine-quilt it.   I used my walking foot to outline the lettering, and then did a medium-sized meandering all over the rest of the little quilt  I haven't yet bound the edges.  It only measures around 28 x 32 inches, and will be a good size to hang from the quilt rack that is on my living room wall.

It's not quite as joyous as the all over 'HAHAHAHAHAHA',  but, then again, neither am I.  But there is hope.  Just as I hope there are many more quilts in my future, I believe that, someday again, there will be much more laughter.

"NOW THANKS BE UNTO GOD, WHICH ALWAYS CAUSETH US TO TRIUMPH IN CHRIST......."  II Corinthians 2:14