Giving Thanks

We returned home from Texas yesterday. Tori and I drove down to visit family for the holiday. She was a most excellent co pilot. it is a 22 hour drive from PA.I am so enjoying having a teenager. She shared in the driving and that was a big help.
This is a picture of Tori and my SIL Theresa. Theresa was diagnosed in March of 2009 and she is still with us. We are celebrating just having her still with us.

This is part of my Texas family. My brother Ron, SIL Theresa me and my sister Renee. Yep we are all "Rs". Gets a little confusing at times.


It was a great visit but glad to be home.

Finished a project too. In my "glass half full" attitude I am early for next fall.


Time to clean the house so I can begin decorating.

Blessings,Rhonda

16 and Pinwheels

Oh to be 16 and just getting my license again. My oldest daughter got her drivers license last week. We had to buy a new car for various reasons so she has been "given" the use of my faithful Caravan. Now I say it is because she isn't allowed to drive the new car which is considerably smaller (by the way). My real reasoning is that it has lots more car around her should-God forbid- anything ever happen to her. Call it what you want I feel safer....

What a magical time she is having with this new found freedom. Last evening she wanted a burger so off she went. She wanted to go to the mall so off she went... Get the picture. It really is a lot of fun watching her grow through this latest stage. She's even cleaning out the car right now. Washing the outside as well as the inside and vacuuming. Can you beat that!!


Here is a picture of her on her mission trip this summer. Not sure how much paint was on the building.





She's a good girl and really fun to have around.


Haven't finished too much in the line of projects lately. I belong to a summer quilting group designed to get you to sew one block a day. We started as an off shoot of Crazy Mom Quilts blog except we do a different block every year. This year we did a pinwheel block. I had 102 blocks completed in the allotted time. It was not sewn into a top however. Now it is in strips and ready to go to my Sept quilt retreat to be completed.

It's made from my collection of reproduction feedsacks. There's not one repeat block in the quilt. I thought I would be using up so much fabric and I didn't even make a dent in it. So I will be pulling out more patterns to use it up.

i will close with some pictures of other quilts in various stages theta were brought to our show and tell picnic at the end of the summer. Enjoy.
All of us ....preparing for show and tell.


My favorite. 2" 4" and 8" blocks.





Can't have an event without a Pittsburgh Black 'n Gold quilt. This one is a Penguins quilt to be raffled of at this quilters church.




We are a Yahoo group so anyone can participate. Think about it for next year.

Blessings,
Rhonda

Time flies

I can't believe it's been weeks since I posted. I have been reading all my favorite blogs but didn't seem to have time to post.

It seems that this time of year I lose so much time. I go outside to work in my gardens and I forget to stop. It just feeds my soul to work in the dirt.
This year I've had a little help getting the vegetable garden in shape. Emily had to do a project for school for Earth Day. She started plants and turned over the soil in our vegetable garden.


She has such a sweet spirit. I just try to nurture it. I think spending time with the plants helps. I hope she picks up my good habits since I know she's picked up the not so good. But they say more is caught than taught so I can hope.

My other time consumer in the spring is Fast pitch softball. Tori is playing for her school and will be starting her local team soon as well. I try to get to her games as often as I can. DH actually gets to more as his work schedule allows. She loves to play so we support her all we can.


This past weekend was a dance at school. I had 5 teenagers trying to get ready for the dance here at my house. Some things went well others did not. But in the end all were gorgeous. I really enjoyed watching my DH the most of all. The girls were demanding and laughing and carrying on. He was totally baffled by all the commotion. His job was to deliver Emily to her friends house for pictures and to drop off her things to stay over night. He waited patiently for awhile then started to get nervous she was going to be late. I can hardly wait until the girls are getting ready for a real dance. He'll go crazy.
Here's Tori and then Tori and her friends.



This is Emily and her friends. She's the one in the yellow. Unfortunately the picture of her alone didn't turn out. Gotta give hubby picture taking lessons.




I did get a few projects done but I was on nights for the last 2 weeks so I have all of them in various stages of completion. I'll show those and some new purchases soon.

Rhonda