My Landscape Quilt

I wanted to show everyone the quilt I made from one of Bob's pictures. It is hand appliqued and hand quilted. It took some time finding just the right fabrics to make the picture work, but the process was lots more fun than cutting squares and matching corners!!!

<---This is the original picture. It was taken while Bob was hiking Coyote Gulch. This is the Coyote Creek near where it empties into the Escalante River in southern Utah. I liked the contrasts, the rugged rocks and the water. In my version I added an eagle, because it I thought your eyes just kind of went up the cliffs then drifted out of the picture to the right. I needed a barricade.

I entered in the Sanpete County fair and it got a Sweepstakes ribbon, so I am taking it to the State Fair tomorrow. I think I have found a new passion- as if I needed anything new to do in my life, right? (Click on picture to enlarge)

Hope all of you are finding that you had a wonderful summer. What were your highlights? Would love to hear your memories and adventures.

Anne's Progress

I just talked to Anne. She had an evaluation appointment at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore with her Desmoid team. The MRI taken last Thursday was compared to the one in December, but not the one taken in April, when they decided to do the chemo. It is slightly larger than December, but her pain symptoms are so much relieved, that they are going to look at April's. The thought is that it might have grown significantly larger between Dec and April, and that the tumor is SMALLER now than in April, but larger than it was in December. They will call her Monday. They are very happy with her outcome so far.

The good news is that she is feeling a little less pain, and she is completely off narcotics. She still takes other pain meds, tho. She will resume chemo weekly for 8 weeks, then another MRI. They said it will be a 52 week plan. At 23 weeks, or when there is significant improvement, they may cut back to every other week. She is encouraged, and courageous. Keep her in your prayers.

A HUMDINGER?

We have had two humming bird feeders up most of the summer, but haven't seen very many little hummers. This morning when I went out to do some yard work I noticed that one of the feeding bottles was unexpectedly empty. I made up some hummer food by putting sugar in hot water. When I went out to fill the bottle I was suddenly surrounded. As I stood on the deck table with the feeder still in my hand, humming birds buzzed all around me, some only inches from my head and hands. There were several kinds; some with white thoats and rust colored breasts, some with shiny dark green necks, and some with bright red tail feathers. I stood and watched, fascinated, as they stuck their long soda-straw beaks into the feeders and stuck out their tiny tongues to lap up sticky stuff just inches from my eyes. I carefully filled the empty bottle with fresh food. One bird immediately stuck his beak in the mixture, then suddenly withdrew and shook his head. The water was still hot! I backed away and let the feeder hang for a few minutes, but as the birds came and went I began to worry about what would happen if the birdies burned their tongues, so rushed to put the feeder in the refridgerator until it cooled. Had I killed them with (intended) kindness? When the sun was fully up, the birds all disappeared and I worried until the day began to cool and they returned like a squadron of tiny attack helicopters. It appears all is well, but a hummer with a burned tongue must certainly be as awful as an elephant with a runny nose.

BTW: A lady at the office told me about a little boy who was learning to read. He kept talking about a freakin' elephant. Shocked, the teacher hurried to check the book. Sure enough, it WAS about African elephants.

Sincerely,

Bob

Odds and Ends

Ends first:

* I finished my landscape quilt, done from a photo Bob took while hiking Coyote Canyon. I took it, along with two other quilts, to the county fair building yesterday. I'll get pictures on here after the fair.

* Today is Anne's last chemo treatment, for now anyway. She has an MRI on Thursday, and an appointment with the team at Johns Hopkins next Tuesday to review the results. Anne has a desmoid blog, which I have added to the links here. She hasn't felt well enough to keep it up, but said she is updating it this week.

* Ned and Kim ended their stay in Richfield and have moved to Salt Lake City. That means all my kids except Mike and Anne (and Pete and Rebekah) are in the Salt Lake area now. Check out his and Mary's music sites to see all the concerts and "gigs" they have lined up!!

* Pete and Rebekah have decided to move to SLC area after their summer job in Chicago. They had planned to stay a year or two, but have decided against it. It'll be good to see them again soon.

* School started here today, signaling the end of summer vacation, which also means Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts are in the afternoons again instead of mornings, like they were during the summer. Somehow it makes those days seem longer to have mornings free again.

Odds:

* We have resumed work on the the Hobbit bedroom. I took one of the old bifold closet doors and painted it the light yellow/gold we painted the walls, then stained over it. After two coats of stain it matches the woodwork in the room. So last night Bob and I painted the shutters (covers the 4x6 window, with a large circle cut out of the center to make is appear like a round window), the inside of the door, and the four closet doors. Today I stained them - first coat now, second coat later.

* Granny and I canned beef (cut up roasts) in her pressure canner yesterday. It turned out really nice. Protien is so hard to store! Tuna, chili and other beans...canned salmon, chicken, etc is soooo expensive. These roasts were on sale for 2.29/lb, and we got 16 pints out of 18 lbs, plus enough small scraps to make two pots of vegetable beef soup. I am going to do some turkey later, as well. Then you use it in stews and casseroles.

* Living the letter of the law, we planted two tomatoe plants, some lettuce and radishes in two containers. We are eating the first of the tomatoes. Gardeners we are not.

* Granny is flying to Wisconsin to Kevin's wedding in September. Everyone remember to send them a card!!

"Saturday, In the Park;;;"

I went with Bob on Friday to Provo, and worked on the landscape quilt while he precepted in the Family Practice residency program. I ran a few errands, but mostly just hung out. We ate Panda for lunch and Fazoli's for dinner, spent a little time at the new mall in south Provo, then went to our motel. ( Bob had called the residency to make reservations for us - turns out they paid for it, too!) We watched the last part of the Olympics opening cereony( My repeated comment throughout was -"wow, did you see that?").

In the morning - early- I drove Bob to Lindon (north of Orem) to a testing center where Bob had to take his Family Practice Board Exams - renewed every 5 years. It is an all day thing, so I had planned with Karen to go spend the day with her. It was Midvale's Harvest Day celebration. She had run the 5k earlier (it was her third race, and she came in 5th in her age group at 30 minutes 32 seconds ). Jeffrey was MCing the parade. We called Mary and Aaron, who had morning plans, but said they would join us at the park later. We watched the parade across the street from where Jeffrey was announcing. He had prizes he gave away during the parade - like a lint roller to the guy with the longest hair. I won for having the most children - my prize was a pregnancy test!

Ned and Kim are moving to SLC on Wednesday, and because they wanted to bring a UHaul up then they needed to bring their car full of stuff up ahead of time, and we agreed to drive them back to Richfield from SL if they did it Saturday.

So Karen and I went to the park (Jeffrey had a book signing at a sporting goods retailers convention) and watched Greek dancers and listened to Greek music, and looked at the booths, etc. Pretty soon Ned and Kim came.They called David, and he came over. Mary and Aaron showed up a little later, and I had fun just watching my kids interact, discussing their latest concert venues and upcoming "gigs", talking about moving and apartments and work and plans. I sat there thinking how cool it is that my kids are friends.

After a couple of hours the kids went to Karen's to hang out while Karen and I went to get my hair cut and she grocery shopped. When Bob called to say he was finished, we went to Karen's, and I picked up Ned and Kim and drove to Lindon to get Bob. We drove about 30 minutes to Spanish Fork for Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Ned was talking about all the movies Bob HAD to see, one being "Ironman". We had noticed it the night before at the dollar movies in Provo, so after a little discussion, we drove BACK to Provo and went the the movies. We got Ned and Kim home about 11:00 and we got home about midnight.

But it was fun to touch bases and visit with the kids. I envy Bill's weekly and sometimes daily contact with his kids. I hear from the 'far away' girls at least weekly, sometimes more often. James calls and updates us on Cami's dr appts and his travels with work. I am loving this time in my life.

On Spiritual Growth

I play the piano in Primary every Sunday. That probably says everything I could add right there.

Flowers grow. A little water, a little dirt, a little sunshine, and almost everything you can plant will somehow survive. Okay, if they are outside and either get a fair amount of rain or are planted in my yard where there is an automatic sprinkler system. My house plants are another matter.

Children grow. Unless we are talking major physical impairment or neglect, kids just sprout up and out of their shoes and jeans and winter coats. Too fast. I look at pictures or video of my children when they were little, and I wonder where those kids went, for Pete's sake. I have adult friends with the same names and the same memories - well, their memories are sometimes different or much better on some things than mine, but the KIDS are gone.

But my spirit.

I love Primary. The kids are priceless. Their little testimonies and talks and their voices when they sing are magical. But I'm not being nourished.

I used to be more like the garden. I relied on the natural surroundings to nourish me - Sacrament meeting, Sunday School and Relief society. These things came to me and fed me and I was content. Bob and I would talk about class, about the latest insights he or I had discovered. Conference was a blessing and a whole season of rain.

I admit, except for the family scripture time that we had when the kids were all home, I've never been one to just sit and study the scriptures - in spite of all the admonitions to do so. I read the Ensign, usually, but mostly the stories and short stuff. I live 7 blocks from the temple, but don't go often enough. So, spiritually, I am malnourished. My spirit is not starving, just really hungry. I'm afraid if my spirit were a child, the Department of Family Services would be paying a visit. I have neglected it.

So. "Today is the first day of the rest of my life".

1. I will take my RS manual in my music bag and read the lesson during Sharing Time.

2. I will read my scriptures every morning while I eat breakfast, instead of the paper.

3. I will have Bob give me the SS lesson during dinner (our church is 1:30-4:30).

That's a start. So, here's to sunshine and soil and rain!!!

"Read it and Sweep"

Bob and I have learned a very important and perhaps life-changing piece of information.

First of all, as you probably already know, when we travel together I read aloud to Bob while he drives. We have shared countless novels in this way - Tony Hillerman, the Father Cadfield books, FableHaven, Louis L'Amour, and the list goes on.

Secondly, you ALL know my level of commitment to cleaning house. There are always so many other interesting things to be doing!

So. Midnight Friday night I got Bob out of bed and we drove to Walmart and bought the last of the Twilight series, along with LOTS of other romance crazed females, but I was too tired to start it right then. So, first thing in the morning I began. I had MADE Bob listen to me read the other three aloud, after I had read them -first time all three in 4 days, and several partial readings after that - and he was ....tolerant. A good sport. About breakfast time he asked what had happened so far, so I gave him an update and started reading aloud. He fussed around the kitchen, did the dishes and sat at the computer, then asked me to come outside and read, which I did, dragging a chair around as he fixed a couple of sprinkler heads and cleaned out all the aspen suckers and weeds from in front of the house and in the Japanese garden. He fixed lunch, then started working on the computer room. Of course 90% of the stuff in there is my mess. So, he suggested He read while I clean. And three hours later, it was 1/2 done, and drawers were sorted and the begining was very noticable.

After dinner we finished the book, but Bob has decided to find another book right away, and we will "work together" to get some of the projects done niether of us wants to do alone. So, maybe we have found a new way to be together, get unpleasant jobs done, and share the written word.