LAUGHTER, LIGHT MOMENTS, AND NUMBER THREE DONE

Life certainly has its twists and turns, slips and slides, and thrilling vistas. These past few weeks have proven this little description to be true. It has been a month to the day that I went into the hospital with all my problems, and I am still recovering. Comparatively speaking, my illnesses aren't seriously life-threatening, but they have stopped me in my tracks. One of my "comforts"??? has been the quilt which I am making for TJ. I've made many quilts, but this one has been challenging, challenging, challenging. I've made every mistake in the book and picked out and put back together every stitch in the quilt, but it has given me hours of busy work when I didn't feel like doing much else. I have about three hours' worth of hand quilting left to do, and I'll be able to send it off to TJ. Yesterday, I had lunch with my dear friend, Kathy, from my working days. She was very concerned about my surgery, when she is dealing, and has been since last summer, with the terminal cancer of her boyfriend, JR, the excessive stress of a special ed job, and the responsibility of being the breadwinner in her family. Kathy has taught me many lessons about dealing with tragedy with grace, and I've never seen it that grace so beautifully manifest as I did yesterday. Kathy and I love to laugh at our troubles as a way to deal with them, so we remembered jokes we've heard about gall bladder surgery and the funny, funny antics of our special ed students years ago.

A week or two ago, we mapped out a careful strategy for re-arranging the house to accommodate Marie's family. We had planned all along to move us upstairs, so that, come winter, we'd be heating only the upstairs, so this was the perfect opportunity to make that move. We'd moved the sewing room/study when we received the news that Marie won't be able to come due to Navy bureaucracy in the form of missing passports!! However, we pressed on, and have the move nearly complete. Now, there will be two guest rooms downstairs. The top picture is of Dad's Father's Day gift--a 42" tv.

The last picture is of our latest adventure. Dad helped Uncle Garth with some roofing. Aunt Joan and I are in the room that would be to Uncle Garth's left, chatting away and solving quilting problems!! Life is fun!!

I promise a blog soon about the reunion!! Love, Mom