TRYING AGAIN

                                  I just saved my 2011 journal to an external hard drive--196 pages, single spaced, size 10 font. 117,000 words. My journal, since about 2007, has consisted of cutting and pasting the daily, often twice daily, emails I send to my sister, into a Word document. I don't include her responses. This endeavor has reaped a fairly accurate representation of my life each year. It's honest but not brutal; tender at times, touching, filled with words and feelings of frustration, anguish, soul-searching. As I read the journal, the tears flowed, laughter filled my house, and sweet memories flowed from every entry. What were near-fatal crises six months ago had become only a blip of the ups and downs of daily living. I also keep a Quotations file in my Word program. It's a collection of little poems, pithy sayings, words of wisdom I hear or see as I read, surf the web, or watch tv. No one will probably ever read my journals--they're really quite boring. In addition to my written collection, I have pictures...hundreds of pictures, which I've put onto my computer. Because I was new to organizing my pictures, I'd loaded literally hundreds of pictures three and four times. I've reduced my 377 files to 20. I'm now ready to launch into 2012.

                 We did manage to get through the holidays unscathed.  Thanksgiving was a quiet affair.  Vale was with us for Thanksgiving dinner; then his mom whisked him off to Vale Las Vegas, Baby to see Phantom of the Opera and Lion King.  We had no such excitement--just a quiet weekend together.  Christmas was a busy circus.  Marie's family came.  Our five grandchildren wanted only one thing for Christmas--snow.  The two smaller children have never seen snow; the older three had only vague memories of playing in snow, since they've lived in Guam and then California for the last four years.  On Christmas Day, it did snow and hail for FIVE MINUTES.  Our nine year old grandson exclaimed, "It's snowing!!  Heavenly Father does answer our prayers!"  There was no snow during their entire visit.  Poor babies.  A good time was still had by all. 

                   January brought snow.  Finally!!  We need the moisture.  A week or so ago was a wintry, stormy week.  A phenomenon occured in our area that I haven't seen in all the years we've lived here.  Hundreds of trees in our area were broken and downed by the horrendous ice storm.  Broken tree limbs and fallen trees clogged nearly every residential street in our town.  In the picture taken from the window of my sewing room you can see the branches and twigs that literally covered the entire surface of our front yard.  To the left is our neighbor's yard where a beautiful evergreen tree and an old-growth oak tree were downed by the ice.

Many of the smaller old oak trees in our yard were damaged as well.  Since we're town dwellers we had only an 18 hour power outage, but many in our area were without power for as long as eight days!!  Everyone is telling survivor stories.  I was impressed by a group of the retired men in our neighborhood who came by on skis with shovels over their shoulders to help their neighbors dig themselves out of 4 feet of snow!
                   Tom has been confined to the house for a few weeks and is feeling like a caged animal!!  He's kept himself busy, but he's itching to get outside and start the cleanup of the yard.  I've managed to make a few quilts in this confining weather. 

           The top quilt is for two year old Mason.  I feel that I will only be able to make one quilt for each of my grandchildren, so I've made them all so that they fit a standard double size bed.  Mason's quilt is a strip quilt; the white panel is an old-fashioned train puffing out his name.  I made two quilts that were quite similar--jeans/flannel quilts for my grandsons, Kahlil and Wyatt.  When Vale saw their quilts, he asked if he could swap the red and blue jeans quilt I made for him some years ago with Wyatt's.  Vale hadn't used his quilt because he'd always lived in California, and he'd outgrown it.  So we made the swap.  I revamped the quilt I'd started for Wyatt so it would fit a 6 foot plus young man.  The Ivan quilt is for almost 7 year old Ivan.  If you knew Ivan, you'd know how perfectly this bold, optimistic quilt fits him!
                 The red and green quilt was my gift to Tom for his december birthday.  For the first time in 40 years of marriage, I was able to surprise Tom on his birthday.  I went to visit my sister, explaining that I wanted to have some sister time before the weather got bad. We put the quilt top together in two days; Tom never suspected.  The picture is of the quilt top; I'm still dong the hand-stitching on that quilt.  I'm even doing my own design of Celtic Lover's Knots on the quilt.  (For those who can't tell, I'm the sister on the left.)

            Our stormy weather is gone--temporarily the weather man says.  We're well and keeping ourselves busy and fulfilled.  Hope all of you can say the same.  Love, Mom
“When our wagon gets stuck in the mud, God is much more likely to assist the man who gets out to push than the man who merely raises his voice in prayer—no matter how eloquent the oration.” (Deiter F. Uchtdorf)