Quilt Therapy

I had to go to town to take pictures of a local veterinarian’s business last weekend, and found SO much quilt-spiration there that I just wanted to share it!

Hi Tammy:  I wanted to let you know that I got a box of quilting fabrics in the mail today from Sheila in DC.  Let me just say she was very, very generous.

I had my 7 month old grand daughter, Zoey, this morning and I decided to take a ride with her in my power wheelchair, then I decided I’d go check my mail.  When I opened up my mail box there was a key inside, meaning I had a package in one of the larger locked mail boxes.  When I saw what a big and heavy package it was I thought I’d come back for it later, but I couldn’t relock the box, I guess only the mail  man can do that.  So I had to figure out a way to bring it home with me.  I had to end up standing up, putting Zoey in the seat, so that I could use both hands to get the package out of the mailbox.  I put it on the foot rest and rested my legs on it to keep it from falling off.  I can only imagine what I must have looked like.  

We came home and I opened the box it was like Christmas! There was so much fabric, large pieces, small pieces, already cut quilt pieces, BOM pieces, Christmas fabric, floral fabric, already assembled quilt blocks, way too much to mention.  I oooh’d and aaaah’d over it all, while Zoey looked at me and with her great big smile.  Wonder if she saw a new quilt in her near future? 

Zoey had her first quilting lessons today:  1-get the fabric; 2-get the fabric home any way you can; 3- Share the fabric with someone you love.

Thanks so much for helping to bless so many people, and thanks for letting me share my joy.

Blessings, Ruth

I have received my “Georgia Sunshine” BOM quilt back from my lovely friend and longarm quilter, Meloney – and will spend the weekend putting the binding on it.  It is destined for a special young lady, who is getting married next weekend.  My husband calls her his “first” girl, since he was living with her parents (they were all in college) when she was born – he was the first baby butt he diapered!

Hope you get some quilt therapy in this weekend, too!

We have four children.  Each of them has basically been raised the same, save for the fact that one is a boy and the other three are girls – and the boy is all boy while the girls all are different, in their own right.

My husband has a PhD and a strong leadership personality.  I’m not near as educated, but I did graduate from college.  Growing up the way I did has led to me being quite the person in charge of my own life.  I don’t do well with others telling me right or wrong, I rely on my faith and my joy for life to lead me in the directions I want to go.  I haven’t been a follower since I was quite young.  I’d also like to mention that both my DH and myself are scout leaders – and the main goal for those organizations is leadership.

Three of our children are leaders…who could care less what anyone else is doing, they are on a quest to live their own lives, on their terms, and obstacles are no match for their ability to press onward to their goals.  We may butt heads over their leadership qualities, but we know they learned them from us.

Yet, we have one daughter who is a follower.   She has made her whole existance based on what others think, feel, do, etc.  She does not let her individuality shine through, she chooses to be just like everyone else.  She wants to participate in the things that everyone else participates in, wants to wear the clothes they wear and wants to act like them, too.  Of course, with the latter, we’ve had to have words already – and school just started on Monday this week.  I will not tolerate sass, disrespect or poor manners.  We have taught them respect and manners their whole lives – she knows how to be good.  The sass is a hard one, because I have been known <ahem> to sass a time or two in my life – but, I can tell you that with my own parents, a good sass meant a good smack to the face.  No, we do not do that to our children.  But, talking isn’t doing much good, either.

We allow our kids to choose one thing they want to do during the school week, and we choose the other.  For instance, this daughter I speak of chooses to be in band (she’s amazingly gifted with musical instruments) and we choose for her to take piano lessons.  It worked great last year and we had no problems. 

With four kids, each of them doing 2 things a week – there goes our entire week and we rarely have a day off!

But, we now have an issue with this one daughter who is a follower.  She wants to add a third thing to her week – volleyball.  It’s not because she’s athletically talented – quite the opposite, actually.  She’s the blondest brunette you’ve ever seen!  But, all of her friends are in volleyball, so she believes she HAS to be there, too.  And she will not listen to reason, she would rather give up her already-chosen weekly “thing” to participate in volleyball – because her friends aren’t involved in her weekly choice, but they are all going to be in volleyball.

I’m having a hard time with this.  Trying to figure out how to parent a follower is difficult, in and of itself.  But, trying to reason with an emotional pre-teen who just moved up to middle school is even more difficult.  She doesn’t see what she’s doing to herself – how she’s “running with the pack” instead of being true to herself and her gifts and taking them as far as she can go. 

We don’t have any answers yet, but we’re working on it.  She knows she’s not athletic.  She knows music is her gift.  But, she also wants to be part of the “in” crowd and follow them (over a cliff) wherever they go. 

I want my child to be happy, but not at the expense of her self-esteem or her loss of time with her true gifts.  And gee, we let one do more then we have to let the other three do more – and there just isn’t enough adults to go around!

The kids are back in school.  And this time, all four are attending the local public school.  I pray with all my heart that it works out for our son-man, and I’m very happy with the teacher he has this year.  If there’s any teacher I would choose for him, she would be the one.  He only got to go a half of a day yesterday because we had to get him another shot (let’s not go there, mkay?).  But, he attended three afternoon classes and was very happy when he came home, especially because he had homework!  The girls are great and happy with their classes, for the most part.  We have a new neighbor who is in DD#2’s grade and her dad was wondering where we were for the past two months – he had no idea so many kids lived on this hill!  I’m sure she and our second daughter will become fast friends since we live so close to them.

We’ve had a guinea sitting on 6 eggs – and we didn’t know when she layed them, so we had no clue when they were going to hatch (gestation usually 26-28 days).  Wouldn’t you know, just as I was ready to nap yesterday afternoon, all three of our adult guineas were raising such a ruckus that DH couldn’t even talk on the phone – so, I went out to check it out.  There was the mama, with baby keets running around her feet. 

Now, we’ve already lost 6 adult guineas to some varmints - DH suspects feral cats, but it could be any number of things because they’re free range.  And the mama was under an agareta bush and not otherwise protected, so we had to move her and the keets to a special area of the coop that DH and DD#1 set up last week. 

Have you ever tried to get a guinea mama?  DH’s arms are all scratched up from the bush as those babies were near-impossible to see on the ground.  We finally got the mama away, after being attacked a half-dozen times, and picked up 4 keets and took them to the little swimming pool we had set up.  Then, we realized one hadn’t hatched yet, so DH got that egg over to the pool.  The pool has bedding in it, but it has sides that are high enough that the baby chicks or keets can’t jump out for a few weeks – great place to keep them contained.  So, there was 1 left, but DH had to get a fax from his mom’s and then go get the girls. 

DS and I finally got the mama into the pool without being attacked anymore, before DH left.  But, we could NOT find that last baby (see the pix above to see how hard they are to see in the grass) - and we were so scared to step on it that I told DS we needed to wait for DH & the girls to come home to see if we could let the mama out and see if she could get the other one. 

Of course, this being the first day of school for the girls, we had to hear all about their day and didn’t get a chance to get back out to the guineas until my men left for scouts.  When we went to the coop, we found that the lost baby had made it over to the pen and had crawled under the chicken wire and was sitting outside of the pool. 

SO, my next adventure was to get that baby into the pool where the others were, as well as feed and water.  OY.  I have a small prick on my finger where the mama attacked me.  I finally had one of the kids go get one of DH’s garden buckets and put it on top of the mama and picked that baby up and put it in the pool.  Mama calmed down and we left.  Whew. 

We still have to see if that last keet will finish hatching – will open it later this morning.  I know she originally had 14 eggs and threw a number of them out of her nest, but the girls saw the keet moving inside the egg tonight, so we’ll pray that it lives and finally hatches before morning.

I usually don’t toot my birthday horn, but figured since I’m working and no one else is around, I’d have to sing birthday wishes to myself.  My husband and kids took me out for a delish lunch after church yesterday and then my MIL will have a birthday dinner for us tomorrow night.  We just have too much to do today, to deal with it (and I’m totally ok with that).  DH sent the 3 girls off this morning on the bus to their first day of school for the new school year, and is desparately trying to get our son-mans immunization records so he can go to school, too.  Our emergency does not constitute and emergency on anyone else’s part, even when it may have an effect on a child’s heart.  They’ll get the info to us if or when they have time.   Sad, but true!

So, today, I’ll celebrate in silence as I work.  And I’m ok with that, too.  Gives me time to reflect on who is missing in my life, who I wish – beyond anything else – that they could share this birthday celebration with me …. Mom, Dad, Mike, Gramma from Tramma.  And those who are still around, but who will forget or not take the time to say anything to me – Tom, Jeff, Cody, Kayla and a host of others who shall remain nameless.

I’m 46 today.  I’ve lived longer than both of my parents did and my older brother.  I celebrate every milestone, and I’ll take this one with my boots on.

The lovely quilter who I sent fabric to as her Quilt Therapy Angel has made another quilt from some of the fabrics I sent to her!

Remember, if you are a quilter in need, we have a group of Quilt Therapy Angels at-the-ready to send you some fabric, patterns or notions to help out!  Just send me an email at quiltalicious@gmail.com and I’ll connect you with someone who is willing and able to share their quilted hearts!

When I received the latest issue of Country magazine in the mail:

I noticed an article that for some reason, reminded me of SOMETHING that I couldn’t place:

I asked DD#1 if she recognized the place, because that stained glass ceiling sure looked familiar!  She said, “Yeah, it does look familiar.  Hey, isn’t that the place where we ate lunch….and then, just before we finished, that nice old lady came up to you and told you that you had the nicest and best mannered children she’d ever encountered in such a nice restaurant.”

Aha, of course!  Here’s a few pix I had taken of the Geiser Grand Hotel:

And here’s the notes about our experience:

I had to have the Cowboy Reuben – just to compare it to the others I’ve had across the states!  I would probably rate it as #2 on my list thus far.  It still didn’t beat the one at The Ram in Boise!  JD had a grilled chicken Caesar salad and said it was good … but, it became MUCH better when the waitress brought out a small loaf of freshly made sourdough bread!  I love to watch him eat his meal slow, while enjoying every bite!

After we were finished eating, we were sitting at the table enjoying digestion.  A lady diner, about 70 years old, came over to our table and put her hands on JD and my shoulders.  She was there to compliment us and our children!  She said many times she’s eaten in restaurants where other people’s children just make her meal miserable.  She said she truly enjoyed her meal and she truly enjoyed the fact that our children were so well behaved during their meal!  She said when she saw children who behaved so well, she always tried to go to their table and tell them – they deserved recognition and appreciation!

We, of course, were wondering what planet she was on!  hehe

A local dude ranch gave us nine guineas.  They are good for the land, help to get rid of bugs & snakes and provide decent fertilizer that is helpful for the compost pile.

Unfortunately, we also have predators in our neck o’the woods.  As far as we can tell, it’s feral cats that have been thinning our flock.  We are now down to just three guineas, and we thought all of them were male.

Until DD#1 found a nest, and eggs scattered everywhere.  She picked up the eggs that had been kicked out of the next and then counted 14 eggs within a nest.  We figure the eggs were from one of the other birds who was killed and the sitting guinea didn’t want them in her clutch in this very thorny agareta bush:

Guess one of the guy guineas is actually a girl guinea:

The gestation for guinea eggs is less than 30 days, and we had no clue how long ago she’d laid the eggs….so, we had a lot of work to do, to get ready for babies – and to try to save them from further harm.  Hubby and the kids enlarged our chicken coop and then lined half of it with chicken wire, to help contain the keets when they make their appearance.  DD#1 noticed today that the mother guinea had been pulling out her fluffy down and lining the clutch with them.  Seems that is a sign that the keets should hatch soon enough.  The kids are excited to see the babies, and I’m just wondering how many more “kids” we can keep up with!