Christmas 2008

Merry Christmas to all of you. As we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, we spend time with our families enjoying the love and warmth of each other.

I know some of you are buried under lots of snow and ice. But here in Arizona we have been having our share of rain for the past week. We have even had a couple of nights where we have had to cover our tender plants from the freeze we have had. I know most of you think this is kind of funny but if your summer temperatures were around 110 plus for a straight 4 months you would know how cold 32 degrees is to us desert rats. We wear coats at 60 degrees here and rarely go outside once it gets below 50. Our blood has thinned out so we can handle those 110 plus days.

Onto Christmas this year. We spent a lovely day with my son, daugher in law, grand daughter, and mother. We went to my son's house and had a wonderful day of gifts, food and fun. We talked to 2 of our other childern and 4 of our other grandchildren. It was a wonderful day even though it rained most of it.

As you can see from our pictures our Grand daughter got her jeep for Christmas from "Santa Claus". She drove a "truck" this summer at her "crazy Uncle Jay's" house and loved it so much, Santa decided she needed something like it so she could remember those good times. She is pretty good in reverse but needs to learn how to steer. She thinks going forwards in one direction is great but trees, walls, and toys do not move out of her way!

Also in the pictures is one of our son, wife and daughter. As you can see we don't get really dressed up for the holiday. We feel comfortable is best since we know we will be napping throughout the day.

The picture of the lovely lady with the birthday cake is my mother. Christmas Day is her birthday and she turned 81 this year! She feels so special to share her birthday with Jesus, as well she should. It has been a bit of a rough year for her with surgeries, deaths of siblings, hospitalizations for health issues and generalized aging "things". But thru it all she keeps her spirits up and stays as active as she can. Mom and I have done a lot of shopping this year together. We have also taken up beading as a new crafting project. Of course we both still knit and I still crochet. Now that Mom has had the total shoulder replacement it is so much easier for her to do her crafting that she so loves. It is such a joy to have her close to us. She is getting the joy of watching one of her MANY great grandchildren grow up and her great grandchild adores her. (after all GiGi always has cookies and M&M's at her house!)

On the crafting front.....................I made several hats, scarve and slippers for my family for christmas. The hats were loomed, the scarves were knit and the slippers were crocheted. I also made lots of necklaces, bracelets and earrings for gifts all from my new found love of beading. I am in the process of knitting a prayer shawl right now. Knitting is a slower process for me but I still love the look of it for some things.

As soon as the Christmas season is over I will be able to get back into my craftroom again and start planning more projects. Right now all the books from the two 7 foot tall book cases are in there so we could put up our 50 plus nativity sets. I don't mind at all. After all it is only once a year that we get to celebrate the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is a small sacrifice to make compared to the BIG one He made for us on Good Friday!!!!!!!!

May God bless all of you this season and may He continue to bless and keep you close to Him in the year to come.

A Quick Note

I know I said I would not be updating my blog for a few weeks but I had to tell all of you about the most incredible book I just finished reading. It is "The Shack" by Wm Paul Young. I picked it up at Costco on a friends advice and read the whole thing in 2 days.

It was the most incredible book I have read in years. I gained so much from reading it and it has truly changed my out look on many things and makes me really think before I speak or act.

It made me cry, laugh and contemplate. I would highly recommend reading this book and please remember it is fiction but, oh my! It can cause you to re-evaluate many things in life. I don't want to tell you much about the book because it is much better if you just pick it up and find out for yourself. I will tell you that you must read the prologue or you will be lost for a while in the beginning of the book.

Ok, that is all from me. Still getting things taken care of here so I can go and join my husband this Friday with the family to say some much needed "goodbyes". But as my Daughter told me, she did not tell Grandpa goodbye the last time she spoke to him as she knows she will be seeing him again someday. What a happy thought, huh? Sometimes she is so insightful!

Have a great day and will post when I get back and get some time.

Another chapter begins

I am not one to soft coat much of anything and this post will be no different!

My Father in Law passed away yesterday early morning. We are assuming it was around midnight Sunday morning. My DH was home for the weekend to celebrate our 33rd anniversary and had just told me on Saturday that he would be driving back to his parents early Sunday morning. We received a call during our dinner informing us that Dad's breathing was shallow and labored. My husband told his brother he would catch the next plane out and be there ASAP.

To your surprise all flights from Phoenix to Las Vegas stop at 9pm and we got that call at 8:30pm. So he booked the first flight for Sunday morning which was 7:30am. Unfortunately his father passed from this life about 7 and 1/2 hours earlier than that.

We have been expecting this chapter of our lifes to come to a close and the new chapter to begin but it is never easy to lose a loved one. The one comfort we do have is that he died peacefully in his sleep. He was breathing and just stopped. No "death rattle" as so many people report, no struggling for breath just stopped breathing and went home to his eternal rest.

This post may not be posted on for a couple of weeks as I am trying to tie things up here on the homefront so I can get to Las Vegas to be with the family. I will be there for a few days and then be home..........but...........My mother had a total shoulder replacement done last Wednesday and I have been helping her out with meals, dressing, cleaning, laundry etc. She gets her sutures removed this Thursday so that should help her out a bit. I also have a friend that will be coming in to help her out while I am gone so she will not be totally on her own. We also have in home health that comes in Monday thru Friday for 2 weeks.

I want to thank all of you for your prayers over the past few months. Your support has meant a lot to us.

Just a bit on the crafting front............

I finished my Daughter's prayer shawl and will be mailing that to her this week. I took pictures of it and will post those once she receives the shawl. I am also trying to crochet slippers for some family members for Christmas. I am not able to find a decent pattern for them. I use to make them when the kids were little but I can not find a pattern like the one I use to make. It is unisexed and is kind of like a ballet slipper without the strap across the top. DOes anyone know what I am talking about? They don't take long to make and you can make then any size to fit any foot. HELP!!!!!! This would be a great item to take with me on my way to Vegas on that lovely 5-6 hour drive. If you know what I am talking about please leave me a comment on here as to where I can get the pattern as all comments go to my e-mail and I can pick that up anywhere I am at.

Thanks again and God Bless all of you.

Ok, I felt guilty about not having any pictures for you all. So here are the ones I took today. As you can see on the socks they look kind of deformed to me but once you put them on they seem to fall into shape nicely. I am going to have to work on the bind off as I used a crochet bind off that was "guaranteed" to make them stretch enough to go over the heel. NOT! I had to rip it out twice and then I did my own crochet bind off with an extra chain between the bind off. The hardest part of this was.........I knit right handed and crochet left handed! I had to do the bind off with the crochet hook in my right hand. Talk about awkward.

You may not think my craftroom looks really "clean" but trust me it is. I have 3 different areas in the room. I have the sewing/serging area, beading/ribbon/knitting machine area and the looming area. The other area I have is for my tread mill. Please notice that there are no clothes on the tread mill. When I got it I heard horror stories about them becoming a clothes hanger. I vowed never to let that happen and it never has! As you can see from the closet shots..........I am pretty full in there. Lucky for me it is a walk in closet or I would be in some big trouble there.

Ok, I feel better now that I have pictures up for y'all. Now I can go and loom on the prayer shawl in peace.

Update

My mother and I have spent the last 2 weekends cleaning out my craft room. The first weekend we got the main part of the room cleaned and this weekend we attacked the closet. Now I know most of you think............so what? Well I'll tell you what! I have a yarn stash that makes most LYS look naked. After cleaning out the closet and reorganizing it I now have 7 twelve gallon tubs and 2 fourty gallon tubs full of yarn. Then there are two 12 gallon tubs of ribbon, one 12 gallon tub of soap making supplies and popourri dolls supplies. I have 2 seven drawer rolling carts full of cloth ribbon, dried/silk flowers, "fancy" sissors and material/patterns. And to add to that I have a 3 drawer wide cart full of my glass/egg etching supplies. So what do I decide to do once we get started on cleaning all of this up so I have some sort of organization? I start a new hobby! I am now into beading. I guess it really is not all that new since I have been making rosaries for the past 10 years and that does require beads. But this time I am making jewelry from the beading and am loving it. Most projects do not take much time to complete but finding just the "right" stuff for a person can be difficult.

I do need to let all of you know that I finally completed my first pair of socks. I am mailing them to my Daughter in Law in Chicago. I am not totally happy with the way they turned out but they will be a nice sock for her to wear around the house this winter. They do not have any wool in them (she is highly allergic) and the yarn was so nice and soft to work with. I have several more skeins of this sock yarn but will need to wait on that. I have promised my Daughter in New Mexico a prayer shawl for almost a year now. I am over half way done with it and am working on it as much as possible right now so I can finish it. She has seen the beginning of it but has no idea of the "surprise" that will be on it when she receives it. And since she reads this blog frequently I am not going to tell the rest of you what it is until it is done and in the mail to her. Then I will post a picture of it on here. (sorry Jenn, you will have to wait)

I don't have any new pictures to post (I haven't taken any!). I keep forgetting to take pictures of projects when they are finished. Do you think it would help if I had my camera by my crafting chair? Or maybe I should just keep it around my neck all the time so I can shoot off some pics as needed. LOL

My husband is leaving tomorrow for Las Vegas again. We have no idea for how long this time. He father is getting really weak now and requires a lot of help just to get out of a chair to walk to another one. He is still eating good though. Please keep us in your prayers as we really don't expect to have Dad around for much longer. We cherish everyday that we have with him and bless God for giving us the chance to love this very special man for all the years we have had.

Have a blessed day and keep on craftin'

Home and glad to be here.

Here are some of the pictures I got of the family while I was on vacation in Chicago. The first one is on the first night. Josie was turning her cousins (Jaden and Bryson) into frogs and dogs. Of course I was thrilled with this as I had to kiss them to make them back into little boys again. GOOD JOB JOSIE!

Then we have the day the kids all got to drive the cars around. This was a first for Josie and she had a blast driving. Her steering left a little to be desired but she had fun. The boys are pros at this most of the time. Bryson (the youngest) seemed to find himself up on the grass a lot but he still had a ball too.

The next three pictures are of the day we walked to Lake Michigan which is only about 2 blocks away from their house. I was told that I might have a problem getting to the lake and when I got there I saw what they meant. We were about 100 feet up from the beach area and the incline was quite steep that we had to go down to get there. But after watching the boys and my son in the water I told my Daughter in Law and Granddaughter that we would give it a shot. We made it down without anyone falling and rolling! After I got down there I noticed another path leading up that was not as steep and asked if we could use that one on the way out. WELL!!!!!!!! It was all concrete with rocks sticking out of it and was like doing a rock wall. Piece of cake! This was the first time Josie had been to the beach and she really enjoyed getting her tootsies in the sand and letting the waves rush over her feet. The boys are experts at this and so they spent time looking for seashells for their bathroom to decorate it up. They got some real nice ones too.

The next picture is of Neiko getting his hair cut. He does sports and hates his hair to be in the way. So his Dad said he would be happy to cut it up for him. It really turned out nice. My son (Neiko's dad) cuts his own hair about every other week since he is an instructor at the boot camp there in Great Lakes.

The last picture is the first day of school. Jaden is in 3rd grade and Bryson started Kindergarten this year. It was so hard to see them leave for that first full day. It was also the day we left so we did not get to see Jaden again but Bryson was home before we left and I got some good lovin' from him before I left.

The weather was wonderful while we were there so it made all of our outings great and enjoyable. We spent a lot of time outside as we were so used to 100+ days here that the 80's felt pretty good to us. There were a couple of nights that it was so cool out that we were able to put a fire in the fire pit outside and enjoyed that.

The day after I came home DH went back up to Las Vegas to see his father. He is going downhill gradually but my DH is trying to get all the loose ends tied up so that when the end comes we don't have a bunch of legal and emotional stuff to take care of. He was there for 10 days. As of this writing he is back up there again. He is only suppose to be there a week this time but if anything happens he will stay a bit longer.

Please keep our family in your prayers as we all go thru this emotional time. It effects all of us in different ways but I know with God's help we will get thru it and be able to move on with our lives. Even though our lives will be different once we loose Big PaPa Joe.

Not much on the crafting front. I am still working on Jamie's socks. I thought I would get them finished while I was in Chicago but we were on the go so much I only got about 2 inches of the cuff done. I still have another 2-3 inches to go. Since I have been back I have not really had any down time to work on them. Hopefully I will get them done before their first snow fall!

Have a great day and keep on crafting. Let me know what you all are working on. Maybe that will inspire me to get back to my yarn!

I promised

Ok I promised you pictures of the place I stayed at in New Mexico so here are the ones of the room I stayed in. I loved the ceiling with its big wooden logs there.

I thought I had taken a picture of the "ribbon" shawl I completed there but it seems to have disappeared from my camera. HUM...........I think a 3 yr old got a hold of the camera recently. Must remember to keep it up higher.

I am off on Saturday to Chicago to visit my son and his family. I am taking the 3 yr old with me so she can play with her cousins. Hopefully I will blog quicker after I get back and put up some pictures so you can see how beautiful my family is.

On the crafting front........I am knitting socks for my DIL in Chicago. I am almost done with the heel of one sock and ready to do the other heel. For some reason I seem to have too many stitches at this point so will have to do a bit of "reducing" soon or they will be slouch socks. I am using the magic loop method so I don't have to worry about having orphan socks around the house.

I also have a prayer shawl in the works (crocheting) and another prayer shawl on my loom. I need to get more prayer shawls done as I am being called on often now to get them to people. I am hoping to get a prayer shawl ministry started at our church after I get back from Chicago. That way there will be more shawls available and I won't feel like I am all alone out there.

Better get off of here and get some packing done for the trip.

Before I go I must leave you with a picture of my Grand Daughter on her 3rd birthday. This was the family party we had and as you can see she really loves this one gift she got. She saw it and screamed "George Washingtons"! I am telling you she is gifted!