Day 7 0f 30

It was a short night for me.  Bedtime rolled around at midnight and here it is 5:30am and I am up and ready to take on the day.  The house is super quiet.  No TV or radio on.  The dogs are sound asleep still too. (Although one of them is snoring loudly)

Last night I took a Cricut class at JoAnn's.  I have owned my Cricut for several months and have had a heck of a time trying to figure out what to do with it.  It was a very informative class and the instructor was so sweet and very patient.  She answered all questions without showing any signs of frustration.  The JoAnn's I went to was HUGE.  I could not believe how large it was.  The stock there was much more diverse than the two that are close to my house.  Unfortunately it is a bit of a drive to get to it.  Yet, I think if I really am needing supplies for my Cricut, that will be the store I will go to from now on.  I will just make a day trip out of it.  

Upon arriving home I noticed something wrong with my left eye.  It looked like I had a hair or piece of fine lint in it.  I tried washing it out to no avail.  Drat, I do believe I have my first ever floater in my eye.  I have a Doctor appointment this morning so will ask her if she can look at it to see if there is an issue.  If she can not see anything, then I will contact my eye Dr to see what to do.  I have never experienced this before and it is quite annoying.

Today's thankfulness is for modern medicine.  The advances being made are amazing.  I look at all the diseases that used to be an automatic death sentence and now are just a bump in the road of life.  I look at diseases like, diabetes, high blood pressure, influenza, pneumonia, and other diseases.  Yes, these diseases still can cause death but the for the most part, they are treatable and some of them even curable.  We have pretty much wiped out small pox, measles, mumps, polio, whooping cough, typhoid, even chicken pox.  Yes, there are cases that pop up now and then but not on the scale of several decades ago.  Are any of you old enough to remember the Iron Lung for polio patients?  How about having to lay in a dark room for days when you got the measles so your eyesight would not be damaged?  Or your neck being so swollen you could hardly swallow water during the height of your mumps?  Someday, I pray, there will be a cure for all forms of cancer, MS, MD, ALS and a way to prevent Alzheimer's.  But for now, I am amazed at the advances made in the 66 years I have been on this earth and very thankful for the women and men that strive each day to make our health better.

Day 6 of 30

OUCH!  I just sat on a double point needle.  Dang that hurts!  It is going to leave a mark too.  So far today I have gotten a haircut, gone to WalMart, filled my car with gas and now am writing my blog for the day.  

Today I am thankful for my kids/grandkids/great grandkid. (FAMILY) Hubby and I have a blended family of yours, mine and ours.  How blessed we are to have 4 children, 8 grandchildren and 1 great grandson.  I loved watching my children grow into adults.  Believe it or not, the teen years were my favorite time with them.  Ok, I loved the baby cuddle stage quite a bit too.  But, the teen years gave me a bit of insight into the kind of adults they were going to become.

Our oldest son has his own comic store in Washington state.  He has never married but gave us our first Grand Daughter.  (Don't judge)  Our only daughter is married and gainfully employed and lives about an hour away from us.  She is the one that can make me laugh even on my worse days and vise versa.  Our next son is married and lives about 15 minutes from us.  He has been with the same company for over 15 years and has done quite well moving up in the business. He has blessed us with 1 Grand Daughter.  Our youngest lives in Texas and is getting ready to retire from the US Navy next year.  He enlisted in 1997 and has never once been deployed, to his chagrin.  He is married also and has given us 6 Grands.  His is a blended family also.  Our grands range from 30 years to 14 years of age and the Great Grand is just over a year old.  My heart swells with love when I think of these individuals.  I love them all so much.  I have been truly blessed with them.  I had always wanted to have a large family since, I only had one sibling.  Unfortunately, I was only able to give birth to 2, where as I wanted to have 6.  So the blended family is a blessing for me.  

Never in all the years have I referred to 'his' children as my 'step' children.  To me they are my son and daughter.  The same with my husband.  My son is his son.  This also applies to all those Grands we have.  No matter how they arrived into our family..............they are ours.  Our family has several nationalities in it and our skin tones are from one end of the spectrum to the other.  No matter.............we are still family.  We love fiercely and are quite protective of each other.  We may poke fun at each other but no one from the outside had better ever try and hurt any of us.  Our bonds are strong.  F.A.M.I.L.Y. = Family Means I Love You!

Have a great day!

Day 5 of 30

Greetings.  It is another gorgeous day here in Arizona.  Unfortunately, it is a bit warmer than I would like.  The temps are going to be almost 90F today.  Come on weather!  It is November!  I have sweaters and sweatshirts I want to wear. (sigh)

My to do list is quite a bit shorter today.  I got so much accomplished yesterday.  Today, I am hoping to pull my sweater out of it's work basket and get quite a bit done on it.  I have not touched it since Saturday at our retreat.

That is not why you are here, right?  Let me tell you about my thankful item today.

Today I am thankful for my childhood.  I was blessed to have two very loving parents.  Never, did I doubt the fact they loved me and treasured me as their daughter.   Yes, I was truly blessed.  My parents had rules (curfews, homework, chores around the house) but nothing that was cruel or inappropriate for my age.  Mom taught me to sew, knit, clean and tried to teach me to cook.  My dad taught me how to change the oil and tire on my car.  He also taught me to tie my shoes (he was a lefty too), how to write without backward slants.  My parents and I sang in the church choir together until I married and moved away from my home town.  We visited both sets of our grandparents each summer and that was a 9 hour drive in a car without air conditioning.  We played board games and card games as a family.  The Wonderful World of Disney, Ed Sullivan, The Shirley Temple Hour and Red Skelton were watched each week as a family. (I just showed my age, huh)  My mom made almost all of my clothes including my prom dresses (back then it was cheaper to do that).  She even knit and sewed clothes for my Barbie dolls.  My brother introduced me to the music of the Beach Boys and showed me how to put model cars together.  He taught me how to whistle loudly without using my fingers. (that came in handy many times)  Yes, my childhood was good and I would not have asked for anything different.

 When I read stories of children in abusive homes, I cry.  How could anyone hurt a child, no matter what they did or didn't do!  I worked in a school nurses office for a year and seeing kids come in with bruises and other marks on their bodies because they refused to walk to the convenience store at midnight to buy mom/dad something, made my blood boil!  They are children.  I am talking about ages 5-7!  It bothered me so much, I never applied for another job in a school health office.  Too many times CPS had to be called because of injuries inflicted on a child by the parents.  Yet those children would not say anything bad about their parents.  So frustrating.  I wanted to grab each of them and bring them home with me to show them that childhood should be enjoyed and not feared.

To my mom, dad, and brother, thank you for giving me a blessed childhood.  You may all be gone from this earth, but your memories live on in me.

Day 4 of 30

Happy Monday.  Hope you all had a good weekend.  Ours was very good, thank you for asking.

Today has been super busy since I took yesterday to just rest and enjoy time with the hubby.  So far I have gone to 3 grocery stores, put away all the laundry, tidied up the kitchen, made a loaf of bread and now, am getting ready to shell pistachios for our chicken salad that is for dinner tomorrow.  I very much enjoy getting all my running done in the mornings so I can do my 'sit down' work after lunch.

Here is my thankful item today:

I am very thankful for my friends.  My circle of friends is very small.  I am not a social butterfly in the least.  The friends I have are the kind I can call in the middle of the night and they will be at my doorstep in a matter of minutes.  Likewise, I would and have done the same for them.  Good friends are not easy for find, yet I have been blessed to find several.

Well, those pistachios are not going to shell themselves.

WEEK 18 & DAY 3 of 30

Good day to all of you.  I am here, once again, to share with you what my past week was like, both in crafting and in living.  Before I get started, I do need to tell you I have made one change to my blog.  When you comment, it no longer posts right away.  I am now moderating all my comments.  There have been some very unsavory anonymous comments lately.  It seems to only be happening to those of us on blogger.  I got tired of deleting 5-6 comments every day on various blog posts.  Hopefully, this is only temporary and I can go back to having your comments post immediately.  Thank you for understanding.

So, let's get started.

My Cardigan grew quite a bit this week.

It now reaches the top of my hips.  I like my sweaters long, so will continue knitting until I feel it covers all my ASSets.  This is the only item I worked on this week.  I am still hopeful it will be completed in time for me to take it on my mini vacation in 3 weeks..It is the perfect  mindless knitting. I opted not to do the 'lace' section in the waist area.  I just wanted a plain jane sweater for everyday wear.  The size, this time, seems to be perfect.  I will be adding in another row of increases for the hips though.  (My mom blessed me with HIPS)

This past week was totally different for me.  I spent most of Tuesday through Thursday at my son's home.  His work has him traveling and since there is a puppy in the house, I have the blessing of puppy sitting.  I would have taken him to my house, but he is just too rough with my dogs still.  Hence the reason I got so much done on my sweater.  Here is just a little taste of what my dog sitting looked like.

Everyday, Thor and I would go and pick up 'the girl' from high school.  He is a wonderful navigator.  He made sure all the cars around us were driving properly.

If I took a little snooze, this is the face I would wake up to.  He seldom left my side the whole time I was there.  He is turning into a very wonderful dog.  I will get to do this again in a couple of weeks but only for 2 days instead of 4.

With all the dog sitting it was hard to get time to bake bread.  I did manage to do that on Tuesday evening.  

FINALLY!  A loaf worth showing.  This is just a basic white bread made in my bread machine.  The last couple have not turned out this nice.  I was so happy.  I am still working on getting a sourdough starter going.  My second try turned out horrible also.  Today, I will do more research and find another way to make the starter and try again.

Our dogs get a small amount of wet dog food in their evening meal for their coats.  We order it off line from PetCo, as it is much cheaper than going to the store, which is 3 blocks away, and buying it.  This week is the first time we had any issues with the delivery.

Every can looked like this, if not worse.  I called the company immediately.  What wonderful customer service.  They sent a new case out to us, no charge, and it arrived 2 days later.  I asked if they wanted any photos of the damage and they said they believed me and to just dispose of the product.  I am NOT going to dispose of the product (other than the one can that burst open).  The cans will be donated to a rescue that wants/needs them.

Yesterday, (Saturday) Hubby and I spent the day at our church helping to put on a retreat.  If you read my post from yesterday you already know about this.  It is a retreat to help inform people, interested in becoming Catholic, about the beliefs and traditions of our faith.  It is such a long day.  We start the retreat at 7am and it goes until 10pm.  This old lady's body is not happy with her this morning.  I have backed off from quite a few of the duties I used to do for this retreat, but am still the official photographer.  This means I was walking around our church campus all day and night taking photos of all different aspects of the people and things going on.  Trust me, I got my steps in for the day!

Now for this:

Today is day 3 of 30.  Yup, doing this again this year.  I have picked the theme of thankfulness this year.  Each day I post what I am thankful for.  I figured this would be super easy.  Here it is day three and I am already struggling with it.  Not that I do not have anything to be thankful for, but the fact I have so many things to be thankful for.  It is hard to pick just one. 

Today I am very thankful for my husband.  He is not a perfect person (neither am I) but he is the perfect one for me.  He keeps me very grounded since I tend to be a bit flighty at times.  He can make me laugh just as I am taking myself too seriously.  He is sensitive to my days when my body is betraying me.  He is my rock when my world seems to be falling apart.  He is the one I can always turn to when I need someone to 'get' me.  He even enables my love of crafting.  I have been truly blessed these past 44 years.  My husband, Joe, is what I am thankful for today.

Excuse me, while I go and tell him how much I love him.

Until Next Time..................Happy Crafting!!!!!!!!!!!!

DAY 2 OF 30

I bet you thought I was not going to make a post for today.  WRONG!  It is 10:11pm here so I made it under the wire.

We got up at 5 this morning and went on a retreat at our church.  We got home about 30 minutes ago.  We are bone tired.  But it is a good type of tired.

So today I am thankful for the freedom of religion.  After spending 14 hours helping with formation of new Catholics, it occurred to me, there are so many places where Christianity is punishable by death.  Living in a country where you are free to practice your religion without fear is wonderful.  

That is all from me for today.  TTYL

DAY 1 OF 30

I will once again try and write a blog post daily for the next 30 days.  Some will be short and some long.  I really wanted to try and make a theme for this years 30 days.

There is one blogger, whom I follow, who will be doing a minimalist theme where she will be parting with items from her home that match the day number. (IE. day 16 remove 16 items from your home)  This does appeal to me.  Hubby even thought it was a grand idea.  Then we realized, we are going to be away from said home many days this month.  Therefore, this did not seem feasible.

How about casting on a new project each day of the month? Are you kidding me?  I would end up with 30 projects in a basket by the end of the month.  After really considering this for about 10 seconds, I threw it out the window.  I don't even think I have enough knitting needles or crochet hooks to have that many projects going at once. (Actually, I just checked and I do have enough crochet hooks to do that!)

Then there was the though of taking my camera out each day and taking a photo to post.  Once again, with us being out of town and having spotty WiFi coverage while away, this did not seem like the perfect idea.  This one was probably my favorite idea.  I really want to get to know my camera better.  This would have been the perfect plan.

The last idea I came up with is a tried and true one.  Several bloggers do it each year in November.  This is the month of giving thanks.  Each day I would post something I was thankful for in my life.  This would be super easy to do.  I am usually a glass half full type of person.  It really doesn't seem very challenging to me, yet, it would be something I could do even if I was traveling.

So, this is the first day of the month.  Today I am very thankful for my house.  It isn't just a house.  It is a home.  We have lived in this home for over 30 years.  Our children were raised in this home.  We have laughed, cried, yelled and loved in this home.  It is the place I always feel safe.  It is not a mansion.   It is not fancy.  It is the home where my memories are alive.  It is the home I love and am truly thankful for.

What are you thankful for?