Shocking News

This isn't the shocking news that will come after this. But this is a piece I finished last fall and my sister framed it brought it back with her Monday. It's hanging in my parents room now.

I haven't had much time to stitch this past week and probably won't until stitch a lot until the weekend. The next few days are going to be rough and hectic.

I've mentioned my parents health problems before and that my mom had a second ankle surgery taking out the screws putting in earlier as they broke loose. The surgery was a month ago. It was healing good but then last week in Physical Therapy the therapist noticed a blister on back of her foot. So the therapist called the Dr. Her regular Dr. wasn't there and she saw one of his partners. That partner was not nice and just says..."That is just a popped blister." and put a small bandaid on it and left. Yea right with all that drainage! My dad rewrapped it. Thursday morning she found a second popped blister that was draining very bad so dad called the office emergency. That Dr. was really nice told dad how to wrap it and prescribed a strong antibiotic. That seemed to be working so we thought. Although mom and dad could feel the screw at bottom of her foot. She went back to the Dr. and received really bad news and her and dad have 24 hours to make their decision. One is they can redo the surgery clean everything out and put a rod in. No guarantees that will work. Or two lose her her leg up to the shin bone. Needless to say mom is very upset and dad is concearned. My sister left yesterday but she's coming back today to be with mom. Kay is a RN and she wants to talk to someone in the Dr. office etc.

Also tomorrow I have a scope scheduled to find out if my Acid Reflux Disease has progressed or if something else is going on in my stomach. I've had problems with my chest and upper stomach for months now and the past couple weeks have been worse. I was going to cancel it by my family will be very upset if I do. Don't know how I'll get to the hospital as I don't drive. Maybe if my sister is still here she will take me. I just hope it isn't bad news. If it is I'm not telling my parents at this point.

I usually don't ask this and I usually try to be up beat but we are really concearned about our parents they are up in age and both have CHF. So please pray for them as they make this decision. Thank you.

At last a Finish

This is finish no. 4 towards the 25-50 challenge. (Twenty five books I haven't stitched from or 50 pieces altogether. So far this counts as 4 both ways. It was a quick easy finish. Now to go start the Christmas piece I kitted up.

I'm keeping this one short as I've said plenty the last few days. Until next time. Happy Stitching!

Thanksgiving

How was everyone's Thanksgiving? Ours was good. This picture is funny. My niece's husband held up this big Turkey Leg asked who wanted it and 12-year-old Andrew spoke up for it. So here he is holding up the Turkey Leg before we all get ready to eat. He didn't eat quite all of it, but he gave it a good try. We had so much food and it was fun.

My nephew Bryan and his fiancee Krissy made it in from Chicago. They just announced their engagement and Krissy has a beautiful ring. It had been a couple of years since I had seen Bryan and he has sure matured a lot. He was a 21 year old kid and Krissy had just came into his life when I last saw him at Heather's Wedding 23 months ago. He was a man now not a kid. Michelle made it in from OR. Michelle the vegetarian, and Heather who had never made a turkey before made the turkey and did a good job. The meal was so good. Bryan did take some teasing from us because he was asked to bring the ingrediants for Greaen Bean Casserole and Krissy would make it up at Heather's house. Well, he brought a can of Peas along with the other stuff. He felt peas belonged in the casserole.

My sister and brother-in-law made it in with their dog from other side of state. Because of a skin problem healing up they didn't want to kennel Maveric. He got along well with Heather and Brian's dog, Trisket. The dogs were in the basement most of the time, but some of us went and saw them and the dogs were brought up a couple of times to greet everyone. Michelle and I took the dogs for a walk and Trisket for being so big was so good to walk with. She didn't pull, she just walked beside me. Maverick is on a mission when he walks, he just wants to walk, Trisket wanted to "stop and smell the flowers" and observe everything.

It was a fun day that ended too soon. Fortunately the weather was decent for us I don't know about those going to other side of the state. Today it is snowing out so let the Christmas Holidays begin I guess.

Well until next time Happy Stitching! I hope to have Autumn's Harvest finished tomorrow morning so I'll post then.

Start No. 4-Swirly Snow

I decied to lay down The Caretaker for a few days to do a couple of easy projects. This piece is called Swirly Snow. It's a SAL with some members at 123 stitch. One of the members designed it and we really liked it. I will have to lay it down for the day since it is on black and the sun just isn't out today and it's getting drearier out so lighting is poor. I'm going to start Autumn Harvest by Brittercup Designs. That one I will work on in the car tomorrow on our way to my niece's house. We call it my "shut up" piece that way I'm not all over the driver who in this case will be my dad. We are taking the back way as it is much quicker and easier than getting on to the expressway. As long as we don't get behind a slowpoke.
Hopefully the roads are clear for my nephew and his girlfriend coming in from Chicago and my niece is flying in from OR. Hopefully she will miss the messy weather.

Michelle will be in MI for a week although most of it at her parents on other side of state. Tues. we are having a mini get together as some won't be there tomorrow. We are hoping Tabitha can take her noon hour and join us and meet Michelle. She looks so much like Michelle. (Tabitha is my niece but we only recently learned about her long story I don't care to go into at this point). Michelle has a job interview at a college near here on Monday. In the spring her Internship ends so her and Scott have applied to be Professors at several different colleges. Needless to say they are applying all over but going to live where they can either be at the same college or a college near by. (Both have their Phd.'s in Chemistry)

Our weather is iffy the next couple of days although they said today would be bad and so bad it's not. Tomorrow is suppose to be okay, snow or rain at times but not bad.

Well Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving. Until next time Happy Stitching!

The Caretaker 200 Hours

I've done a lot of stitching this past week and got quit a bit further. Three in a half pages are now completed. Page 4 is going quite fast and so far it's been my favorite page. You can see the elk just barely coming in. I have now stitched on it 200 hours and will still keep at it.

My mom felt like she was Queen for the Day at church. This lady gave her a lot of jewlery she had made. It was beautiful stuff. This lady is very talented in crafts she can do almost everything including cross stitching, quilting, fabric painting, sewing, jewlery making. Well you got the idea. Than another lady made some Pecan Pie and gave her a piece to make sure she took home with her. Mom loved it.

We had our annual Harvest Dinner after church today. As usual the food was really good. And there was lots left over. We had a large turnout. On the way home we had a little excitement. One of the ladies on the bus lives in a bad part of town and we saw a fight. The bus driver gets off the bus yells at the boys to stop and after 3 attempts at calling 911 he just got through when a police car came behind and he stopped the car to tell them what happened. The lady that lives in the neighborhood also got off the bus to talk to the boys. Man Jim was lucky one of the boys didn't pull a knife on him or have a gun. But they really were beating that boy bad and we were nervous they'd kill him. But all is well that ends well....well hopefully the boy will be okay. Hopefully they won't get the boy later.

Does everyone have Thanksgiving plans? We are going to my niece's house. They just bought a new house so we'll get to see it.

Well, I'm going to try to get a little more stitching in. Just wanted to show the progress after 200 hours stitching even.

The Caretaker

Almost 3 complete pages are done. I'm going to start the 4th page in a few minutes as the blue is getting monotonous. I'm really anxious to get to the next section as I think the Elk will start to come in and the pattern will really look like something then. I am really enjoying this piece. So far I've put in a little over 160 hours and I have worked on it 5 weeks now. I started it 5 weeks ago today infact, so you can see I do have spent probably more time than I should have on it. Oh well.....I'll keep at it for awhile anyway.

We had a Pizza Party for the 3rd-5th graders from Adventure Club last night. They played a lot of games and had pizza. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves. They played a couple of games that usually aren't played at Adventure Club.

I had the Ultra Sound yesterday to see if it's my Gall Bladder causing my problems. We really don't think it is, we sort of think it's the Acid Reflux Disease in large part. And I think it is but man the discomfort and nausea I feel at times. A part of me wonders if I'm just drinking too much Pepsi.
Afterwards I went to my parents to unpack some of their photo albums etc. But the ones mom really want are still in storage so we'll need to get them out. Also spoiled the dog some more. I missed that dog. She's quite a character and when I left I told her I'd try not to stay away so long and she just looked at me and listened intently. Of course she got a couple good walks out of me. She leads me where she wants to go!

Well until next time Happy Stitching!

Our Little Pumpkin

Johnny was a little Pumpkin on Halloween night. I love this picture of him so had to share it.

I have a feeling I'm in for a 3rd night without heat! I called Maitenance yesterday, he came and fixed it and at night it went out again. He came again today and now tonight it's not working again. I am very unhappy. Tomorrow I can call the office. I'll just tell them I need heat at night. Right now it's not so bad as it only gets down to 30's but tomorrow is suppose to turn cold I really need the heat then. As it is I'm fighting a cold from not having heat!

I'm still stitchng on The Caretaker. Not a lot further. Well until next time Happy Stitching!

"Trunk Or Treat"

Unfortunately I didn't think to take my camera to church last night but the Trunk or Treating seemed to be a big success. This is new to us but is common on other side of the state. People from the church put candy in their trunks, decorate them and the Trick or Treaters get candy from them. Since our church is fairly small and this is our first time we only had 7 cars but lots of Trick or Treaters. I was inside with the Adventure Club kids. We had about 20 kids which is more than we thought we would. We took the kids to the 7 cars where they got some candy. Than while the kids and some of us leaders were listening to the chalk artist some other leaders took their bags and filled them up with candy donated from members of our church and from us leaders. The kids were amazed how much candy they got! That should keep them happy for a couple of weeks. I'm sure their parents love us for loading them up with all that sugar! Those bags were filled!
The kids really seemed to enjoy the Chalk Artist it was something different from our noraml program. Fortunately the rain held off. In this area you can only Trick or Treat between the hours of 6 and 8 pm. It's for the child's safety. Most of the trick or treaters are done by 7:30. My parents had a few kids come to their apartment but their favorite two were their Great Grand Sons, 4 year old Ashton brought by his mommy Tabitha and 10 month old Johnny brought by his mommy, Melissa. I can't wait to see the pictures of those two. My nephew Andrew (12) decided at 12 years old he was too old to Trick or Treat so he handed out the candy instead.
I've been working on The Caretaker quite abit. Page 2 is almost done, but I went to page 3 as I knew it would be a boring page so I could go back to page 2 when 3 got too boring. I know I'm wierd!
Well I have a Board Meeting at church tonight. First we have a joint meeting of all boards to discuss something than we'll meet in our own boards. Usually they don't do that but are tonight.
Until next time Happy Stitching!