Something that continuall amazes me…

are the heartfelt prayers that you all lift up for those you do not know.  Will you join us all again as we pray for a baby in our church?  Updates on Joe can be found here.

Once again…

we were quiet

Can’t… breathe…

Currently Listening Mark Schultz By Mark Schultz see related

<GASP>  As you have probably seen over at Corin’s blog, things are a bit smoky around these parts.  I took these photos down our street yesterday afternoon, but it is even worse today!

There have been fires all over our state the past couple of weeks and the smoke just loves to settle into the valley.

Remember all of the pictures of the beautiful green field we had?  Do those of you out of state remember how jealous you were?

We now have lovely, dead weeds, everywhere!  We do keep the area up by the house green for our pleasure and for fire prevention.

Aaaaah, the Golden State, I think it was named that after the color of the sky in Summer

We have been enjoying our week so far, lots of visiting with church families.  We were invited over to the V’s on Sunday for lunch and had a wonderful time visiting, eating, knitting and playing games.

Hey Rob, I think this game was a “blood bath” too, right up there with Parcheesi

Yesterday afternoon we went to another family’s for the afternoon.  The kids (and Mr.R) all swam the day away, my brothers were still tired when they woke up this morning, I guess part of that could have been how late we stayed We had such a great time visiting with them and their neighbors (Mrs.R’s sister and her girls) that it was soon eleven!  Thankfully they live nearby and we were home in ten minutes.

I had another treat yesterday, it came in the mail.

The package from Bren’s giveaway arrived!

When I opened the box this envelope was on top, it made my mom and I smile.  My mom often calls me Dani-Girl as does an old friend of mine 

Hooooo-eeeee, am I spoiled rotten!

Thanks Bren for all of the wonderful gifts, it was so much fun to open, and your hand quilting is amazing!

OH THE INHUMANITY!

Currently Reading Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, … America (or at least the Republican Party) By Rod Dreher see related Moments, I mean mere seconds from when I was going to hit the save changes button on my blog post to make it go live, my computer screen turned blue with a whole bunch of gobbledy gook, and then the whole thing shut down.  It was wrong, SO WRONG!!!  As my notebook started booting back up I hoped that maybe my post was still saved to the clip board.  Windows popped up a window telling me that my system was recovering from an error “Really now?” I said incredulously, “I hadn’t noticed!” (what, you don’t talk to your computer?).  As I brought Xanga back up, it became clear that my post was gone, never to be seen or heard from again.  Pardon my tears, I’ll get over it…eventually. Let’s try this again… The weather here has been pretty hot.  Since last Saturday the five day forecast for our area has shown that the last two days will be in the upper eighties.  Every day I look again, and every day it is still the last two days, that is until last night.  Last night they took off one of my eighty degree days! Today it hit 100, good ice cream weather!  Yesterday I made chocolate, and then today I made my memom’s vanilla (which actually has hardly any vanilla in it).  The vanilla makes a large batch, so I made half in our electric electric ice cream churn and Aaron happily cranked the rest in our bigger churn. Tuesday we celebrated Pixie Girl’s first birthday.  After making Little Miss Feisty’s skirts in April, I realized there was still plenty of fabric to make some matching ones for the Pixie.  I halved the length of the fabric and shortened the smallest size by a few inches.  My mom and I went out shopping last Friday and I had no luck finding matching tops.  My mom suggested taking some Wonder-Under and applying it to the remaining skirt fabric and using them on some plain onesies.  I was very happy with how they turned out. So now that I have spent the time retyping all of this, my dad is now home and I am sure the ice cream is ready to be consumed… Oh, my mom, Corin and I were quiet tonight too.

“GET ‘ER DONE!!!”

Currently Listening Great Songs of George Gershwin By Various Artists see related

Or so says a frequent visitor of my dad’s workplace.

In my case, I got ‘er done!  Here is the blouse I was working on last week. The pintucks and buttonholes intimidated me, but I looked that vicious monster in the face and found out that it really wasn’t that scary after all!  The whole blouse went together so smoothly that I was sure I was doing something wrong.  My mom helped me alter the pattern so that it fits perfectly (thanks mom) and she also took pictures for me this evening (thanks again mom ).

I finished up another sewing project this afternoon, I used some more of this fabric that I bought back in January.  Just a little bit of it, although that is just about all that is left.  I have been surprised at how far it has stretched.  Our local Jo-Ann’s has continued to get in more and more Alexander Henry fabric, which makes my mom and I very happy.  He has such great designs and the hand of the fabric is amazing!  I’ll show what I made in a week or so, I have a few things I need to pick up to go with it before I show you all.

The weather here continues to get hotter.  We actually had to turn on our air conditioner yesterday and the local weatherman is saying 101 by Saturday.  Will has been hanging out in the pool every afternoon, I think he has the right idea.

Well, our home state has made national news yet again, doesn’t it make a person proud? Hmmm, maybe it is time for CA to drop off into the Pacific like they said it was supposed to years ago, I think the rest of the US would be happier for it.  You shouldn’t get looks of disgust when you tell people where you are from, you know?

This is Dani, signing out.