A Very Very Grateful Day....

Thanksgiving....the glorious November day in Charlotte.

Here they are...the darlings. 

Dylan is wearing the shirt I made his father when he was 6.

I love generational things.  I used fun food fabric..

Three darlings, but only one princess!!!

Voila..the Thanksgiving skirt.

Uncle Bri teaching Lynsey how to count the marshmallows on the tators..
He is so clever.

See how she learns!!!  L for Lynsey...the sweet potato way.

This year...an outside event.

My girl made it all so special!!
Tradition has us using our Christmas china at Thanksgiving.

The feastly complications...:

I was thrilled to have my brother here with his wife, not so much their 16 cats in their rented van.

We had a lovely time laughing and playing traditional canasta...

My brother's leg is awful.  If he continues to be homeless, his leg will not heal.

He will eventually have to lose his leg or his life thru sepsis.

They had agreed to look at a trailer park my DIL had seen before.

It was all set up.  Then SIL refused to go.  She preferred to live in the van.

There is nothing I can do.  They have left.

I am glad they came.

My girl has made Thanksgiving a real feast.

She and her man are outstanding cooks.

I did nothing. So happy....so grateful..so proud..
My girl brought the joy with her.
She and her man continued traditions that the grands will hold dear.

Even surrounded with such love, tears came.  There is an emptiness that can never be filled.
There is a feeling of desperation and despair...
This is not a mind thing, it is a gut thing born of loss.

They have left.  I am so grateful that they came.

There is joy in the coming and sadness in the leaving.

That is the way of life.

The Faust Groupies

We fabric addicts struck gold at Faust Thursday..10 women searching for the best...

So exhausted and ready for lunch...what better way to spend a day.
 Treasure hunting at $2.50 a pound.
Faust is a wholesale fabric store in Kings Mountain, North Carolina.

Look at some of the loot that came from that pile...ha ha..so much fun.
Also got Insul-Brite and 505 spray basting for 50% off...

Need has nothing to do with desire....Unfortunately money does!!!!
The Juki......hmmmm
Juki review by Crafty Gemini

Evan is such a dear...at 10 years old we can hang out together.
 Last night we watched the coverage of Hurricane Andrew from 1992.
  Mr.O'Quilts and our family lived through the storm, lying in the hallway, covered with a mattress.
Our house was 5 minutes from the National Hurricane Center where this video came from..
Lucky us survived with only broken windows and missing trees.
Emily was sorting through the VHS tapes when we came upon this one..

The three of them are growing up....I love them so.

Pumpkin misses my dear man too...We have decided to sew together!!!
Himself would have been pleased.

Hello Silence, my old friend..

I had my group over as usual on Wednesday night.  I so needed help with this top.  There was one block that was driving me nuts..I felt that I had to take it apart and switch it around due to value.

Ten women looked to find the mistake.  Ten women chose 10 different blocks that they thought were causing the problem...Lordy!!!

The photo showed no problem at all...so I am leaving it.

I need two more rows for this quilt top..Putting it away for a rainy day!

Great Aunt Carl in Greenville, Alabama gave me a cutting of her Gardenia bush many moons ago.

She died last year on my mother's birthday.

She would be thrilled to see how that one rooting has make a huge tree all in bloom here.

A little family fun...little kids in their pool. 

 Three kids????

Thank you soo soo much Aunt Brandy for taking the three children today for the weekend.

My three and your three make six..You are a saint.

The sound of silence roars its relaxation!!!

So Come Again Another Day......

The visitors left.  But....They booked a flight back in June...How about that.  How awesome is that...so we do not feel alone and do not feel like it is goodbye forever. 

 Awesome is the key word.

The visit was a great success in many ways.  Geraldine bought the kids books...

Well..Dear Evan who hates to read has almost finished the book she bought whilst sipping tea..the Irish way :)  Geraldine knows math too and Declan  fixes screens and handles household spiders..

A big thanks to both of you.....now safely back home in Dublin.

Quilting night...deciding to just finish off bottles of gift wine, etc....gotta recycle, you know...

 Muggs got carried away at the store with bday cakes!!  No one complained!!

 Cleaning day...all hands on board.  Someone.... is the only one small enough to get into the bottom freezer to clean out the ice...you go girl.

 A race with the dog..better these two than me..How much fun!!!!

...

 Non stop nerve racking construction.  No wonder there is no quilting post.

Now all the downstairs doors are wheelchair accessible. 

 Sometimes it is just too much. 

 Mr. O'Quilts has now ordered a trapeze for his hospital bed so he can get up and turn over.

 Random cheer...Molas...What to do with all of these that I got in Panama years and years ago...I just had to throw this one in...

And then there is this cool power cord covers tute..I put it in my Evernote files for future reference when things calm down...when things calm down...when things calm down...

I am out of chocolate.

Good night.