I'm A Winner!

This weekend is my quilt guild's biennial quilt show. It's the first time I have ever entered a quilt in a show to be judged. Imagine my surprise when I walked in this morning and saw this:

There are over 250 quilts displayed in this show -- lots of beautiful ones created by quilters much more experienced than me. I entered my "Spreading My Wings" quilt, and my award is 2nd place for a pieced, bed-size quilt. Yessssssss!!

All the winners get to wear one of these:

My quilting buddies, the "Scissor Sisters" decided that we should display our quilts from our class at Long Beach last summer. Some of us did "Dresden Plates" and some did "Fans". It's fun to see how something so similar can look so different when done in different fabrics and color.

And that was my exciting week.

Keeping Busy

Since my intentions to add more to "What Do We Do In The Summertime" never came to fruition, thought I would share one of the many things that has been keeping me busy. This began as a class that my quilting buddies and I took at the Long Beach Quilt Festival in July. Michele, our friendship group leader, suggested that it would be fun if we all put our completed quilts in our quilt guild's upcoming quilt show. So, after many long hours and late nights, it's now complete. It's only 25" square, but it's hand-appliqued and hand-quilted.

The 4-Runner Reaches a Milestone

Oh What Do We Do In The Summertime?

We make very quick weekend trips to Utah over the 4th of July!

The whole family gathered for Landon's blessing: Jeff, Amy, & baby-to-be from Denver, the Larsen's from Cedar City, the Hooper clan from Arkansas, Michael & Cali Gma & Gpa from California.

All the grandchildren with Grandma and Grandpa Great. We're so glad that they made the trip to American Fork to be with us for the blessing.

Landon is such a cutie and his sisters absolutely love him.

Spending the 4th of July with the family in Park City was sooooo much fun!

Uncle Jeff can hardly wait to hold his own little guy! He needs to be patient for just a few more months.

Aren't they cute parents-to-be?

CaliGma & Gpa with Landon. But where are all our other cute grandchildren? We need to fire the photographer!!

What Happened to Spring?

As usual, we're way over due for a update. April and May was pretty eventful for us which is why, now that it's nearly June, we're wondering how we missed out on Spring.

Mid-April took us up to Utah -- a few days with Nicole, Jon and the girls. Brooklyn is always so excited to see us and keeps reminding us throughout our visit how happy she is that we are there. She and Jacey planned a birthday party for Grandpa complete with games and balloons.

We played Pin the Tail on the Donkey!

Grandpa's favorite: Banana Cream Pie!!

And he even blew out all the candles!!!

It's was hard to leave.

We then traveled up to Logan to spend a couple of days with Grandma & Grandpa Crosbie whom we hadn't seen since last June. Our next destination was down to Provo to participate in Jeff & Amy's graduation from Brigham Young University. We were privileged to be able to hear President Uchtdorf and Elder Russell M. Nelson at the Commencement on Thursday, and then ended up with numb bums after sitting in the Marriott Center for about 7 hours on Friday for Jeff & Amy's Convocations. It was a joyful occasion.

Proud Graduates

Gotta love those Cougars

And the grandparents were even given a graduation gift:

And lastly, it seems like every occasion we've had in Provo has included this:

(Look close -- those are BIG snowflakes!!!)

We then headed home to get ready for the next big event -- Steve's double hernia surgery. He wasn't looking forward to this and has been impatiently waiting to be able to resume yard work and house projects ever since (8 very long weeks). However, next Monday, he gets to undergo another surgery to repair the damage to his leg from his ATV accident last summer. Oh, by the way, there are no pictures of these events. :)

Our next great event was the birth of our new grandson on May 7th. Michael and I got to make a trip back to Cedar over Memorial weekend to see this handsome little dude.

Now we understand why April and May just whizzed by!

Much Ado About Nothing

Well, yesterday the stitches came out and I thought you might be interested in seeing what was under all that packing --


My wrist and hand were pretty bruised, but now it's only my knuckle that's still slightly discolored. Best of all, I'm able to bend my thumb a little. As the swelling subsides, it should soon be back to normal.


It's kind of sad that this is the most exciting thing going on in our lives right now!! Wait until I post pictures of Dad's upcoming vein stripping and hernia operations. =}

Ouch!

This little piggy has an owee --

Little Miss Thumb doesn't bend.

She went to see the doctor,

Now Miss Thumb is on the mend.

Moving On

We thought we should report that we've gotten through the month. Dad's been officially unemployed for a week now and has been keeping busy by working on several projects around the house. We're trying to keep optimistic as we try to figure out what our options are. We have so appreciated all the love, concern and prayers from everyone.

So, now it's time to move on to happier things . . .

I keep promising to post my quilts so you all can see what I've been working on. My "quilt album" will posted soon. However, for the past two weeks it's been petal to the metal as a friend and I put together a quilt for our recently released Bishop. I've never had to complete one quite this fast; the one I made for Grandma and Grandpa's anniversary was put together in about a month, but we were given a very short timeline for this one. I would come home from work each night and sew from 5-11 or until I couldn't see what I was doing. I figured out that I personally spent a minimum of 40 hours just piecing it and another 3 hours quilting it today. We finished it just in time to take to the Ward social this evening. So, for your viewing pleasure:

The Bishop loved his quilt!

Day 3

Still numb and tomorrow starts another week. We will begin it with baby steps, keep our chins and heads up, try to remain positive, and are grateful for all the concern and prayers that are being offered on our behalf. Our faith, family, and friends is what keeps us grounded. We love you all.

A Changing Day

I've been reading through the blogs we've posted during the past year. It's been fun and interesting to go back and re-read what we've written and to discover that we've created a sort of history about us. I was also watching one of my quilting programs tonight where they were discussing how to create blogs. They described them as kind of a diary where we can write about events that take place in our lives so that we can later go back and see what we learned and how we grew from our experiences. It's kind of like writing in our journals -- something I'm not very good about doing. There are personal experiences that are more appropriate for a journal that I would never put in my blog. Then there are experiences that we all share in and putting them in a blog seems appropriate. Today has been one of those experiences.

I remember the feeling of panic we felt in 1971 when we were graduating from college, had a new baby, our apartment had been rented out from underneath us, our car needed major repairs, and we had no jobs. Working odd jobs and a few months of pounding the pavement, we finally had a job which eventually located us to California. The years since have been good and employment has been the least of our worries. We've actually been talking about and looking forward to retirement in about 3-4 years.

Several weeks ago we were talking with our bishop and he ask us about our jobs. We both expressed that we felt pretty secure, that both of our jobs entailed responsibilities that were somewhat unique in our workplaces. Today's events were something that Steve says that he never saw coming. Being told that you are being layed off because the company is down-sizing really sucks!! He's been with this company for 35 1/2 years -- far longer than any of his co-workers, hardly ever taken a sick day, always on time, and willing to do whatever was needed to get the job done.

The first hour following the "news", we were in shock and disbelief. After reality began to hit, then came feelings of panic, hurt, anger and tears (on my part). The kids have all been so great with their calls of concern and advise. Stef's comment was one of the best: "You don't mess with my dad!!" Our bishop was at our door before Steve got home from work -- he's such a great person, a good friend, and just happens to be a labor attorney. He has offered to go through all the paperwork with us to make sure no labor laws were violated (age, being near to retirement, current medical concerns, etc). We're going to take it day by day and are trying to remain positive. We'll keep you updated.

It's About Time

You can interpret the meaning of the title however you want -- either way would be appropriate. Since January has been really unexciting at our house, we're going to backtrack and give you a Christmas review.

Our house was bursting at the seams as we shared the holidays with Jeff and Amy, and Nicole, Jon, Jacey, and Brooklyn. Needless to say, a great time was had by all. The only thing that would have made it better would have been having the Hoopers here too.