Thanks, Murphy. I appreciate it. Not.

Yep, it's been one of those days.

My "good" sewing machine has been throwing fits, so I finally decided to quit fighting with it and busted out the big old one. When I say "big old one" - I'm not exaggerating.

I love this machine. Absolutely love it. I love all 36 pounds of solid metal that runs so smoothly and quietly, compared to the roughness of the 14 pound plastic one. A friend gave it to me years ago, and it's gotten many, many hours of use from me.

It's old. But it worked great - for about an hour. And then it froze. And it's dead. It did this to me once before and it eventually came back to life, but I don't know if that's going to happen this time or not. I think I'm finally going to just have to bite the bullet and take both of them in to get them serviced - as soon as I find someone who will do it and not charge an arm and a leg for it.

So now I'm stuck with no machine to use - but thanks to a plea on facebook, a friend is going to loan me her machine. I'm going to take off as soon as I get the boys to school in the morning and head to Wichita to get it from her and hopefully, it will work *crossing fingers*. I'm running out of time to get this thing done!

On top of that, the ceiling light in my laundry room decided to quit working today. No, it's not just burned out - something's up with the socket. So I have to call the landlord and see if I can get him out here to fix it, because of course, that's the only light source in that room.

However, in an effort to not be completely and totally negative tonight....

I did manage to get out and walk about 4.5 miles today. Just walking, not at speed or anything, but I got out there and did it. Now, if I can just keep that up....

On one of my walks, I went to get the boys from school. We were walking back with a little girl who is Alex's age (and her mother and little brother) and as we were crossing the bridge over the local (dried up) creek, something caught my eye. I looked down into the puddle that used to be the creek (seriously, it's about 3" deep at most) and sure enough, there was a critter down there. We all stopped and watched him moving around for a few minutes, and then walked down off of the bridge and to the water's edge to see if we could see him closer, but he had disappeared. He was a good sized one too - probably about 6" long.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love this camera? I took that picture from the bridge above the water. I'm not sure how tall it is, but that crawdad was probably about 20-25' away from us and I still managed to get that picture of it.

So....it definitely wasn't the most stellar day ever - but there have been worse.

Quilt progress

As promised, here are some more pictures of the t-shirt quilt as it progresses...

The completed top

The Dude helping to set up the tables to quilt it.

Getting it on the frame.

THIS is why I need at least an 8-foot long table.

And after I preach at the kids about leaving books laying
around on the floor, I use them to level the tables. *sigh*

Ready to quilt.

The quilting in progress.

So, before any of you ask, the gizmo that I use to do the actual quilting - the frame thingamajig - I don't remember exactly what it's called, but it was made by HandiQuilter. I do not think that they make these any more. I bought mine off of Ebay years ago so other than that, I have no idea where to tell anyone to get one. It's a pain in the butt to get it set up and get the quilt onto it, but it works (for the most part).

I worked on the quilting for a few hours this afternoon. I had to fight with the sewing machine and threaten to throw it through a window, but it's working *knock on wood* at the moment. Hopefully I can get all of the quilting done in the next day or two, and then I can get the binding done and it'll be ready to go by Saturday.

No pressure. ;)

More volleyball and craftiness

So today was Emily's last round of volleyball games. She didn't get to play because of her back, but she still went and stood on the sidelines and cheered for the rest of her teammates.

Sarah was a line judge again.

Not necessarily impressed with having to sit and watch.
Again.

Bored, bored, bored.

After we got home from the games, I worked on the quilt top some more. I got the top completely assembled, and now I just have to figure out what I want to do as far as the quilting goes on it. Actually, I know what I *want* to do, but I don't know if my sewing machine will cooperate long enough to let me do it. I need to get it all set up tomorrow - but I have to wait for The Dude to get off work so that he can help me do it, because I need another set of adult hands.

I also played around with the little keychain pouch thingees that I got the pattern for the other day - still trying to tweak them to get them to come out exactly right, but I'm definitely getting closer!

Tomorrow, Alex is supposed to go with his father for the day - which leaves just me and Daniel for most of the day. We'll go to church, and then come back here and hang out and clean and sew until The Dude gets off work, and then we'll just add him into the mix!

Parting shot - seems like just last week we were dealing with the constant 110-degree heat. I'd like to have that back please. I do not like turning my furnace on during the first week of October. That is just wrong.

My weekend challenge

A while back, a friend asked me to help her with a project. She needed someone to make a t-shirt quilt for her kids' school fundraiser auction. So I offered to help. It took a little longer than we had hoped to gather enough t-shirts - but now that we have enough, it's time to get the entire thing assembled.

So my goal - no, my mission - for the weekend is to at least get the top of the quilt completely assembled so that it will be ready to finish.

I have about a week to get it completely done.

No pressure, right? ;)

Seriously though, I'm not worried about getting it done - besides, I work better under pressure. And I'm always up for a challenge! However, if I don't get my blog posts done, or I'm not on my facebook page as much - this should explain why!

And yes, of course I will post pictures of it when I get it done.

Crazy day - but in a good way

So. It's been a long day. A really really really long day.

But at the same time, it's been a really good day.

Snapshots of the day - literally:

Because I had to have Emily at the orthopedic surgeon at 7:45 this morning (ugh) The Dude came over to take the boys to school for me. So he rolled in my front door at about 6:00am - normally, that would be reason for me to be not-so-nice to someone - but when that someone comes bearing donuts and chocolate milk, all is forgiven.

We ended up having a breakfast picnic on my bed.

The breakfast picnic then caused me and Emily to run around the house like idiots so that we could get out the door in time to get to her appointment - which we did manage to do. With time to spare, actually. And this is the view that greeted us at one point on our trip this morning...

The appointment itself was fabulous - after we waited for close to 45 minutes to be seen. Seriously, how does that happen with a 7:45am appointment? How can they be running that late 15 minutes after they open the doors?

Anyway, the orthopedic surgeon was a very nice guy. He examined Emily - and really questioned her about her pain and whatnot. He talked to us and listened to our concerns. He showed us the xrays and went over them in detail with us. And his final determination is that she does NOT have any compression fractures. He still wants her to stay out of sports for a month just to be safe, because she does hurt - and he'll check her out again in about 4 weeks just to be sure. But she's ok.

When I got home from that, I found a package in my mailbox - one that I had been expecting. A friend of mine had a spare digital camera laying around, and so she sent me her old one! I have been without mine ever since the tail end of our vacation this summer and it's been driving me nuts - and now I have one again. It's actually a really nice little camera, and a little more advanced than what I'm used to, so I'm sure that I will be spending quite a bit of time over the next few days weeks taking lots of pictures to figure out all of the settings on it. And I know she's getting tired of hearing me say "thank you" but I'm saying it again - THANK YOU!!! You are awesome, and I appreciate it so much!

Then we had Sarah's volleyball games this afternoon/evening. 139.2 miles round trip to get to these games. We didn't get home until almost 10:00, so getting the kids up for school in the morning is going to be more of a nightmare than usual. But, she played well - and there's only one week left!

Downtown really reminded me of "Back to the Future"

Victory! (Sarah in white jersey)

Meeting with coach

When we finally got home from volleyball, the kids all went straight to bed (one bonus of being out so late) and I'm sitting here looking around my trashed house debating what really needs to be done before I go to bed.

I'm actually leaning towards nothing at all. I might just hit "publish", clear off my bed, and crash.

Tomorrow's another day.

A quick project

I took a little bit of time today and went in town to a quilt shop that is closing. All of the stuff in the shop was marked down 25% today, so I went to see what I could find. I managed to restrain myself and not buy any fabric, but I did go through the patterns and I found a few things that I just couldn't resist.

One of the patterns that caught my eye was for something called "Key Fob Pockets" - just a cute little pouch that can be attached to a key chain or purse or backpack, and used to carry ChapStick (my addiction) or a USB drive or other little trinkets.

It took me about an hour to make it. It wouldn't have been that long but the directions kind of sucked and I might have put it together wrong the first time and had to tear it apart and redo it....so it's crooked and a little wonky, but that always happens with the first one.

Now I have better ideas for how to make it easier and faster - and to make it look better when it's done. So now I'm all sorts of excited to make more of them. And sell them. Yup yup.

So other than my craftiness tonight, it's been kind of an 'off' day. I finally decided that I was going to take a nap go straight back to bed after taking the boys to school - and I crashed hard for a couple of hours - before the phone rang and I had to go pick up Daniel from school. He got hit by the Vomit Rocket again and had it all over him from head to toe. I got him home and cleaned up and he was fine for the rest of the day - like I knew he would be.

The usual Wednesday night chaos wasn't quite as bad as it typically is. Sarah and Jared ended up going back to Ex1's house so that his wife can take them to school in the morning - The Dude is coming here in the morning to take Alex and Daniel to school - and I am taking Emily to the orthopedic surgeon (Ex1 is meeting us there). So the morning is going to be a bit funky, but at least we figured out a way that Ex1 and I could both be at the appointment, and all of the other kids would get to school. After we are done there, he will take Emily back to school.

Tomorrow afternoon, we have to travel about 70 miles each way to get to Sarah's volleyball games - which means leaving directly from school when I pick up the boys and heading straight there. Once again I'll be packing supper in a cooler to eat in the stands at the games. I love watching the games - but not the chaos that they tend to create. We'll be lucky to get home by 10pm and then getting the kids up for school Friday morning will be a nightmare.

Thankfully, volleyball is almost over. Then we get a break for a couple of weeks before it starts all over again with basketball - but this time there will be 3 kids participating instead of just two.

I. can't. wait.

Life keeps happening.

It seems like every time things seem to calm down a little bit, they go right back into an uproar...

We had the whole volleyball injury on Saturday...which meant that yesterday was spent getting her into the pediatrician, who then consulted with a neurosurgeon... and at that point we were simply told to eliminate sports for a month and see what happens.

Given that this is her BACK that we're talking about, Ex1 and I discussed it at length and we decided that we are going to get a second opinion - that way, if the injury really isn't that severe - we don't have to worry so much. But on the off chance that something was missed, we'll know now instead of later.

Today was spent making phone calls to make the arrangements to pick up the xrays from the hospital and then to make an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon to get the second opinion. I got that scheduled for Thursday morning, but the receptionist strongly suggested that I come and get the "new patient packet" before then so that I could get it completed.

So I went and picked up the xrays and then made the 60-mile round trip to the orthopedic surgeon's office. On the plus side, now I know where it is so it'll make Thursday morning a little less stressful. The trick will be getting the other 4 kids to school, but Ex1's wife and The Dude will be helping there so that Ex1 and I can both be with Emily at the doctor. And I'm glad that I got the paperwork now, since it took me over an hour to complete all of it. Ugh.

Last night, Alex had Scouts again - and he was absolutely thrilled that he finally got his shirt! He feels all sorts of official now, and has been working on memorizing the stuff that he needs to remember. He likes going to the meetings, and Daniel has fun too - even though he's technically not a Scout.

We found out last night that the one little boy who goes to the meetings is actually Nice Neighbor's grandson - I had seen him at the meetings before, but just never put the two together until last night. So now when he comes to visit his grandmother, he and Alex can play together, which is always a good thing. He's not over there very often so we don't know him well, and he goes to a different elementary school than Alex does so this was a good opportunity for them to get to know each other.

Today was Daniel's first day of all-day kindergarten! He has been looking forward to this day for months. I swear that he's been asking since the first day of school when he could go for all day, and now it's finally here. I dropped the boys off at school for breakfast this morning, and then used my 7 1/2 hours alone to get some things done around the house - not to mention all of the running around that I had to do as well.

When I picked them up from school this afternoon and asked Daniel what it was like to go to school all day, all he could say was that "it was AWESOME!!!!" He's growing up so fast - and I'm just thrilled that he loves school as much as he does.

 The Dude came over this afternoon and we finally got to spend some time together. We took the boys and walked up to a local Mexican restaurant for an early supper. The chairs were all carved and painted and colorful - we were trying to decide if they were handmade or not, and I'm not 100% convinced either way.

 This was the back of the booth where Alex and I were sitting. OK, it looks really really cool - but it's really not that comfortable to lean back against, especially after eating the massive amounts of food that we got.

 I can't decide if the look on his face is cute or evil. I'm kind of leaning towards evil at this point.

After we all ate and got the check, we were amazed at the price. It was about half of what we were expecting to pay. We both looked at the total a couple of times, and then I realized that we were only charged $0.01 for each of the kids' meals - then we realized that this was one of those restaurants where kids eat for free on Tuesday nights.

SCORE!

After we ate, we walked back home and stopped to take a few pictures of the wildflowers along the way. I got the boys bathed and into bed and then The Dude and I hung out while he watched a movie and I filled out the paperwork for Emily's appointment, and then he had to go back to his place to take care of some things.

And now, as usual, it's time for me to work on more laundry and more cleaning and more stuff around the house before I finally crash for the night....