My Beautiful Nephew...
Is he not the most gorgeous little guy? Benjamin is sitting so cool here with Boo. They look like teeny-boppers instead of 4 year-olds.

I got a call, Sunday night, that he was being life-flighted into Indianapolis to Riley Children's Hospital. DH and I drove over there to meet him, so he wouldn't be alone and scared. His mama would take 4 hours to get there. We beat the helicopter and he was happy to see us. Never shed a single tear. Around 1am he lifts his little hands up with IVs in them and gestures towards the bright and noisy nurses station and says, "How am I ever gonna sleep with this?" Out of the mouth of babes. He also wanted to know when they were going to take "this doctor stuff" off. He is doing pretty well, now. He was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. Poor little dear. They have a great program here at Riley- he is in good hands. DH and I have spent the last two nights with him so his mama could get some sleep. Benjamin is such a little trooper. "I'm all better now," is all he ever says if you ask him how he is feeling. With a blood sugar of 600, I doubt he is "all better." But he is desperately wanting to get home and he is too young- just turned five, to understand he'll be going home with all the bother that is with him there. Benjamin told the nurse, last night, "I'm just scared." Broke my heart. But maybe it will help- just a little bit- to know that he has an aunt who knows what it's like. I oogled his meter- he agreed mine was smaller than his- but I didn't have a cool green case like his. And I told him the Bible story of why our bracelets have snakes on a pole. He spent the day in "class." On our way home, DH and I said that if spending a night in a pediatric hospital doesn't just break your heart then you don't have one- a heart, that is.

Something old and silly...
This quilt top came to me via a thrift shop in Arkansas. My SIL thought it was ugly enough for me to like and my DH paid for it, sight unseen. And I do love it. For some inexplicable reason. My favorite fabric is this wristwatch pattern with the bright blue wristbands. Isn't it great how all the watches are set to a different time? The other fabric in the block? hmm... What were they thinking? Well, that is the fun in these old quilts, trying to figure out the pattern. I am hoping to find some time, this year, to quilt it- think it'll quilt up nicely with some cotton batting and muslin on the back. I love taking other people's unfinished projects and completing them. It is such a good feeling. I feel great knowing that this poor unfortunate quilt top- while a bit on the ugly side, isn't wasting away in some box being unappreciated. There is still a lot of work that went into it! Look at those points. This was not a beginner's quilt. Maybe just a quilt made from extreme thrift. I notice there is a lot of peicing going on in the smallest of blocks.

Shopping at Hobby Lobby...
I was amused by Sarah's blog about her latest trip to Hobby Lobby. I felt like I was shopping with her. Hmm... shopping and friends. Now that's a good combination. Apparently, I was shopping while she was blogging. I had only discovered Hobby Lobby fabric about a month ago. Their prices are similiar to quilt shop prices, and as I work in a quilt shop, I couldn't figure why someone would choose to not support a local business. But then, I caught a load of their clearance prices. It is great, quality fabric, and you can get it for $2, $3, and $5 a yard. There is no way a quilt shop can compete with those kind of discounts. I bought 7 yards of the blue floral- guess I'll have enough to back the blue and yellow P/A blossom, and still have some to share with some one I know who loves blue. The yellow is also Sarah's, 2 yards. And the blue... Well, it is a bit bright for Sarah, but I'll happily share if she wants some. The batik I got at the quilt shop to put in the borders of my P/A blossom. No, silly, not the blue one but the bright batik one.

My efforts to accomplish the big 4 s's have been stymmied, lately. We have had house guests for 2 weeks. We have enjoyed their company, but I am about to drop- and I know the kids are exhausted as well. My DH's sister is married to a college professor, so they spend their breaks in our neck of the woods. They do have a house only one mile down the road, but the children insist on spending every moment together. (they have 6 and we have 8- you do the math. It's noisy, any way you look at it.) Summer is a long way away for a kid. Seems a while off to this old mama, too. Bill's grandmother had an amusing saying, "Fish and company stink after three days!" Isn't that a hoot? She also had another one , "When you start smelling yourself, other people have been smelling you for three days!" I think she had a limit of three days for just about everything! But she really was the most patient woman I ever knew. And never an unkind thing to say about anyone. She wouldn't even dream of criticizing the devil. Really. Bill's BIL taught a sermon on Satan, one Sunday, and "Baba" says, "Oh the devil... he's made my life difficult sometimes. Not that I hold it against him. That's his job." She was a very cool lady. I did get side-tracked there, didn't I? Back to the big S's...

There's been a lack of sewing- now that is really sad. I'm just not myself if I can't get a little machine time in. Then there's schooling- I'm not really behind as the children were sitting around the tree on Xmas eve doing math. I had no intention that they do school, but well, they were contentedly doing it, so who am I to stop forward progress? And then there is our normal, daily schedule- shot to peices. Schedules are always open to change, but it really does help to maintain some type of order with a family this size. And the last is sitting- well, if I'm not sitting, then I'm not sewing, so they kinda go together... Oh, and I've thought of another one- socializing! I don't think I have read more than two blogs in all this time!! I feel so out of touch, it's awful. So, after this post I am going surfing, to visit all of my Maverick friends! It'll probably take two weeks just to get through them all!!! See ya!

Request for Prayer...

I'm sure many of you have heard of the mine explosion in West Virginia. My Grandfather was a West Virginia coal miner and when something like this happens, it is more upsetting to the families and communities than you can understand. We were heartbroken to hear this evening that there had been a mistake in the press release and that there had been 13 lost and only one found alive. I am still not sure if that is correct information, but I do know that there are so many families that could use your prayers during this tragic time.

My attempt at blue and yellow...
So, what do you think? I plan on making this one like Bonnie's, with sashing and light-colored cornerstones. I think it'll be alright. I am seriously enjoying my "new" featherweight. I found a note on it, yesterday, that read, "Everytime I see this thing it keeps getting smaller and smaller!!! Are you sure this is what you want? I'm thinking you need a big industrial machine to support your addiction, er... hobby." Oh, he is just too funny. It seems to be plenty big for my needs.

Sarah's other trip around the world...
Isn't she well traveled? She made this quilt for my second DD, Rebekah. Wasn't that a great gift? She also brought me a box of my favorite chocolates. I'm conflicted about which gift I liked the best... Abraham uses the quilt now, and he loves it, too. So the quilt is definitely longer lasting the the pound of chocolate I snarfed down in about two days- hey, I was pacing myself! She made this quilt before we had bought the quilting machine, so it is tied- and it has held up amazingly well. Notice the surprising color combination- I'm afraid it was only the beginning of an apparently life-long obsession. I fuel the fire, as I bought her several yards of blue and yellow, only yesterday. And doesn't she put them together well? It isn't broken, so I don't suggest she fix it. I only like teasing her about it- as she does my affinity for all things orange.

Me, Eva and the 3 foot drift...
Well, it doesn't look like much, but that is the 3 foot drift that Eva and I landed in a few weeks ago. We were on our way to town to run some errands and we hit a "patch" of ice that was about, oh, 100 meters long. I skidded this way and that as the back of the truck kept trying to be the front of the truck. And wouldn't you know, it was on a stretch of road that had telephone poles on both sides! I felt like we were on some sort of medievil obstacle course- with Eva screaming like a girl- ok, she is a girl, but it wasn't helping me any. And wouldn't you know it, I was driving my dad's truck as it had been sitting in the driveway for nearly two weeks and he said the battery needed a spin. So it wasn't my old clunker of a jeep, it was his nice, pretty, shiny truck. Finally, I felt that our luck was gonna run out as were were headed for that next-to-last pole, so I just turned the truck around and slid us into the ditch. Now, how come, when the weather is fair you never take notice of which side of the road has the deepest ditch? If I had chosen the other side, I would have landed in 3 inches of snow. As it was, I choose the 3 foot snow drift to land in. It was a fairly soft landing and Eva finally quit screaming- to burst into tears, and I was just so glad I missed that last telephone pole. I felt so foolish- cars started stopping to see if I had a cell phone to call someone- honestly, there is rarely a car on that road, but it was getting time for school to be in, so there were dozens of gawkers- like they never saw anyone in a ditch. Oh well. Dear husband came to the rescue- it was only one mile down the road from our home. He brought my two oldest boys. They were grinning from ear to ear- figure this wasn't something that we could keep in the family. Oh, no, now they have proof. They walk around the truck surveying the predicament I'm in- still all grins. Boys. Then I notice that the 15 yr old is three feet shorter than the 14 yr old. Wonder when they'll notice? Finally, Joe looks up at his little brother and they both burst out laughing. Joe is a hefty fellow- and his size 14 shoes still aren't big enough to hold him on top of the snow. Dan is as thin as a fence rail- and his size 13 shoes were acting like snowshoes- there he was just walking along on top of the snow, while Joe is trudging with snow up to his hips! They came with shovels and salt- gonna dig me out as I am actually on top of the 3 feet of snow. About 30 minutes into it, a second car slides- on the very same place- and ends up in the ditch. I felt a little better. It took almost 3 hours to get me out of there, with the help of 3 more school boys- Brock, Nathan and Brandon- thank you. And just as an aside- naming your child Brock will probably assure that he will be built like a small locomotive and have freckles and red hair. The kid was huge and it felt funny writing, "Please excuse Brock from being tardy- he helped me get out of a ditch." I wonder if it worked. But I don't think these boys are new to being in trouble. Here they all were, sitting shoulder to shoulder in an old beat-up pick-up truck- the type that looks suspiciously like the kind you see out late on Saturday night bashing in mail boxes. (Is that an Indiana thing? Nothing to do, so the youngin's make a sport of taking baseball bats to all the mail boxes on these rural roads. It's really not nice, but once your mailbox is "christened" they rarely hit it again- and as long as the door still works, we all figure we got off pretty light. I see some neighbors have had enough, and they barracade their boxes with scraps of 2x4's. It must work.) I don't mean to malign these young men, but they just had a certain gleam in their eyes- even if they were very handy to have around on that cold and slippery morning. Eva says it was a very exciting day for her.