More Birthday and Family Time and More

 I didn't plan to be so long away from the blog, but September and June are often two of my busiest months. It is the months of the most family birthdays. 

I am letting phone pictures guide the post. 

One Saturday morning, I walked out to water my flowers on the back deck when I spotted dolphins. You can't help but stop to stare, so I rushed out to the end of the dock to spy two dolphins pass by. I am awful at trying to anticipate how long they will stay under and then pop up, but I managed one picture to share.

Even Gus was quiet to watch them pass. 

I got a sweet present from Arlene for my birthday.

She sent me some of her linen that she had dyed. I already started a stitch on one and have another plan for another. Thanks Arlene.

I also got some sweet cards lined up in the background.

Then one night before the first official day of fall I was lured out to gawk at the full moon on the bayou. I so wish I could take a picture to show you how bright and beautiful it was.

The next picture is of my sweet Tucker. They had a sale at Target and Lindsay managed to get a Marshall of Paw Patrol costume for $10. It is almost too small but I told her he will enjoy it enough even before Halloween to be worth it. If you don't have a preschooler then you may not know that Paw Patrol is IT for them. 

He LOVED the costume.

He had to FaceTime to show me all the parts of the costume. 

Someone is 2 months old.

The entire family went to Auburn for the weekend. It was Lindsay's birthday on Saturday so we made a family weekend of it.

The weather was amazing and I can tell you that nothing warms my heart better than having the family together.

When we arrived I found that Katie had decorated the stairwell chalkboard. They had been up there a few weeks ago and she had been informed that anytime she was there and wanted to do it that it was hers to do. I discovered about a year ago that she had a knack for it.

Isn't it amazing?

Now for some closeups.

Jeff, Mother and I went up on Thursday afternoon, so I had time to hang up my "Lord's Prayer" stitch. You can't really tell, but it looks amazing on the wall with my samplers and verses.

It is the on the bottom left.

Jeff had time to think of things he wanted to do for the weekend, so he comes walking out of Home Depot with "Bones." Then he set it up so that if the kids came in from the garage or around the side of the house they would see him. Jeff loves things like this. He absolutely loves his family too.

Tucker is finally getting big enough for the little fort out back. He can't climb up in it on his own yet, but loves being helped. 

We now have darts, a basketball goal and new additions of a ping pong table and corn hole to keep the family active and having fun while watching football on the outside TV.

We grilled out, played games, watched football and on Saturday night made a fire to enjoy and make Smores. 

I wish I had taken more photos but you know sometime you just want to be in the minute. I will post some of the littles and some I snatched from Lindsay's Instagram account to record the moments shared.

I am about to blow up the computer with pics and they are NOT in timeline order because I do NOT feel like fighting the blogger battle of photos tonight.

I just want to get it all recorded...

This is Tucker on his way home with a swollen upper lip because he busted it running.

From Lindsay's account...

Me and the grandsons on Saturday morning.

Lindsay and Tyler took the kiddos downtown to take some pictures at Toomer's Corner and Samford Hall.

Mom with Palmer while Lindsay and Tyler took Tucker to the ballgame for the first half. Tucker loved the eagle flying.

Gus letting Katie spoil him even more rotten.

Palmer on the way home.

Another pull from Lindsay's account.

Tucker with some famous Toomer's lemonade.

This is part of us in the backyard. Our really good friends who we have been friends with forever joined us  for the day. Tucker and Mother were napping and Jeff being silly covered Palmer up. Lots of fun was had and good memories were made. 

This is the stuff of life that makes it worthwhile.

So so blessed,

Sandy

Birthday, All of September, and Stitching

 I decided at the beginning of the year that I would separate my family updates from stitching posts, but I am breaking my rule with this post. September is always a busy month and that means less blogging.

I have been working on two of my larger pieces and am honestly farther along on both pieces than my pictures. I was just too lazy to go back and photograph again.

I had hoped I would finish the heron this year but I don't think that will happen. I suspect it will go into January of next year. 

I am procrastinating now because to the right above that leg is going to be the tails feathers. It will be a lot of grays and changing threads. It is going to be so beautiful when completed, but it is going to take lots of concentration. When I get past that page I honestly thing the neck and head will go a lot quicker. 

My other stitch as of late is the Thirsty Hart sampler. This one is going slow because I am changing ALL of the colors. I am not great at that, but I envision this as colorful not a neutral pattern as charted.

I think this one can be finished in '21. As I said I am already a little farther along.

I have to take Mom to get an endoscopy tomorrow and then stay with her some tomorrow so I am taking a long something smaller to work on. I will share my progress on that next week.

I saw an Instagram post from one of my favorite decorators/gardeners. He lives in South Georgia so he is my gardening zone. He gets my love of summer but also forward thinking to fall. He said September is 3 parts summer and 1 part fall. I think that is true at least for Zone 8b. Summer is the one season I sort of hold on to even though I love everything about fall. 

I am slowing easing in which suits me really well. The light is changing and this week it seems like it happened even faster because of the cloudy weather.

I love mums and when I was growing up the big antebellum homes in Brewton would have lots of them out front. I have zero luck with them but it doesn't make me not want some any less. I succumbed and bought two small ones to enjoy since I figured the prices was about the same as grocery store flowers.

This was one morning when the light seemed so pretty and my little mum made me happy.

I have put out some fall...not all...just a slow adding it in.

I had put decorated my dining room table. My birthday was yesterday and we had a family dinner which was prepared for me. We hadn't planned to eat in there, but outside but it was rainy. I threw on the table cloth and set it all back in place. 

I was blessed and here is my only picture of the evening...

Here are few more shots from my phone...

Palmer's name has been hung.

Tucker loves the airplanes and in this case helicopters and much as his mimi.

I would have stopped to watch too.

It has rained so much that I have taken to walking Gus in the rain....otherwise he is going stir crazy.

So long,

Sandy

Doing Sensible Things

I decided I better get a post out soon or people would wonder what happened to me. I have been busy, but I am also going to admit I haven't been in a blogging mood. Let's see --- I will do my best to keep things upbeat because I have more blessings than ills but the ills have kept me busy:)

I did a bit of unexpected decluttering projects. It kind of hit me in two waves... The first was one was that I just simply opened my cookbook closet  which also contains the medicine cabinet and paper goods products for the kitchen and thought to myself, "This is ridiculous." I had to go through it in small incremental doses because for the past two weeks I feel as if I have been here, there, ---everywhere but my own home.

This and a candle in the living room are the first signs I am moving to the fall season.

I got it done and a good bit left that closet including 15 cookbooks with 6 more being seriously evaluated. I have a problem with cookbooks...that home ec major coming in to play there. That closet is way more pleasing to the eye now. I am pretty sure those other 6 will leave it soon.

I then tackled another closet where I keep small appliances and baking goods and made a huge dent in it as well. I tackled under my bathroom sink and really made a difference there. I got rid of some hair gadgets that I will never use ...you get the idea.

All of these were literally done when I would be home for an hour before I had to go somewhere else. Little snippets of time led to quite a pile for Goodwill. 

At some point in all this decluttering story... Mom had spent the night over here in the last month when she was having a very bad day and it just hit me that I really needed to think about the possibility of Lindsay's old room being needed for her one day. I had Lindsay come over one day. I told her she didn't have to do anything but just point to things and tell me if it was really a keeper or could it go. We made a huge mess on the floor with books and stuff that were easily pulled off shelves or drawers. She left me with a list of things to then see about as I had time. I think we pulled almost 40 books off the shelves. IT took me another couple of days to get it all righted and out of there. I think I have a better grasp of it all now. Her closet is almost all empty on the bottom. I can easily box up the rest of what I would want in that room and place downstairs in a closet if I ever have to move Mom in here. 

I know Mom wants to stay at home as long as possible and I want that too. I would rather hire help as long as I can before I made a move. I also know she would rather not EVER come here, but with the assisted living places going into lockdowns that would not be something I would consider unless it were a last resort.

Now for Mom...she is doing better. We have an esophagus stretch scheduled for next week. She has had a pulled muscle that required a doctor visit. I suppose that was probably from all the pulling up she had to do when she got really down. Now, if you saw her today you would not think she had been as sick as she was a few weeks ago. That is what she does...Down down down and then bounces back.

Her best friend passed away and we attended the funeral on Monday. We moved to Brewton in August of 1971 and they met soon after. They were besties for a long time. They did everything together and Mrs. Carolyn was so sad when Mama moved here. They kept in close contact. She was 92 so older than Mom and had gotten some cancer a couple of years ago. 

Enough of Mom ...It is just that time of life when I will be busy and that is that.

I have done yard work when it is not raining, stitched at night when I am not too tired. (Stitching post next week...maybe) I have held that precious baby Palmer. He is growing and changing so much. Lindsay is not much better. We can't see the specialist in Pensacola until January 3rd. IT is hard for her, but she is a strong girl and is doing a great job with the kiddos and she will persevere.

They were with the other grandparents in a condo for the first football game.

I will leave you with a quote from C. S. Lewis that I heard in a message a week or so ago. I loved it and with all my goings on I have really leaned into the last part which I will bold for you...

C. S. Lewis "Living in the Atomic Age" (1948)

Replace "atomic age" with your choice of word from the news.

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. "How are we to live in an atomic age?" I am temped to reply: "Why, as you would have lived is in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents."

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways.... It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such changes and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things - praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts - not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies, but they need not dominate our minds.

*****

I have been really trying to do that. It was good to watch college football again on Saturday. 

My little pumpkins. 

I will try to get my blogging mojo back.

Sandy