Rain, Sun, Rain...Rinse and repeat!

We have had a wonderful week of sunny days...until today.  It's been raining fairly steadily most of the day which is fine with me, but there is severe flooding all around northern Washington and Idaho and I feel so bad for the people in those areas.  Flooding now and then forest fires in a few months.  That seems to be the cycle in the past few years.

Big family news!

Miss Piper graduated!  Here are a few photos of her. This first one was sent to me before they left for school yesterday.  She looks so old!  Oh, my goodness, where have the years gone?   She chose her own dress and accessories.

 Here she is with Brad's mom, Marilyn.  I'm so glad that at least one of us Grandma's were able to go to her special programs, (and graduation), this year.  I am VERY sad that I'm missing all of these milestones, but very grateful that Mandy sends us lots of picturees.

 This was sent to us at bedtime last night.  Apparently she didn't want to remove her graduation cap.  Papa said she's already studying for college.  I think we need to let her go to kindergarten first. :-)

 I've been knitting on a couple of dishcloths since I last wrote on Monday.  I realized my gift shelf was getting pretty low so I thought I should get some made up.  I have another on the needles now and really enjoy this pattern.  It's become my "go to" pattern for dishcloths.  It's memorized so very easy to do on the go.

It was a busy morning for me today.  I went out to the lake yesterday morning and we spent the night.  Dennis left for work about 4:45 a.m. and I left about 7:00.  After a quick stop at home to drop Chloe off and shower I was off to Weight Watchers.  It was a good week there where I was down 1.2 lbs. for a total of almost 20!  Only a little tiny bit more to reach that first big goal.  I still have lots more to lose, (about 30 lbs.), but it will be good to reach another milestone.

After W.W. I stopped at Hobby Lobby because they have their "I Love This Cotton" on sale for 30% off.  Since I was almost completely out, I thought I should get some.  All of this was less than $20.00.  Normally it's $3.49 per skein so it was a good time to stock up a little.

 After Hobby Lobby, I ran to get my hair trimmed then it was time for acupuncture on my feet, the grocery store and finally home about 2:30.  Now I need to clean house and finish some laundry because we have Bible Study here tonight.  Whew!  I'm tired.

Tomorrow I'll go back to the lake for the weekend.  Yippee!  We have a birthday party to attend for Hayden on Saturday out at their new house.  I hope the weather is good.  They have a new addition to their family.  The boys were promised a dog when they got settled in a forever home so look who came home last week!  Meet Denali!  He is SO cute.  They love Chloe so much that they decided to get a lab puppy, although he is an American lab and she is a British lab.

Jenny gave me and her daughters each a couple of roses on Mother's day.  Wasn't that sweet?  I think they're beautiful and they still look gorgeous.

Okay.  Enough sitting.  I need to sweep floors and switch the clothes from the washer to dryer and fold the sheets.  A woman's work is never done is it?

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend full of love and blessings, both seen and unseen.

"In thier hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps." Proberbs 16:9

Blessings,
Betsy

Summertime, Summertime!

It's Monday and I don't know where the time has gone since I last posted. We did have a couple of guests from Monday until Friday morning.  Becky, who is GrandmaBeckyL on my sidebar and her husband Phil came to stay with us.  They live south of Portland, OR and Becky and I have gotten together with other bloggers, Teresa, Gracie and Taci before for lunch when I made the trek to Portland.  Our husbands all also had dinner with us one evening when we were visiting.  I think they had a good time, although the weather was cool and rainy most of the week.  Of course after they left it turned glorious outside.  Sunshine and 80F.  Isn't that the way it happens?

Dennis took a day off of work and we took them out to the lake for a few hours.  Here Phil and Becky are relaxing in the camper while it rained outside.  Or as Phil said, they're from Portland, they call it "heavy air!"

 Once there was a long enough break in between rain showers, we walked down to the little store at the lake, (which was closed for some strange reason. Here we're pointing at the picture on the back of the bench.

  

 Becky very graciously brought me some sweet gifts.  Choclate, wonderful smelling soap, a magnet and a cute hand towel with a beachy theme.  She knows how much I love the ocean!

 She also brought me this cute purple planter that I planted some geraniums and grass in last night.  Sorry about the shadows, the sun is shining very brightly right now and I wanted to include a photo of the flower pot in this post.

Nita gave me some squares for a toddler blanket so last night I began putting them together.  I'm about halfway done.  This will be for the Crisis Nursery.

 Oops.  The picture is upside down and I can't seem to get it to go rightside up!  You can probably tell that they are two baby hats made with sock yarn from Nancy's pattern over at Wyoming Breezes blog.  Thank you for the pattern Nancy.  It was a nice easy one to work on while chatting with friends at the lake this weekend.

I also have both legs done and one heel turned on the socks I was working on last week.  It took me all day to turn the heel on Saturday.  I kept picking it up and putting it down. :-)

My back did pretty well while Phil and Becky were here, and although I had several doctor appointments, they had plans of things that they wanted to go see so it all worked out.  Only on Thursday evening did the back spasms start and I think I had just done too much that day.

Maybe it was a blessing in disguise though, because I saw the chiropractor the next morning and he was able to actually feel the knots in my back for the first time.  He did a "twisty" thing to my back that he's never done before and do you know what?  It's been better.  Not great, but much, much better.  I have hope finally.  He thinks the scapula is pressing on a nerve in my mid back.  Oh, I hope we can get this figured out.  He gave me a few exercises to do since he'll be out of town all of this week.  Believe me, I'm faithfully doing them!  I actually worked in the yard for awhile this morning trimming bushes.  Then did some grocery shopping...and I'm still upright!  I will take it easy the rest of the day though.

Look at this precious little girl.  This is a sweater I made her a while ago and a dress we sent her a few weeks ago.  Look how short those sleeves are!  She's growinng so fast.

 I thought this one was really cute too.  I'm afraid she's 5 going on 16. :-)

We talked to all three of the kids yesterday and that made my Mother's Day wonderful.  It would have been better to actually be with them, but hearing voices is pretty good too.  Jamie told us that our granddaughter Kyleigh won a citizenship award for her grade at school.  She also won it for the entire school!  This is the second year in a row that she's won it for the entire school.  She is 13 and pretty special.  She cares about everyone is is very active in anti-bullying projects, etc.  

I had planned to stay at the lake until tomorrow, but some unexpected things came up so we came home last night.  The hope  is to go back out tomorrow night and stay until Thursday morning when I have an acupuncture appointment and we have Bible study in the evening.  I love the weekdays at the trailer, especially at this time of year when it's so quiet up there.  Once school is out, it's pure craziness!

I hope you all had a lovely weekend.  I've been enjoying reading blogs and trying to keep up with everyone. 

"Fight the good fight of the faith.  Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses." 1 Timothy 6:12

"Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." John 3:18

Blessings,
Betsy

Happy Sunday!

It's unusual for me to post on a Sunday, but here I am.  It may be a busy week so I thought I would just stop in and say hi in case it doesn't happen later in the week. :-)

We were able to spend the nights Friday and Saturday at the lake.  Oh my goodness!  It was wonderful.  We walked some and Dennis got some jobs done out there.  We drove in early this morning, around 7:00 a.m., took our showers and headed off to church.  Lunch out with friends and now we're home.  Dennis is mowing and I have some ice on my back while I write this.  Hopefully we'll be going back to the lake for a few hours this afternoon before coming back this evening.

You can barely see the grab bar across the screen door here.  This is Larry and Nita's trailer and Dennis installed it for them yesterday to make it easier to open & close the door on the camper.  We have one on ours and it was very helpful for them so he's surprising them with one of their own!  You can see Lori carrying a garbage can FULL of pinecones to the golfcart to take them to the burn pile.  Mattie is laying on the mat outside the door.  The corner of our trailer can be seen across the way with just Dennis' legs in view!  Spring clean-up has begun.

We were planning to put new handrails on the steps of all three trailersr to make it easier for Larry and Nita to go in and out.  Here a great consultation was going on between Dennis and Paul outside our trailer.  Ultimately they decided to put the handrail that Dennis is holding on the stairs going down the hill and I bought new handrails for all of us on Amazon that "should" work better for everyone.  They are supposed to arrive this week.  There is always a project or two happening at the lake.

My Knit Picks order arrived and I had so much fun going through it when the box arrived.

First of all is five pair of socks worth of Tweed fingering weight.

Three skeins of Chroma Twist.  I've never used it before and it looks like fun!  And on the right is a Hawthorne fingering skein.  There was a great sale going on and I got all of this yarn for around $65.00!  I think that was a fantastic bargain.  Enough for nine pair of socks unless I decide another shawl should be made with some of it. :-)

Thursday morning was spent at the hospital with Larry and Nita while he had surgery on his knee to repair a tear in something or other!  I think it was the miniscus.  When the surgeon came out to talk to us she said he has "bone on bone" in two places and the tear was much larger than they thought.  A knee replacement is in his very near future according to her.  He looks happy here but not so much afterward.  He hasn't been able to keep anything down since surgery and that is VERY unlike Larry.

Since Nita just had a hip replacement about 6 weeks ago, I've been spending lots of time at their house.  Grocery runs, etc. have been the order of the day.  I have NO time to deal with a back that keeps giving me issues.  I have too many things to do.  That's a lot of the reason why my whole back issue is so annoying.  The pain I can deal with, but the spasms incapacitate me.

Chloe and I were walking down the street to get mail when the young, (college age), boy next door called her over.  He loves her and it looks like the feeling is mutual doesn't it?  They had a nice love-fest before we meandered on down the road.  

I have finished the first leg on my "Petty Harbour" socks and started the cuff of the second sock.  It's

working very well for me to do both socks at one time.

 I just finished the 5th square on this bigger nine-patch square while driving into town this morning.  These little squares are quite addicting.

And now I hear Dennis washing the lawn mower so I know he'll be ready to go back to the lake in a few minutes.  I hope you all have a lovely week and I'll be reading your blogs to say hello.  I must admit, I'm quite jealous of Debra, (Araignee on my sidebar).  She just attended the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival this week and I would have loved to see the cute baby sheep and dog and sheep trials she posted about today.  Maybe next year.  I really should have gone when Mandy lived in Maryland.  It would have been so convenient wouldn't it?  Oh well.

Take care my friends and enjoy the week.

"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.  He will not grow tired or weary, and His understandinng no one can fathom.  Isaiah 40:28

Blessings,
Betsy