It’s been awhile…again.

Hello! It’s been a hot minute hasn’t it? Our life is so chaotic right now. When I have been home I have just collapsed into my chair and done basically nothing. I have finished the Christmas ornaments for our family, but I don’t dare post them here in case someone’s reading the blog. I’ve also finished embroidering a set of tea towels that is also a Christmas gift. I’ll take pictures of everything and post them after Christmas. Both of these projects have been great carry along projects.

I also have started the Stephen West garter squish blanket that is a free pattern on Ravelry. It uses a lot of yarn because you hold two strands of worsted yarn doubled using a size 15 needle! I have never used a size 15 needle before and it takes some getting used to, but this does make a wonderfully squishy blanket. This will be a Christmas gift for Dennis‘s mom as she is always so cold.

Here we are in mom‘s apartment. You can see my toes and that’s it! She loves her new place. This is just a little part of the living room and kitchenette. It’s about twice this big and she has a very large bedroom and bathroom too. She is truly loving the apartment and the meals that are provided. I was there yesterday helping her with her laundry and she said she wishes she had done this years ago.

This is where I am right now. I’m watching Pamela‘s Adoring Crochet on YouTube while I finished hand sewing the Christmas ornaments. Today is the first day I’ve been home in weeks. We do have Bible study tonight, but I don’t have to go anywhere until then. I hope I didn’t just jinx myself. 😍

As you can see I’ve hung up my crocheted autumn leaf garland, as well as put out a few pumpkins for fall. You can also see Zoey’s bed and toy box.

Dennis signed the papers on Mom‘s house on Monday and the new buyers are supposed to sign on Friday. Less than 2 1/2 weeks from when we listed it! Meanwhile, there have been a couple of inspections this week and I’ve been calling to get utilities shut off and insurance canceled, etc. This doesn’t include our daily, at least once a day trips to see Mom. Hopefully that will all begin to slow down now. I have filled up the gas tank in my car three times in the last 10 days! That definitely cannot continue.

In addition to all of this, while Dennis has been doing the final things around Mom’s house, I have been looking at apartments and over 55 apartments for us. We finally narrowed it down to two possibilities, but the cost is prohibitive at the one we really like. The manager told us rent went up 7% last year and they are planning another 7% increase for this year. With the uncertain economy and not knowing what’s going to happen over the winter, I think we decided just to stay put in the house for the time being. Maybe things will change in the spring or maybe we will decide just to stay here. Meanwhile, we have bought a locking mailbox that attaches to the house so that if we decide to go camping we don’t have to worry about our mail. That is a concern in this area. In the past, our mailman was very good about just delivering our mail to mom’s house if we were gone.

I am so sorry I haven’t been around much lately, either writing here on my blog or commenting on your posts. I have been reading them, but I’ve been falling asleep while trying to comment and then what I write makes absolutely no sense! So many of you have told me you understand and this is just a period in my life I’m going through. I have to admit, I have seriously thought of just giving up blogging altogether because life has been so overwhelming. Dennis has been encouraging me to just stay with it and pop in when I can. Hopefully, since we’re not moving again right now, the worst of it is over.

Here’s a funny from FaceBook that I thought you would appreciate.

“This discounted yarn is very challenging to crochet with. The cuteness is distracting, yarn moves around a lot and yarn actually farted once. Would not recommend.  1/10 stars.”

Isn’t that hilarious? The yarn matches the puppy’s fur so well. 💜💕💜 Wishing you all a wonderful Wednesday! Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Blessings and love,

Betsy

I’m still here!

First of all I would like to express my condolences to all of my friends overseas and in Canada with the passing of  Queen Elizabeth II. She was a lovely and gracious woman who was deeply admired by most of the world. Our London family has been reaching out to us and sending us articles and photos since before she passed yesterday. I hope and pray that King Charles III is as compassionate a leader as his mother was. Rest in peace Dear qQueen Elizabeth. You have earned it.

Thank you all so much for checking on me. I know it’s been a while since I posted. We have been incredibly busy here. But first let me show you what I made while we were on our trip to Spokane. I can’t believe I haven’t even shown you those things yet.

First off are three crocheted baby blankets in the “Every Which-Way” pattern. They were very easy to work on as we drove across the western US and stayed in various campgrounds. No pattern to have to follow as this is so easily memorized.

I also made three chemo caps in different sizes for the hospital.

As to where I have been for the past few weeks, we have been busy packing up mom’s house. Four bedrooms, three bathrooms, living room, family room, dining room and kitchen. And this is without mentioning the myriad of closets and storage places this house has. Each closet was completely filled to the brim. 47 years of memories had to be cleaned out of the house in just a little over a week. A lot of tears were shed by several of us as we remembered various items throughout the house in closets and hidden nooks. Mom is completely thrilled in her apartment though. It’s like a huge albatross has been lifted off of her with moving out of this house. Dennis and I did most of the closet work and sifting through all of the papers and photos. I emptied the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator. We moved much of the furniture ourselves, but had a lot of help in cleaning over last weekend. Several of the granddaughters and grandsons were there to help clean out the garage and do the actual cleaning of cupboards, floors and bathrooms. Oh, how we appreciated that! ( That’s our house, the white one on the right in the photo.)

I took the photo below of mom standing outside the door the last time she walked out of the house. Right after this, I drove her to her new apartment where Mandy and I had unpacked everything. We tried to put it the furniture and mementos in as close to the same spots as they were in at the house. We wanted it to be as familiar as possible for her. As I said before, she absolutely loves it there.

The house went on the market Wednesday and we had four offers presented to us at 3:00 today. An offer has been accepted and signed and will hopefully close in two weeks time. When they say the market is still hot, they are not kidding. There must have been 25 or 30 different groups of people go through the house. There were many more offers made, but our realtor picked out the best four to present to us. We still have a few things to get out of the house that are going to the grandkids. It had been planned to be done tomorrow, but there’s a 95% chance of rain all day tomorrow. Of course. It’s the first rain since the night I came home from Texas! 

Now, Dennis and I have a big decision to make. We had never intended to live in this neighborhood if we moved back to Omaha, but we needed to be close to mom. We may be listing our house soon or we may stay for another year or more. It depends on what we can find in the next week or so. The thought of moving again fills me with dread. Especially after just finishing up with mom’s house. We shall see. We could definitely use your prayers for wisdom in this decision. We are actually seriously thinking of moving into a manufactured home just a few blocks from where mom is. It’s also much closer to Mandy and Brad. It’s in a park setting with many other manufactured homes. It would mean considerable downsizing, so we’ll have to see what we decide. Living in tornado alley is also a concern. We would  like to buy a condo or something similar that we could just turn the key and walk away if we wanted to take a trip somewhere. If we stay in this house or buy another house will have yard care and snow removal to worry about which is also a concern as we get older. We are trying to make a wise move and have it be our last one. But unfortunately, the market is “slim pickens,” right now. Most of the condos either have a lot of stairs, which I don’t want, or they are way out of our price range or not in the part of town we want to live in.🤷‍♀️

Meanwhile we are really struggling with getting the homecare people to get mom‘s insulin injection to her at the same time every day. She has a long acting insulin, but it should be given within a half hour window at the same time every day. Today was the first day that we haven’t been there at night for her injection. Some nights the people show up and some nights they don’t, so Dennis or I have to give her the injection. Tonight I had her call me to tell me that they did show up which is great! I have driven out there twice today already and I just wasn’t ready for a third trip unless I had to! You wouldn’t believe how much gas I have used in the last week and a half. They seem to be in the same boat as everyone else is these days. They just can’t find anyone who wants to work. The people who are there are absolutely so nice and sweet, but they are considerably understaffed. She is in a lovely, lovely place. If it wasn’t so expensive I would move in there now too and just stay there for the next 30 years! The food is great and I wouldn’t mind not having to plan meals anymore! More time to play with yarn. 😍

If I’m not around much for the next few weeks you will know where I am. I’ll get back to posting as soon as I can. Not much craftiness being done anyway. I do appreciate those of you who reached out to me to make sure that we were OK. It’s lovely to think I have people who care about me all over the world. I am trying to keep up with commenting on everyone’s blogs I’m just a little late sometimes.

Blessings and love,

Betsy

Home Again

Our girls weekend was a wonderful one. We had such a great time. We arrived back home Saturday evening around 8:30 or so. We had driven all the way from about 30 miles north of the Texas/Oklahoma border. I drove the entire distance because I love to drive. My niece doesn’t enjoy driving at all and my sister didn’t care one way or the other. She also has a brand new car and I really enjoyed driving it. I think I know what kind of car I want to get next time we change. That will probably be a long, long time in the future, if ever! Would you believe the very first time I ever drove it, was during rush hour traffic through Dallas? I can’t believe she trusted me to do that! Then that night we drove back north again through Fort Worth rush-hour traffic, again with me at the wheel. We’re still here so I must’ve done all right! It was a long day and the last 2 1/2 or so hours were the longest. We ran into quite a strong rainstorm between Kansas City and Omaha.  All‘s well that ends well though, and we had an absolutely lovely time. Our stop that was the furthest south was in Waco, Texas. Home to the Magnolia Silos. It was almost too much to take in. I took this first photo as we drove by. That is the bakery on the corner. We had the best cupcakes from there. We bought them and took them back to our hotel and had them for a snack before bed. Yum!!!

Before we left Waco we had a late lunch at the Magnolia table restaurant. It is an absolutely beautiful building and the lunch was very good too. Actually, we all had breakfast for lunch.

The decor is stunning. The floor tile work is very intricate. I can only imagine the hours it took to lay that floor.

Another view.

This was the floor just inside of the main door. Amazing craftsmanship!

This old and no longer used Lutheran church was moved from the other side of Waco just in the past year. It was taken apart, piece by piece, and then reassembled on this site. The attention to detail is just stunning.

The inside. Look at those gorgeous chandeliers. So beautiful in their simplicity.

And the windows! Can you believe that they all survived the move unbroken?

Here is my sister Melanie with me when we very first arrived at the Silos.

And a closer photo along with my niece Chaela. We had such a wonderful time together.

Inside “Ferney’s”. This is Joanna’s sisters shop. Such beautiful plants. They all have name tags on them and have just the cutest names, like Jimmy and Lucy or Bob! Somehow, all the names fit the plants perfectly.

Since Melanie and Chaela were here a few years ago, they have added these shops alongside of the green. There are three on each side and they are all specialty shops. There’s a writers store and a lotion/perfume shop among several others.

There are several different food trucks around the site also. They were very busy at lunchtime. I didn’t even notice the security guards when I took the photo. Isn’t it a shame that we have to have people protecting us like this even at fun venues?

There is also a small baseball diamond on the site. There are balls, bats and gloves available for anybody to go in and pitch, if you want to hit a few balls. The concession stand that you see in the rear provides food from Magnolia Table to visitors. There are spots all over with entertainment for children. Lots of green space for them to run and bins of balls and other play things all around. It is truly a family gathering place.

I could go on and on with photos of our weekend. We were only gone four days but we packed a lot into them including driving to and from Texas! We laughed so much and had such a wonderful time. We hope to make it an annual event going somewhere with mothers and daughters. Hopefully next time Mandy will be able to join us.

I’m sorry it has taken me several days to get this last group of pictures out, but our days have been jampacked for about the last two weeks. On Monday we moved Mom into an independent living apartment. Dennis and I did a lot of work on the move before I left, and while I was gone family members jumped in and helped Dennis move her furniture on Saturday. I spent the day at the apartment on Sunday with Mandy unpacking everything and making the bed so it would be already for her. Monday I drove her to her apartment for the first time. We have spent a lot of time with her there since eating at least one meal a day with her in the dining room. It is a beautiful place and I would move there in a heartbeat! The food is very, very good. Their chef is from a local country club. Now we have begun the hard work of going through 47 years of accumulation. Dennis took 3 full pick up truck loads to the thrift store just yesterday while I was cleaning out the kitchen cabinets. The grandkids have gotten what they want and the rest is going. I have lots of furniture on Facebook marketplace and we hope to get the house on the market in the next week or so before it slows down for the winter.

It’s a huge change for her but I just hung up the phone from talking to her this morning and she said her second night was much better and she felt much more at home. Dennis and I bought her a new comforter set because she’s had the other one for 40+ years. She said she feels like a princess in her bed! I think it does help having her familiar things around her and we tried to set the apartment up as much like the house was as possible. She seemed very happy and content this morning. It is very near Mandy‘s house so quite a ways from us but we will be going out every day for a while until we know if she’s settled in. 

Her sister-in-law, Aunt Joyce has lived there for 14 months and absolutely loves it. In fact she says she’s angry at herself for refusing to move in earlier. She says she missed out on so much by staying at home alone.  Mom has eaten all of her meals with Aunt Joyce in the dining room since she arrived. Aunt Joyce is a firecracker! She is involved in practically every activity that goes on. If anybody can get mom more active, she can.

In some ways this will make our life easier with not having the upkeep of two houses and worrying about her when we travel, but in other ways it is complicated our lives even further. Number one is the ridiculous expense of these places and the other is the distance from our home. It was very easy just to run next-door and check on her rather than driving across town, but we weren’t going to move her just anywhere. It had to be a nice place in a safe area. Her balcony overlooks a little park like area behind the building and just yesterday she saw two deer in that park area. That was enough to convince her that she loves it! She does love watching deer!

I’ll be back soon. Take care and I’m sorry for the long post today.

Blessings and love,

Betsy