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memories

This past weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to spend with my family.
There's nothing more pleasant and strange than doing things you did as a child, only as an adult.
As a child I always enjoyed working in the garden with my Dad. The only difference is that now I ask questions and discuss various ways to do things while working instead of waiting for instructions on what to do. The only down side is that it makes me wish I were closer so I could help them out more.
Another wonderful highlight was the news that my cousin's two teenage girls accepted Christ while at camp! I am SO excited for them as individuals and as a family!
One of the neat things from this weekend was the time with my 10 year old nephew and his 6 year old sister. We had what has become the normal "drawing challenge" where we all sit down with paper and pencils and Aunt Monica assigns a topic or item to draw, and the three of us draw it on our own piece of paper. The previous two times we were together we did this, and evidently it was important enough to them and my Mom that Mom had saved all our artwork from the last time and we had to pull out the folder and laugh at our pictures. Another wonderful highlight was that Mason had saved some of his better drawings in a three ring binder and brought for me to see. It was one of those special, but calm times that will always be in my mind.
But not everything was that calm. In the midst of the Alabama heat and humidity where walking outside makes your hair collapse and your skin "glisten" (the ladylike word for "sweat"), I took mercy on them from the upper porch and squirted them with water guns as they showed off their bike skills. Needless to say, we had numerous water gun battles after that.
And between the return trip home and my day of "work" at the polls, I've appliqued and appliqued and appliqued. On the way to church last night I started counting squares, thinking for certain I had enough to start piecing the quilt top together. Sadly, I'm 36 squares short. I'm going to refigure and recalculate before I sew any more, though. I guess my concept of time is another area where I take after my Mom - neither one of us is very good at judging how long a project will take.
Which brings me to today. Between the travel, erratic sleeping, and the early morning, late night of Tuesday and the rush to run errands and church Wednesday, today was the day my body said "Enough!" and repeatedly crashed on me. In between grocery runs, laundry, gardening, and minor cleaning, I napped. My body is still protesting, though not quite as badly. I began the iron enriched foods at supper, and we'll try to continue them on the next few days and see if that does the trick. There's nothing like greens, beans, and OJ to pump up the iron count and energy (or to give you gas!), but after all these years I'm finally learning that when fatigue sets in to this degree my iron count is usually close to depletion. And when that happens, my emotions quickly follow.
Meanwhile, Big Buff moved with her hind parts in front of the small door, so we relocated her to the old dog pen today!!! For the last 3 hours she has protested, squawked, and done her best to fly the coop, but has finally gone to her nest with the 6 eggs I allotted her. Hopefully tomorrow egg production in the hen house will return to normal and she can hatch out her biddies in her new location if she chooses. And I can boil an egg without any thought as to what might be inside. AHHH...the little things in life I so often take for granted!
And the summer brazenly and blazingly continues.

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