sunshine

Last night on the news there was another clip about how tanning beds cause melanoma and how the cancer numbers on the rise among women in the 20-30 bracket. I've heard this all my life, and my parents were never thrilled the summers I had a nice tan (and I used sunscreen, most of the time).  My younger sister started visiting a tanning salon once she got a job, and had been doing so for several months before my parents found out. My mom was apoplectic.  Fast forward 20 something years, add two more melanoma bouts for Mom, and she's just as vigilant about how dangerous a sunburn can be. Every time my sister has to have a spot removed to be checked, my Mom starts preaching a sermon to all us girls about getting too much sun (or for my sister to get rid of her tanning bed).

But there's a catch. My Vitamin D levels are scary low. As in, last year I had to take rickets medicine for several months and I now have to take a Vitamin D supplement in addition to a multi-vitamin. It makes me feel old. So this spring/summer, my goal is to spend at least 10-15 minutes outside, in the sun, in hopes it will help. My arms and face are getting tan (or else my freckles are finally meshing), my legs aren't, and my neck just seems to stay red. I know that when I see my Mom, she's going to have a fit.

And that's okay. I can bear in mind that she loves me and is concerned, is fearful of what may come, and patiently smile and listen. Until she spots a red highlight, which I get from her and the sun, and she'll start to mess with my hair and offer to put in a perm for me which drives me absolutely insane.

So I'm enjoying the sunshine, checking all moles periodically and reviewing my ABCs of melanoma pamphlet, and rejoicing in today and the breeze and sunshine. If you've not ever seen what the ABCs of melanoma are and you a) have someone in your family with skin cancer or b) have a skin type the freckles or burns easily, then I urge you to google it (or visit wral.com).  It is one of those things where ignorance is not bliss.

the wee ones

This was going to be the spring that we didn't incubate ANYTHING...at all. NO mess, no roosters, lots of extra time....and then we lost four hens in a month. One of them was one of our Easter eggers, and I had actually gathered eggs that morning but not refrigerated them yet. When we realized she was gone that evening, I just took all the eggs, including hers, from that day and pulled the incubator out.  Only two of the nine hatched, and the green egg that started the whole process began to hatch but never finished. :(

 

But of the two that did hatch, one of them has this thing about sleeping in the food bowl. Even after moving them outside to the brooder box with the ones we bought, it continues to do this.

 



Tuckered out...

and the one huddled by the waterer was the first born of the two

So life is always full of surprises and some of them make us laugh.

Memorial month

The first weekend May, the town of Garner celebrated the opening ceremonies of its War Memorial. It was incredible in its scope, incorporating EVERY war America has fought in, as well as the names of all Garnerites who gave the greatest sacrifice during each war. To help assist in the funding of the memorial, people could pay to honor those who served (but didn't die) by having their name and rank inscribed on a brick.

 

 

It was bittersweet. It was one thing to reflect on our heritage (and thank you to Congressman David Price for being the only one to include Scripture in his speech...Joshua 8), but it was also a little heartbreaking to hear names I knew and see grieving loved ones supporting each other. For the Webbs and the Sanchez families, "Freedom isn't free" has a totally different meaning.

 

And from there we moved onward to another memorial service, although similar, of a very different kind: Confederate Memorial Day.

My husband is a history buff. He had several ancestors who died fighting in the Civil War. It was my first trip to Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh (which has an entire section of nothing but civil war soldier graves). It's probably one of the most beautiful cemeteries I've been in. I love stone buildings, and the one below the hillside from the Gettysburg graves is absolutely stunning. I told Bobby as morbid as it sounded, I thought this cemetery would make an awesome place for a photo shoot.

 

Garner Sons of Conferederate Veterans had decorated each tomb with a flag. All the graves were originally numbered squares (which you can see near the tomstones), and historians painstakingly researched and validated records so each soldier could finally have a tombstone with name, rank, DOB and DOD. There's even a few Union soldiers who were mistakenly buried there. Their graves have a special footmarker with the details.

 

 During the tornadoes two years ago, many trees were blown over in the cemetery. Someone took the stump of this one and actually made a seat from it.

 And the irony of the old and new continuosly crack me up.

 A Marine came to pay his respects and visited the gravesite of his great (x3?) grandfather. He wasn't overly interested in the monologue of Stonewall Jackson's wife or much of the other stuff, though he did participate in all the militia ceremonies.

I was blown away by the differences in the two ceremonies. One a politically correct, patriotic meeting (with some new age stuff thrown in), and the other a historically, politically incorrect ceremony full of Scripture (and had more than Joshua 8), hymns, prayer, and heartfelt emotions (even from the Union ardist who yelled out during Dixie, the prayer, the flag ceremonies, but then escorted her children up to have their pictures made with the ones laying wreaths on the graves of ancestors).

It was an interesting weekend, and a reminder that we have a godly heritage that isn't perfect but is costly.We have so much to be thankful for.

 

Wake County Library Sale

This weekend I had the opportunity to do something fun/dangerous. Many of you know that I like to read. You also know that my husband likes to read as well. What you may not know is that between books for each other as gifts and the annual Wake County Library Sale, we've accumulated a little too much. So much so, that I've opted out of a book club I really enjoyed and we put ourselves on a moratorium for buying books. (Can you believe I have to wait for an anniversary or Christmas to get the Ducky Dynasty book?)

And I was making progress in my reading...

 Our dresser (my "to read" list) was becoming less daunting, and I was eliminating books that I would never read again or loan out from our stacks.

And then came the annual library sale. I almost didn't go. For those of you not familiar with it, library patrons donate books ALL YEAR long to the library just for this sale. And each library in the county pulls books from the shelves that haven't been checked out in three years or the extra "best-sellers" that they no longer need, and sell them. It takes hundreds of volunteers to pull this off, and in the 13 years I've been here, it has moved to a larger location each year, until the last few years when it wound up at the State Fairgrounds. And I came home with all this, plus 6 more books that didn't make the photo:

And I spent a whopping total of $20.

So the stack on my dresser now extends to the end of the dresser (again) and there's still a small pile on the kitchen table. I probably won't make my New Year's Resolution of finishing all the books on my dresser now that I've extended them, but I do hope to put a very good dent on some of those books that have been there for a few years.

And as if on cue, I'll be riding in a vehicle 4 hours this week, which will hopefully help me knock out a book from the stack. Can life get any better? :)

busy bees

I am actually sitting down. :)  Supper is almost ready. Bobby will be home from a CLE class in about 15 minutes (hopefully), and we should a few minutes after supper to feed the geese before heading out again.

Last week our riding lawn mower gave out. So we called the company to come pick it up for repairs. They've neither repaired it nor called us back yet. So the boys who normally cut our grass did exactly what Bobby told them HAD to be done and no more. :(  With all the rain this last week, the grass has been growing like crazy. Since last Saturday night (when we got home and found out they only worked a few hours), I've cut grass at least an hour every day. And I'm still not finished. I had hoped to finish it off today, but between aching feet and an afternoon appointment, that simply hasn't happened. Maybe it won't rain tomorrow and I'll be able to finish it (although the front yard already needs it again!).

On a better note, it is strawberry season in NC. I've made strawberry jam, and we're having cake topped with strawberries and cream cheese icing tonight. Last week we had strawberries in our salads for lunch, and we had them as our fruit this morning for breakfast. While I don't love strawberries as much as my sister and sister-in-law, I do think they're quite delicious. And if you don't know the story of the drama behind North Carolina's official state "red" berry, I suggest you read up on it. It's quite crazy.

Hope you have a berry good weekend! :)

more UnFinished prOjects

It seems I always have several UFOs around me (unfinished projects, as the quilting world calls them). Last month I felt that my sewing room was out-of-control-I-can't-even-sit-there-and-work messy, so I started tackling some of the smaller unfinished projects I had just to clean off a table. So yes, Bobby got to reclaim some pants that have been sitting there for a while waiting for various types of repairs, which I hate because I never feel like I do a good job.

Anyway, while cleaning off one of my work tables, for some reason I decided I needed to open a box of cut pieces for a quilt top that I've not worked on in quite some time. I finished cutting the material for the last section of piecing, realized I didn't have quite enough material, and so had to create a very quick Plan C  (plan B was back when I started this project and deviated from the original quilt pattern...WHY do I do that to myself?)

So here we are a few years later...

This was supposed to be a building block (see the blocks between the stars?) but as I tried to figure out fabric placement, I kept seeing stars, so I tossed the directions and made my stars. Thanks to youtube, I was able to figure out how to piece the stars together with the blocks (Y seams...not quite so bad). Now I just need to figure out how I want to quilt it.

And I still have a box of fabric. Turns out making stars doesn't require as many cuts of fabric as the building blocks pattern requires, so I have half a box of stars still waiting for the next burst of "let's semi-finish something!" I'm thinking they'll get either a pale yellow, denim, or pale blue background. The purple was nice, but I'm ready for something different. But it will have to wait. My niece IS graduating in a few weeks (as opposed to NEXT year when she was supposed to graduate!) so I'm trying to finish a twin size quilt before her graduation the end of this month. 

Crazy me. I actually thought this was going to be the year I wasn't rushing to finish a quilt in May. I almost made it!

long overdue

Since my nephew has an aversion to his face being on Facebook, but has not said anything about my blog, here we go. :)

From April 21, Townley Free Will Baptist Church in Townley, Alabama:

 Dad getting ready to dunk Carly. And despite all of our teasing that he'd hold her under until she turned blue or bubbled, Pawpaw brought her back up fairly fast.

 Mason, who surprised us by laughing the whole time before going under.

 Just the thought of this endless energy this child has makes me tired! ;)

 Left to Right: Mrs. Weems, Jamie (my bro-in-law), Naomi (my sis), Andy (my bro), and Amie, (my sis-in-law).

And the Weems family after the baptism. :)

Unfortunately I had WAY too much caffeine that weekend, so my hands were a little too shaky to be manuevering a camera. There are a whole lot  more pics, but the ones of the kiddos coming up out of the water are too blurry to post.

And as always, I am one happy aunt. :)