Big brother was visiting in Houston with one of his twins to see mother and sis, so we drove down there for the weekend ourselves. We had a great time seeing everybody on Saturday night. We got to see cousins, and family members that I had not seen in several years.

Getting out of town though was not so pleasant. Just before we left, I needed to run to the bank to set up a wire transfer and that was when the accident happened. We were slowing down to a stop at a light and there it was, rolling back to meet us, this trailer loaded with drilling equipment. Hubby slammed the truck in reverse, but there was another truck on our tail and there was traffic moving on both sides of us. The only thing we could do was just sit there and watch it come. It crunched with a load sound and then the real fun started.

I called 911 and hubby jumped out of the truck to confront the driver of the run-away trailer. That is the driver of the truck with the run-away trailer. Before I could finish talking to the operator, a EMS vehicle was there. These two fellas did not look old enough to be driving let alone helping out in medical emergencies, but they were very efficient. They made me get out of our truck in case someone came along and hit it. So I had to stand in the hot sun and risk heat stroke instead! It was at least 100 degrees out there!

It took almost two hours to get everything settled with the officer and the other people. Turns out, it was a USA gov vehicle. The driver’s boss/supervisor, plus four other people showed up to help their friend out. US gov self insures but it will be a pain to get the money out of them. Thank goodness that is up to our insurance company to handle that.

Here is what hit us:

We are OK, though I am a bit sore. But, it might be the bed we had to sleep in down Houston way that is causing my stiffness. Either way, no fun. The insurance dude is coming tomorrow to check out our truck. But hubby took it by the Ford dealer this morning and they said it was about $1100 worth of work to fix it. OUCH!

As I lay in the chair this afternoon contemplating taking a nap, my precious cat Clio decided she needed a bath in my lap. This is a regular occurrence and comforting in it regularity. But as I watched her do her cleaning rituals I wondered how she knew what parts of her body to clean. Ya, I know, kind of silly to think about. But, hey, just HOW does she know that that back leg needs cleaning or that particular spot on her belly?

Then I got to thinking about other trees in the forest that are falling and no one hears or cares. Why do crickets only sing when there is no one around and stop when you come near? Don’t they want us to hear their pretty song? But rattle snakes shake their rattles when others ARE around, guess they are wanting to scare us off. But sometimes that is the only way you know there is a rattler around is by their sound since they blend in to the leaves and ground so well. Why can I work my calculator so much better without as many mistakes when I print on the adding machine tape? It’s the same calculator and same buttons? How come people call and say what are you doing when they know you are talking on the phone to them? Perhaps they should say, “What did I interrupt?”

Why does television have nothing good on during the weekend when people are home and able to watch? Yet during the week when we need to get up the next morning, there are always good shows on. How do hotels know they are going to have vacancies weeks in advance and are able to give companies like Priceline.com good deals for their customers? How do airlines know this also?

It has been a puzzling day for me thinking of all these things and I guess I just think too much!

Today’s photo is of Dayton checking out the  the quilt that was in progress. It is made now, and there is a photo of it below the Dayton photo.

Have you ever just sat and been amazed at this younger generation?

I just saw a link on my sister’s page about a song my nephew sang at church and clicked on it to see what the boy is up to. Well, guess I should not call him boy as he is kinda out of boyhood by a decade or so. Anyway, he just blows me away with his awesome voice and talent. Some of you all may remember that he won the Who’s Got Talent in Houston before even graduating from college. So, it is not just proud aunt thinking he is great, my opinion is shared by experts.

Check out this video and I bet you too will think this kid gots the talent.

I am proud to announce that finally all of our windows now have curtains on them! Of course they had binds, but the curtains were missing. I kept saying I was going to use the garage sale money and get some, but just never got around to it. Well, today hubby and I got up and went out for breakfast and then went curtain shopping.

I had been looking around for months, so I knew where to go for the best prices - Bed, Bath and Beyond, if you can believe it. Who would figure that they were the best priced curtains around. But, like hubby said, they still were pretty proud of them and charged accordingly.

The curtains sure make a BIG difference!See that daughter? Now when you visit you will have curtains in your room!

While everything was all messed up getting them up, hubby graciously went ahead and took care of the sewing machine cabinet for me. The legs needed shortening so I could quilt and sew without getting shoulder pains. The sewing machine does not sit inside like the cabinet is built for, so it was too tall. I really worried about having those legs cut off , we  cut off two and half inches,  cause once it is done, there is no going back. Only time will tell if I regret it.

ABOUT THIS RAIN - those of you who have been praying for rain, thanks so much, but we kind of need a break. The hurricane and then the tropical depression that hit the southern end of Texas has been sending lots of moisture up our way, or at least something has. The grass sure is getting long and green. Hubby just can’t mow it cause it is so wet. We might get it dried out on Sunday, hopefully!

But pray for those in the flooding areas, it is really bad I understand. Take a look at this:

Isn’t that really radical? that water looks ugly! Actually it looks deadly to me.

It has been so dry lately and it took me forever to get to the store and get a short hose and all to water my herbs. Well, I finally got them and now it is rainy!

I made some awesome Photoshop Actions, really loving how they were turning out and then my Photoshop froze up on me and when I reopened it, they were gone. A full day’s work and I had not saved the actions. Sigh

We have someone interested in purchasing our house in the Houston area. But, when the inspector went through the house on Saturday, it was discovered that there was Ike damage to the roof. Hubby did not have it inspected after the hurricane, he had looked around and thought everything was OK. But, then he was busy helping other people all over the place (neighbors and family) and not paying much attention to home. But, yet again the house insurance should pay for it to be fixed so we will be ahead there. Like the title of the post says, Up and Down.

The table for my sewing machine finally came in, but it does not magically make me a better machine quilter. It still is going to take lots of practice. Nothing comes easy does it?

Daughter and grandson were here this weekend. It was great to see them. Grandson is soo cute in his sunglasses. Here he is as they were leaving on Sunday.

I uploaded a freebie to the store today for all you digi Scrappers. It is to help you with those patriotic layouts. Here is the preview. It has the wreath, a ribbon and a bow in the files.

Today was quilt class day and I had got caught up in another project and not completed my homework. At 8 last night I decided to get it done. Well, three hours later, defeat was staring me in the face. There was no way I was going to be able to make those pieces go together in a nice flat quilt block. Getting the star done worked fine, but when I tried to add the outside white pieces, it would start to bubble up in the middle big time.

Sooo . . .using my photoshop skills I created a paper piecing pattern for the silly thing and took it from there. Of course, it was not as simple as that. It took about hour to make the pattern and then a couple of hours to sew two of them up. AT 3 in the morning, my bed was calling and could not be ignored. This morning I finished them up and made it to class without a minute to spare. Taught me a lesson for sure.

So, now I am doing next week’s homework TONIGHT - no waiting til the last minute. We have class on the first and last Friday of the month so there is only one week between the last class of the month and the first class of the next month. Our homework for next week is to get all the inner blocks sewn together, adding strips here and there to make them all fit. Dayton likes how it goes so far and decided to take a nap on it. So, how is one to do homework when the cat likes to sleep on it?

You can see some of the blocks though - those star thingies are what gave me such a problem last night. Dayton seems to like the Carolina Lily the best though. Didn’t our teacher do a great job of putting together blocks for the quilt? She is awesome. You can see a little of what she does on her website at http://www.judysteward.com/ The photos on the website do not do her quilts blocks justice.

The cats are asleep, the neighborhood is quiet except for the bird calls, once a hour or so a car goes past, and all is quiet. There is no exploding artillery, no  low flying helicopters and not even a distant motor sound of a tank. It is so quiet here in the middle of town I wonder why people thought the country was quiet. Though the nearness of the Fort Hood artillery practice range might have had something to do with the noisiness of the old place.

Hubby has a nephew who would ask me how I liked the silence of the country when we moved out there. (He grew up there, but now lives in Waco.) I would explain that I found it noisier than any city I ever lived in because of the army camp. He would shrug it off and say that you get used to it. Well, I got used to the sounds of a city but did not think it was quiet. He did not understand that it was not true quiet if you had army noises that you had to get used to. LOL

It IS nice though to have peace and quiet - except for the trains that go through a couple of times a day that is. When I hear booming noises I can almost be sure it is thunder now and don’t have to run check the radar to see for sure. The cats seems to like it as well. They have settled in to a routine of eating and sleeping with a little wrestling and a few games of wigglebutt thrown in. Wigglebutt is that game cats play when they crouch down and get ready to pounce on something or someone - they have to wiggle their rear ends to get ready. You really are missing something until you see an extremely overweight, large fluffy cat do the wigglebutt like a kitten. Hey, she doesn’t think of herself as old or over weight, she likes herself just the way she is.

Things have calmed down so much for me I was able to get a few things made for the store. Be sure to check them out, tomorrow they will be on sale in the Friday Express for $2. You can click on their images to be taken to their product page in the store.

Oh, hey, I changed the blog theme - the other was just too busy. Whatch think? I will probably find something else soon, but thought this was a nice change.

So with this new house and all I am able to have a flower bed or two, or three or many more. Anyway, I only have one done so far and probably won’t work on any of the others until Fall when the temperatures go down. Triple digit heat and me do NOT get along.

Here is the one I have working. Hubby says that eventually this flower bed will be gone or redug so not to do too much. Soooo, I put a lot in pots. The youngest daughter gave me the strawberry flower pot so I have a bunch of herbs planted in that. And then there is a basil, a taragon and a jalapeno pepper plant in there. The spider plants were already there along with some mums and a lily or two.  Hopefully I will remember to water everyday. It is going to need it in this heat.

But, there is another thing that is going to need some water, a toad decided he liked the renovations and has moved i! (This photo was taken after the plants had grown a bit.)

Now if only we could figure how to keep the magnolia tree from shedding its leaves so much. That tree is on our list to remove for sure. It is soooo messy. We also have a Chinese Tallowberry tree in the front by the driveway that is going ot have to go.  It is way too messy. But hubby wants it killed from the roots up before cutting it down as otherwise we will be fighting little baby trees for years and years.I hate to cut trees as they really are nice to have around, but you gotta wonder what the builders were thinking when they planted some of the trees around here. There is even a cottonwood tree somewhere in the neighborhood that is doing its thing and sheddng all that mess to clog up our air conditioner coils. Of all the trees on our new property, there are only a few that are not junk trees. We have a nice pear tree in the back along with a few crepe myrtles but the rest, though big are just not worth much. And it is the same for every other lot in the neighborhood.

Hubby hopes to be able to transplant a few of the oak trees we planted in the country. They should still be small enough to move, but we will see. I expect it would take some experts with their fancy equipment and all. And expenses are kind of tight until we can sell the trailor or the house in Pasadena. (Taxes, insurance, and utilities on three properties just are WAY too much!)

So just how does this work when one has been absent from their blog for a while? OK, OK - - it has been longer than a while. But, hey, we bought a house and we now live in town and I started sewing again and I now have a grandson visiting every month. But enough with the excuses, hopefully I can get going again on this blogging thing. I really enjoyed it in the past.

The new house has been taking up a BUNCH of our time, especially the hubby’s. He just now got the trailer home ready to sell, not that there have been people beating down our door to purchase it. He finally got the closet doors in the guest bedroom up and working - daughter is happy about that when she visits - tempting items can now be shut away from the grandson’s eyes and little hands.

He is putting up solar screens currently and THAT has led to a bunch of other projects. Turns out the keys to those burglar bars are not the ones we thought. So, it involved getting a locksmith out to make some new keys. Then, bricks needed fixing that were about to break apart and let the burglar bars come loose. So that needed fixing. It seems he just can’t start a project without it leading to five more and it is so frustrating for him.

I finally got the curtains done in the master bedroom, I really love how they turned out. Now I need to finish the bedspread that will go with them. That is a huge project, but I am about half way through on it. Though I keep taking time off from that project to do other things. This week I made a cute bag to carry my stuff back and forth to the quilting classes I am taking. It took so long cause I made the pattern as I was going along. It really came out a lot bigger than I thought it would! I am hoping that I will be able to sell the pattern to it in the quilting store, we will see.

Big Cheer!! Movers are scheduled for Friday.

Yesterday, I had enough. After a month of driving back and forth to the new house from our old house, a 45 minute drive—dark both ways, I decided enough was enough. We have been working on things every day and it seems like we just can’t get the to do list done. Every time a new project is started it ends up with us having to back and do something else first. This weekend we started on the kitchen sink and ended up having to replace the dishwasher first – which still needs leveling and bolting in. Thank goodness hubby knows how to do all this stuff. But, I am learning through all this. I got my own screwdriver now with different attachments and I even know what these attachments are used for! I want my own power drill like my daughter has. I do have my own electric mouse sander, but that was a craft tool that I am using for other purposes.

I told hubby that our new hobby in our senior years will be getting the house the way we want it and we will be working on it for years! Can you believe this house was advertised as move in ready?

We put on a new roof
We pulled down the wallpaper in kitchen, painted with a oil based primer – two coats, painted with a semi-gloss – three coats
We pulled down all lights, wall plates, smoke detectors, and got the house ready for painters
Painters painted ALL ceilings, wall and trim on three bedrooms
We put up all lights, wall plates, smoke detectors and purchased a new light for living room twice – and will replace the second one too
Removed oven and drop in stove to move plug in for stove that was over the counter, then had to put back in after new outlet was put in (we are still uncertain about a piece that seems to just sit there-wonder where it really goes?)
When working on kitchen sink discovered dishwasher was leaking and had to replace it
Put in new faucet set for kitchen sink

Still to do:
Put in new cartridge for bath tub faucet
Put vents in through to roof for hot water heater (needs two), clothes dryer, bathrooms, stove and air conditioner
Move clothes dryer vent from venting to garage
Replace copper tubing for refrigerator with flexible tubing which means work on clothes washer faucet where it feeds from
Repair chimney which does not have a rain cap (rock holding down a plastic tub lid is on it now)
Fix closet door in guest room – needs epoxy to replace broken spot in top where hinge goes

In the next month or so I need to pull down the wall paper in the bathroom and do the walls – prime and seal, texture, and paint. I just wanted to wait until we were moved in before starting that.