Stress

 I have been becoming more closely in touch with this evil demon than I ever wanted to be.  I have been having what I believe to be anxiety or stress attacks. Let me tell you it is not fun. I feel like I can't take a deep enough breathe, get a sharp pain in my head, dizzy and could even feel shaky. I try deep breathing, but when you can't take a deep breath it tends to make the attack worse because then I feel as if I'm suffocating. Between the kids, house, and animals, it is all taking it's toll on my body. I just feel like I am turning into this miserable whiny person and I hate it.

With the coming holidays, my mom has been on my mind constantly. I'm approaching them with happiness and extreme sorrow because she will not be here. I need to be there and make it special for my kids, but what I would really like to do is hide under my covers in bed all day. I try to think of happier holidays with her. She loved Christmas so much and her favorite character was Santa. Last year because she was sick we didn't get to do much Christmas shopping together, but I did "shop" with her over the phone. She was at her house on the internet and I was at mine, together we shopped for people. I remember her being a perfectionist when it came to wrapping gifts. I have never seen someone get so excited over the fact that the pictures matched perfectly at the seams. LOL I had even seen her take paper off a gift and rewrap it because it didn't come out just right. I thought she was crazy, after all it would just get ripped off, but I now know it was just another way of her showing us how much she loved us and how important we were to her. She would have loved the fact that she had a new baby girl to shop for. I'm sure she would have found a beautiful dress and more than likely would have picked out a baby doll for Lauren. She truly loved giving and seeing the excited faces of her grandkids when they opened a gift.

My mom and dad Christmas 2007.

You make plans and God laughs

well this week, he must have been hysterical! I set out to finish my third quilt, the camo one for Nick who loves everything army related. Everything was going good, I was almost done and only had threes rows left to sew when the bobbin case broke. UGH! The closet place that had them was 1/2 an hour away in another state, so off I went on a road trip with my two younger ones and my mother in law. Yes I could have ordered it online, but wanted to get the quilt done and was too impatient to wait for it to arrive in the mail. So I got it installed, started to finish sewing and my bobbin ran out so I had to make a new one. So apparently the joke is on me. I did end up finishing it although, I am not too happy about it. For some unknown reason, some of my rows came up short and by a lot, but have no fear I know my little army guy will still love it and he won't notice the imperfections, just the fact that him mom loved him enough to make him a special blanket.

The pile o' squares

Sewing the X on the camo

Sewing the X on the green

Then on the khaki

Sewing the squares together to make rows.

 Tower o' rows

The broken one is on the left. Can you tell where it is broke? 

                             All fixed! 

Let's get it started.... 

Finally going to finish!

That is until I had to wind another bobbin. LOL

The finishing stitch that I used around the   edge. 

Before it was washed.

Woohoo! Another one down!

Doing the happy dance. I finished Allison's quilt today. I am very happy with the way it came out. As I expected it is very big, so when she is a college student, she can bring her blanket with her. <3

The squares all sewn together.

The quilt before ragging it.

  

                                                      The back of the quilt

After the ragging

A close-up

Front and back

Next will be Nicholas's blanket and then a special project.

Bittersweet day.

We had the boys' birthday party today. It was yet another "firsts" in a long line of them. This is the first birthday party we had since my mom passed. It is quite unbelievable that it has been six months already. I got a little weepy this morning because I was remembering this time last year was when her bouts with pneumonia started. She had to come to my boys' party in a wheelchair because she was so sick. I had told her not to worry about coming because I knew she didn't feel well, but she came anyway and now I'm grateful for that. I also remember this time last year having the most horrible dream. I dreamt my mom had passed away and I remember waking up crying. I wanted to call her right then, but didn't since it was the middle of the night. Perhaps it was my subconscious preparing me for what was t come, not that you can prepare for that.

I'm starting to feel very overwhelmed in life right now. It is as if I am in this big deep hole trying to claw my way out and every time I make it up a few feet, I fall back down. I know you are thinking, well what the hell did d you get the dog for?! Actually the dog has helped a bit, at least she doesn't yell at me or give me attitude.

While we are on that subject, what the heck is it with 7 year old girls and their attitude? Holy crap! I never recall having such an attitude at so young of an age. I don't even know how to handle it. All I know is that I do not look forward to puberty and PMS. LOL

The progress on the quilts have been halted a little. I had a migraine for several days. While I could take care of the kids, the household stuff and "hobbies" got pushed tot the side. I am hoping this week I can get my house back in some sort of order so I can finish up the quilts since it is definitely not getting any warmer.

Here is a new picture of Lucy.

Just because I am a glutton for punishment..........

Meet our new family member. Little Lucy Bear joined our family on Thursday. She is a four month old Puggle. Half Pug half Beagle. Her owner had to get rid of her due to finances. She is sweet and the kids love her. Before you ask, no she is not potty trained, but we are working on it. She has had only a handful of accidents in the house. She doesn't really bark, and is an avid leaf hunter. LOL She is great with the kids and could care less about the cats. She just kind of goes with the flow if things.

So I have the fabric cut for my next quilt. It will be for Allison and I think it will turn out to be huge. LOL Oh well, then it will grow with her.

The very wrinkled khaki, I would have ironed it, but there was just too much of it.

The light green striped fabric.

Okay, do they seriously need to stamp their name on the fabric? I know where I got it from.

The pretty flower fabric and the tower o' squares. LOL

Now, I know what you are thinking, that isn't the same template, and you are correct! Good eye! This is a new larger template made from a heavy cardboard. Since the quilt was bigger I decided to make the squares 2 inches bigger. Stay tuned for more on this exciting turn of events. LOL

"All those kids."

That really seems to be the popular saying of late. It always irritates amazes me when people say this to me. The comments about how I must have my hands full are a tad annoying too. Yes I am busy, but that does not mean I want your sympathy because of it. I love my kids and if I thought my sanity and bank account could afford it, I would probably petition my husband for some more. I like to think that my hands are full of love as cheesy as that sounds. Seriously I only have 4 kids, I could see if I had 10 that people would say things like "All those kids". I just don't get why people would think 4 is a ton. Maybe it is because I grew up with three brothers that I don't see it as "all those kids". I mean geez, my brother has six and I still don't see them as having "All those kids!" So do me a favor next you are going to make a comment to people with more than 1 or 2 kids, think before you speak. Even if your comments aren't meant to hurt or be insulting, they just maybe.

One of my latest favorite sayings is "A Parent's love is whole no matter how many times divided."

One down!!!

Woohoo I finished up Alex's blanket this morning. I am not sure if I like it though. :~( I just don't know about the ragging effect. oh, well, it is done and pretty cute in my opinion. It isn't perfect, but neither am I. (just don't tell my husband. LOL)

Getting started the squares all sewn together.

And we're off!

I kept checking my bobbin, but imagine my surprise when I looked at the spool of thread.

This is all I had left when it ran out! 3 measly squares!

So, after deciding not to quit and go to the store the next day to buy more, I just used some yellow.

Quilt before "ragging"

All done!

As you can see, he loves it.

A close-up

Not too bad, if I may say so myself.

So I might have gotten in over my head.

Jo-Ann fabrics was having a pretty good Labor Day sale and I jumped at it. I have been wanting to make the kids rag quilts, but kept talking myself out of it because fabric is expensive. I decided this time though that I was going to do it. After all a blanket made by mom is way better store bought quilt. You know because of all the love put into it and all that jazz. Thanks to a friend showing pictures of her gorgeous quilt I decided that I could do it. So I went to the store clutching my $100 bill that I had found while cleaning out my husband's car (after all finder's keepers ;o) ). I was just going to get fabric for my two older since I will be repainting their room. So I picked out the fabric and took a number for it to be cut. I was a good 10 people behind and had a very antsy 2 almost 3 year old so I took him to pick out some fabric for his fire truck bed. Holy Cow! If I don't have a headache by the time I am done making his quilt I will be amazed, let's just say they aren't the calmest colors around. LOL In order to make myself get moving on these blankets, I am going to post pictures here of my progress. I decided to start on Alex's quilt first since it won't be as big as Allie and Nick's.

The fabrics

Getting started, I know you are jealous of my own homemade template. You too can have a jazzy one like that, all you need is an old plastic place mat. :)

All cut... or so I thought. I ended up having to cut some more.

Getting ready to sew. Little did I know my spool pin was snapped off.

Thankfully I have a wonderfully handy husband who ran to Home Depot to get something to fix it. :)

The batting inside, I debated back and forth about having batting, but in the end I decided to just do it.

Sewing! now you can see why I said I may have a headache from this fabric. LOL

Stayed tuned for more progress on this event.

So I must have jinxed myself.

All of the excitement of school beginning jinxed me. I now have three sick kids thanks to school. Ahh yes, the back to school germs. #2, #3, and #4 are sick. I feel bad for the baby because there really is nothing that can be done. I woke up at 4am to feed her, only to have it all come back thanks to all the snot that was in her tummy. :o( I hope that this school year isn't as bad with the illnesses as last year, but it is not starting off so good.

I have been cleaning like a mad woman, perhaps that is why the kiddies are sick. Maybe I should have left all the cute little dust bunnies. Maybe I erased all the good germs and that left the kiddies susceptible to the bad germs. Hmmm, maybe cleaning really is bad for your health. LOL I want to paint frick and frack's room. Currently it is pink with princess murals on the wall. That is great for Allison, but Nicholas is really not liking it. Poor guy is sick of being in a pink room looking at "those stupid princesses!" as he puts it. So I am thinking either of green or a tan color to paint the walls, then I am going to try my hand at making them each a rag quilt. Nick loves anything military relates, so definitely camo and Allison is happy with anything girly, but not babyish because she is 7 you know. I will put up pictures of my progress to share with you, hopefully I won't drive myself too crazy. ;o)

Holly

So I am one of those parents.

I swore I would never be one, but I should know better than to say never when it comes to anything child rearing related. Yes, I am over the moon that today is the first day of school for frick and frack. I swear I thought I was going to lose my mind these last couple of weeks. All they did was fight and argue. I finally gave up and quit trying to break them up and you know what happened? They eventually stopped beating the snot out of each other and played nicely. It is times like this that I really miss my mom. I wish I could call her and ask what she did with my siblings when they fought. Today marks the fifth month since she grew her angel wings and I am actually doing good. It was raining this morning, perhaps it was mom crying because she wasn't with us today. My daughter thinks that when it rains it is because Grandma misses us.

I am very happy that we had no tears this first day of school. I was a little nervous because frack has to take a bus to his school, but he was fine. He climbed right up and sat down in his seat then waved with a big grin on his face. He really thinks he is something special because he gets to ride a bus everyday and his sister does not. Frick shed no tears either as she walked to her building. For Kindergarten it took over two months before she stopped crying in the morning, 1st grade 2 weeks, and now she is in 2nd grade no tears, she didn't even want or need me to walk her to the door. When I asked her if she wanted me to walk her, she just said "No mom, that's okay, I'll be fine." As proud as I am that she was okay, I think part of me misses the sweet little girl who cried when she had to separate from me.