Another quilt finished (Lily)

Last night I stayed up late finishing Lily's quilt and watching the first episodes of the BBC "As Time Goes By" which I have seen occasionally but never from the beginning or consistently. I know I posted just the top before, but now it is ready to send to her. Wahoo!! Since her birthday is the 25th I have managed just in time. Now I will start quilting the one for Magdalena. I'm also cutting pieces for the new baby's quilt. (Did I mention that already?) I want to work on the piecing when I'm at Bonnie's in a couple of weeks, so I won't do much on it here. I am doing it in the Pinwheel design. I had planned to do a double pinwheel but my fabric choices didn't seem to work as well for that so I'll do just a pinwheel. It will go together quite quickly, I think. The piecing is simple, but it will no doubt take me longer to quilt properly.

This has been a good week. On Monday everybody came over and Kevin barbecued hot dogs and hamburgers for us. I had hoped the little kids would want to watch something on Netflix but when they get together they mostly want to run around and be active, so I guess I'll mostly use it when they come over to spend the night from time to time.

Friday was Grandparents Day in Echo's first grade class, so I went over for an hour and did some activities with her class in small groups. It was very fun, and just enough to let me know I really don't want to substitute in the elementary schools. It's not that I wouldn't enjoy the kids, but as I looked around the classroom, I remembered how much multi-tasking and energy it takes to manage a classroom, and I don't think I could do it very well any more. I no longer have eyes in the back of my head, either, like I used to!

Last night I took Busbyberkly to Texas Roadhouse for steak for her birthday present. I hadn't been there ever and it was very good. We got there around 5 and it was already crowded! I think she really liked her dinner and they did a birthday thing and gave her a little ice cream sundae. She got to sit on a saddle while they did a "Yee-haw" (she wasn't quite sure what that was about!) but anyway, I think she had fun.

I'm not sure how I'm going to spend my Saturday. I do much better on Sunday if I haven't run around all day on Saturday. Remember, kids, when I could do that with you and we would go from morning to night on Saturday? I actually was usually pretty tired when I plopped into bed on Saturday night in Tucson when the kids were young. I had a couple of days of not feeling well this week and didn't get some of my chores done, and am tempted to make up for it today, but I'm thinking I'll have time next week to get them done.

Sandra and I tried a new Mexican/Italian restaurant on Thursday, which was very good. What an odd combination, but the chef is Mexican and he used to work at Ottavio's in Provo (which has closed) and developed some of their recipes, so for him it was a logical thing to do. Anyway, it was very good and I'm sure we'll go back, but there are so many new restaurants here, especially Mexican, that something goes out of business literally every month. I don't know how people think they can succeed, but then I suppose they think they are different enough to do it.

My latest idea on how to deal with my financial crisis is to rent my house to support a mission, and maybe when I come back the market will have recovered enough that I can sell my house and realize some small profit. But then my house payments will be less than rent for several more years under my loan modification and I would miss all that time of living here. Could I go on a mission after I sell my house, instead? I would be into my early 70's. Hmmm. And regardless of that, I am still in a financial crisis. Well, I have had plenty of time to learn that Heavenly Father has a plan for me, and just because I can't figure it out doesn't mean there isn't a truly wonderful solution! I have yet to move from one stage of my life into something worse. My life has continually gotten better with every change of circumstances. I'm not sure why I think this will be any different. Something will come. I have been in a "but there's no way to solve this problem" situation many times before and somehow it has been taken care of.

OK. I think that's the essentials from my week. Sandra and I have gone out and run errands together a few times. I am so grateful to have her here. I am really enjoying our companionship.