Field Trip

On Saturday, the "girls" took a field trip to Jackson, Marshall, Battle Creek and Kalamazoo in search of quilt shoppes. Although we started out at our usual haunt, Country Stitches (only the Jackson version), our new favorite is the Marshall House in, well, Marshall, Michigan. The Marshall House is located in a former funeral home. There are many rooms, each with a fabric theme. At the Marshall House, they encouraged you to place the fabrics together to look at colors, to take it outside if you needed better light, and to look at "this." There was no pressure to buy, and once we brought our loaded carts to the cutting table, no complaints about the amount of stuff we wanted. I have just begun a new quilt through a Country Stitches class called Rambling Rose meets Jackson County. It's a pieced quilt with a variety of blocks in the colors of dusty rose, black and beige. Since I just invested in the fabric for this quilt last week, I tried to be frugal on Saturday! I did buy 15 beautiful batik fat quarters for a hand-appliqued wildflower quilt and six lovely moda's to border a Hummel embroidered block quilt.

Divine YaYa's

In the novel, Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood, by Rebecca Wells, the strong, lifelong bond among friends is explored. In this life, I do not think it possible to have too many true friends. This is our YaYa group. We don't wear funny hats, we don't blood-let. We do have a strong bond related to work and age. We are a support to one another and can create and "intervention" within a very short time if someone is in need. The intervention here is the news that one of the seven of us has accepted a new, exciting position. While we wish her the very best and know she won't be leaving town, we still worry that the group will change.

Our group started on the beach in Pensacola, Florida about two years ago. Several of us were attending the same conference. We were overwhelmed at how devastated Pensacola was from hurricane Charlie and how poorly the city was recovering. We were also very pumped from listening to Quint Studer talk about his successes in improving the experience for patients at the hospitals he has led.

I love you all, my YaYa sisters!


On another note: Our friends, John and Judy are doing well. Beth accompanied Judy on a wheelchair ride about the Ingham Medical parking lot Saturday and John was determined to attend the NASCAR race at MIS on Sunday!

My "Wildflower" Garden

This will be the latest edition to my perennial garden! It currently resides with a friend, waiting for it's new home to be constructed in the backyard. Billy is erecting a fence along the current farmer's fence at the back of our yard. The fence will block the view of the field weeds and allow a better view of the perennial flowers planted all along the edge of the fence.

Environment or Genes

What was once a shelving unit Billy was going to use in the pole barn is now a pile of boards and a handful of screws! How is it that a three-year old boy is so adept with a screwdriver?!

Grammy, I want Ice Cream

It was another rainy day in mid-Michigan. There was so much rain in so short a time this afternoon that many roads had 6-12 inches of standing water. On the side road to Leo's Outpost (I'll always remember it as DeMarco's!), a car sat in water up to the door handle. Since we couldn't cook outside, we went to Applebee's for supper. Guess what Noel had?

Noel's Friend Clint

Noel refers to our neighbor across the street as "my friend Clint." Clint & Lynn are near his Grammy's age, but Clint has a John Deere Gator, and a tractor and bees! Noel and some of his friends from the daycare took a field trip to Clint's to "catch bugs." Notice the net and the bug box!