The other night Tammy and I went shopping in Nappanee with some friends of ours.  As we walked out of one of the stores we decided to get a few impromptu memory shots.  Tam and I rarely get pictures taken together so we’re glad to have one to share with you now.  Which do you like better – the black and white or the color?  And by the way – the texture on the picture is the newest fabric by 3 Sisters…  Etchings  Fun!

We're totally attached to this little miss!

She’s growing up fast. One of her favorite things to do when she come to our place is hold onto the handles on our longarm while it is quilting. I think she really thinks she’s making it go! So much fun….

We had two storms come through here only days apart. The first storm hit us pretty hard. No tornadoes were spotted, but the winds had reported gusts of up to 80 mph.  Thankfully no one was hurt and we had no structural damage. However, a few trees got pretty badly torn up and our neighbor lost 3 trees in their front yard.  One tree was a huge old pine. As it fell to the ground it caught the power lines, ripping them out of the neighbor’s house and damaging the lines to our house and the pole. It also covered the road in its massiveness.

It is an incredible amount of work to clean up that many trees.  Our church sent over a few guys with chain saws and Michael came, too.  By the end of the day our entire property was clean except for a huge pile in the front yard from the neighbor’s pine.  It felt good when time finally allowed and the remains of the storm were completely burnt.  What an enormous fire!

The second storm brought 4 tornadoes with it, but they touched down just a couple of miles to the north of us.  We had more branches down, but not the major damage that others suffered.  One man had his entire barn picked up off its foundation and moved across the street!  The hay and equipment was still standing on the foundation.  Now, how does a tornado accomplish such a thing?!  But it did show me  that “gusts up to 80 mph” are definitely a different story than a real, true “tornado”.

When looking at the following pictures, bear in mind that we forgot to take pictures until clean up was well under way.  It was even worse…. 

Here you can see the size of the trunk on the pine. It is sad to loose such an old tree.

The guys at work. I'm not sure how we would have gotten this cleaned up without their help.

Dad and Tammy unloading branches onto the fire pile. Thankfully, the store Dad is building wasn't damaged. That is not a barn in the background - it is a store in progress!

The view of the road after it had been cleared almost to the point of passing. I wish I would have had a picture before it was cleared at all.

The pile that was started in our front yard. It looks like a jungle!

The power company cutting a branch out of the power lines. It was a big relief when they came out and repaired the lines. You don't realize how much you depend on electricity until it's gone.

I’m glad that’s over!  Hopefully there will be no more tornadoes for a long, long time…………..

Meadowsweet Home by Need'l Love

It has an applique center with tiny nine-patches surrounding it that are set on point and alternated with blank square blocks. (I haven’t done any applique work in a while and really, really enjoyed doing it again. It reminded me of my fondness for handwork!) The quilt has a nice, scalloped border surrounding it to allow for pretty quilting. I spent more than a day working on digitizing the patterns for the quilt.

It was such a pleasure to finally load it in the quilting frame and see it start getting stitched out! The nice thing about this quilt is that we made TWO of them…. One is for Adam and Gail, and the other is for Jacquie and Michael. I’m glad the cousins will have identical quilts. I think it’s kind of special – especially since they both started their married lives so close in time to each other.

Check back for the pictures of the quilt. I plan to post them when it’s finished.

Our happy little niece

Michael had a cousin get married in Costa Rica so they decided to go down for the wedding and also stop in Nicaragua to visit some old friends and meet some new ones. We are very glad they had the opportunity to go, although our life here is a bit dry with them gone. We live close to each other so it is normally (and thankfully!) easy to go back and forth with each other working together as “Three Sisters” like to do.

Jacquie has been faithful to email when possible. It’s been nice to get the updates on how everyone is doing. We’ll be picking them up at the Chicago airport on Sunday afternoon. It will be wonderful to see them again and catch up on all their experiences. Email is great, but nothing beats talking face to face!