Oh What a Day…

Yesterday was a day alright.

 It started like this:

Ireland doesn’t get snow very often, and this snow was gone by noon, followed by torrential rain, followed by blinding sun by 1pm. Aine and I made a snow queen and had a snowball fight. We seized the day and had some snowy fun, it might be the last time here for a year or 2!!?? Afterwards, we came in for a nice cup of hot dodo, as Aisling calls it (better known as hot cocoa/chocolate to you and me!) Here is our queen followed by her demise just a few hours later…

In the afternoon we went to see Enchanted with some friends. Very cute movie.

In the evening, I got some not so nice news. My mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer. It is a small lump, and they will fight first with radiation and lumpectomy, but it caught us all by surprise. I’d appreciate any good thoughts or prayers you could send her way.

Now just to end on a positive note, here is one of the babies who recently received some of my crafting work, 2 little onesies/baby vests:

The babies name is Catherine Mary, what a great name, lol! (mine is Catherine Marie, lol) She was named after her grandmother and great grandmother, but I like to think she was named after me, hee hee! I loaned Catherine’s mommy the moses basket I made before Aine was born. I love to see it being used by other friends and family! I really need to get back into basket making, I haven’t done it since I finished this basket.

I was really thrown for a loop with mom’s news yesterday, but now 24 hours on, it sounds bad, but not as bad as I was imagining yesterday. So many people survive breast cancer, but it is never easy to go through, I am sure.

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The Rhythm of Life

Aine and her first row of her own quilt, originally uploaded by Cathi O’Neill.

Look at Aines first quilt row! I marked little dots on the backs of two squares and she used needle and thread to go up and down through those dots. I untangled threads for her, but she stitched all those squares together herself. We haven’t done any more since last week, but she did great!!

Not a huge amount of dramatic photos to show you this week, as I am constantly working in small snippets of time on four main projects. I try to quilt one Dear Jane square each day (count now up to 52 squares quilted!!), I am working on my second sock (up to heel flap now), I am doing freehand fans on the applecore quilt (doesn’t look much different from last week!), and I am slowly sewing together my HSTs for more ocean waves blocks.

Of course while doing all this, I am trying to change the million dress up costumes the girls want changed about every 5 minutes, cleaning toilets, cooking meals, running errands, getting out the few sunny days (it is raining again today!) to the park and friends houses with the kids… It is a nice rhythm of life, and things do get accomplished…slowly!

I wanted to show you all the gorgeous batiks that Micki, another quilting “Yank” here in Ireland sent me when we swapped Civil War fabrics for batiks! I’m well on the way to get my dad’s quilt started…just need to get some good snowy mountain fabric. Thank you so much for the large pieces of batik!!

We had a bank holiday on Monday, so Dave and I packed the kids in the car and headed for the West Coast of Ireland. We walked along a beach or two, I knit quite a lot of my sock, and look what town we went through, I just had to take a photo for the blog, sad I know!

 

Home from Portugal!

View from our apartment in Portugal, originally uploaded by Cathi O’Neill.

This is the view from our living room in our apartment we rented for the week. You can’t see it in the distance in the photo but there is a view of the ocean as well. The lovely pool was a short walk away, and we had access to a kids pool and play area in a neighboring complex. We felt we got great place for a totally reasonable price!

 

DH’s brother and partner and their two sons, Merlin and Noah, live just down the road, and the kids had great fun getting to know them better. Look at Aine and Merlin holding hands. They did that quite often, it was too cute!!

We went on beach barbeques, a water zoo with dolphin shows, the local zoo where Aine saw her favorite flamingos, saw the local city Lagos, went to the end of the world (OK, the westernmost frontier of Europe, last sight of land for Columbus for a good while!) I swam in the ocean twice, tried to swim every day, read one whole book (The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd) and got halfway through another, finished a doll quilt and got through the heel gusset of my Pomatomus sock. We also had a few late night meals with family, and I was able to get drunk one night (which for me entails about 3 or 4 drinks over the course of a night! I’m a lightweight with drinking, if not literally!!) Not bad for a week.

I took a silly fun photo for the vacation photo contest on Summer of Socks. Here is my sock at the “end of the world” beyond this point there be dragons!

Today is our wedding anniversary, 12 years now, how time flies!! We got married on a blistering hot day in Woodstock Virginia. The wedding was at a lovely victorian inn called the River’d Inn. I changed out of my wedding dress and into a swim suit while listening to our wedding band playing traditonal Irish music…pretty laidback wedding, lol!!

I’ll be mostly unpacking, washing clothes, and working on some quilting. We have both decided that today is our first day of Weight Watchers again, so Dave will be cooking a nice but healthy meal tonight!!

OK…so better get going, hope to layer my doll quilt for hand quilting (have fallen in love with hand quilting!) and cutting out some more ocean waves blocks…and unpacking…and….