A New Year!

There's been quite a lot that has happened since I last posted. The problem is Facebook. I was playing too many games, didn't feel like doing anything really...


My sister was diagnosed with breast cancer only because she finally went to the pulmonologist, after my hounding her for quite awhile, to see what was wrong with her lungs. They did an MRI and found she had a couple suspicious areas which did turn out to be two areas of breast cancer. That was October. At this point she's gone through a mastectomy and is receiving no further treatment. They say with her tissue type there's no real proof chemo would help her at all. They do think they got all the cancer so we'll wait and see. She is having reconstruction done and will have surgery for that in about 5 weeks. She's taking it like a trooper. She'd been feeling so bad for so long, my poor sister. I TOLD her she was sick!


We had Christy here for Christmas and she helped the grandkids decorate a gingerbread house. Well, in truth they "helped" HER but it came out really cute in the end. See?


Before Christy arrived I worked really hard to make her a very special quilt. Our old dog, Floyd, died this past May. He was one of those dogs who wears bandanas. His wardrobe consisted of a wide variety of bandanas in all sorts of colors, all of which I was still hanging onto. There were a lot that Christy had put his name on as well. I'd asked Christy what she thought I should do with them and she told me I should make a blanket out of them. "What a great idea!" I thought... Christy was always the child who loved that dog best so I thought what better gift could I give her than a quilt made of her favorite dog's bandanas? It was a time consuming task but every stitch was made with love. She absolutely loved the quilt and didn't even take her jacket home with her so she could fit it into her suitcase. :) You can see she's holding onto it here in the family Christmas photo.

And so a new year has begun nearly leaving me behind in the process. I didn't get a single Christmas card or the annual letter written. I had good intentions but those were all used up right here at home with the family, the visit, the baking, watching over my sister and my family. That IS what is most important after all.

I love you all and appreciate you checking in to see how we're doing. We're hanging in there! We're having FHE with our kids and their kids. We're getting more involved in how we interact with one another in our household and making plans for the future. We're doing alright!