One more post about my beach week.  There are such yummy restaurants in Myrtle Beach!  We had decided before the trip that we would only eat one meal at a restaurant a day, and we shopped for groceries the first night, and we were very good all week long about eating healthy and walking as much as possible.  One day we ate at a Red Lobster for lunch because we had a coupon.  Another night we just got a pizza and had enough of that for leftovers another time.  We wanted to try a new seafood buffet, one that Sheila hadn't been to yet, so that she would know if it was another good choice for when her family goes to the beach.  We found a winner!

                               

It had an amazing seafood buffet of so many different things, both fried and grilled, and it had steak, roast beef, and chicken as well, with lots of country foods too.  The big thing there is crab legs.  Sheila had some of those and did a great job of cracking them open.  But did I have my camera for that??   Nope!   And it had a very long table of every dessert imaginable!

We decided to go to Margaritaville for lunch one day.  Neither of us had been to one, and it was a lot of fun to see all that went on, watch the "Hurricane", listen to the music, and shop in the gift shop!

                              

This is where you went in to the area the restaurant was in -

                              

                              

We walked in, and the first thing that had me laughing, after the large hurricane up on the ceiling, were TVs all over that periodically had Jim Cantore from The Weather Channel talking about a hurricane coming - I of course knew that the Hurricane at Margaritaville was talking about a drink, but I have spent so many years glued to the TV watching Jim Cantore talking about, and being in the middle of, REAL hurricanes, that I found it quite fun!

                             

                             

 

Now to see if the "Hurricane" at Margaritaville comes out as well in the picture as it was in person -

                             

                              

                             

Ok, so in this hurricane, the bottle of Tequila, I think it is, comes down out of the hurricane and fills up the green pitcher.  It all happens right after Jim Cantore's newcast.  So to speak.  And that all happens I guess every half hour or so.  Maybe less often than that because I think we only saw it once when we first went in and once more.  The music playing brought back memories of my youth, and it was a fun experience.  Sheila told me that in the summer, every restaurant, and especially this one, is packed and you sometimes have to wait a couple of hours to be seated.  I would never have waited that long!  But we didn't have to wait at all, in the winter, and so we enjoyed it!  My hamburger, which was suppose to be their Cheeseburger in Paradise without the cheese, came with the cheese on it, but I just took it off.  It was good!

Oh, and one night we asked at the desk for an Italian place, again hoping to find one that was new to Sheila, and were sent to a steak and pasta restaurant.  It was relatively new, and very good, but NOT Italian, except for the few pasta dishes on the menu.  We each had a steak and shared a side dish.  

 

That's the story of my quilting week at the beach!  

I have been struggling with high blood pressure and was instructed to take my blood pressure every day at the same time with the spiffy cuff blood pressure machine I bought at CVS before the trip.  It was great all week long!  Jim said, when I told him over the phone how good my blood pressure was doing,  that he expected it WOULD be good when I was spending a week at the beach quilting with Sheila!  Truly, however, I am convinced that it is the exercise I am doing, walking every day, weights, and stretching, that is keeping my blood pressure in normal range.  Now, if I could get all the other important numbers in a normal range, THAT would be success!

                             

I had to get a picture of Sheila's adorable white featherweight sewing machine!

                  

 

And, on to the quilts I worked on.  The first is one for my grandson John, when he moves into a big bed, which will be soon.  It is a train fabric grouping called "Riding the Rails" and is so cute!  The pattern I chose took some careful cutting and measuring and piecing, so it took me a good bit of 4 of our days to get the top pieced, and the back pieced as well.  These pictures are not all that good because you can't see the outer border,  but the good news is that I gave it to my quilter friend last week, and she told me today that she has it finished!  So, I will get it from her this week, put the binding and label on, and take some better pictures before I give it to Amanda for John!

                  

                  

                   

 

The second project I worked on took a couple of days too, but it is a gift, so I am not going to show pictures right now!  Then, I brought the blocks I put together at quilt camp in November, of what will be a lap-sized quilt for our living room.  I got the inside part of the top put together, but I forgot to bring the border fabric with me, so I will need to finish that later.  But here are the blocks as I was laying them out to decide what went where. 

                 

 

I worked on parts of other projects, and I finished another flower of my Grandmother's Flower Garden while we were sitting and doing some handwork, and I finished 3 ruffly scarves on the car ride.

 

Next time - some of the restaurants we went to!

 

 

                 

                  

I am finally getting to this blog of my trip to Myrtle Beach!  Thanks to Sam for helping me get my pictures on my computer again! And I am trying Safari instead of Google Chrome to see if it lets me put more than 8 onto xanga at one time.  We'll see!

I went to the beach with my friend, Sheila, for a week!   She has a timeshare and is so generous in inviting me to go with her - we take our sewing machines, and we work on our quilts all week long!

The place where we stayed was absolutely wonderful!  We had lots of room for our sewing stuff!  We had a nice kitchen and could eat most of our meals in - we ate one meal out a day - pictures of some restaurants later.

The view from our room overlooking the beach was beautiful!

                   

                   

                   

                   

                   

 

Here are a couple from on the beach, looking up at our condo -

                   

Our unit is the one right under the columns - it was the 15th floor, out of 16.  The 16th was the penthouse; we didn't have that one!

                   

 

And here we are at our sewing machines!

                   

                   

 

More pictures of our quilts and restaurants next time!

 

We had some interesting technological issues while we were there - well, I did, anyway.  Why does this stuff happen when you are away from home?  The first was that we were the victims of credit card fraud.  The bank caught it immediately, put a hold on our credit card, and called right away.  Jim called me to see if I knew of some VERY unusual charges - one for the Palace Hotel in New Mexico and another for a tech charge out of Thailand.  It was stopped before it got very far, we weren't liable for the charges, which weren't much anyway, and we were issued new credit cards the very next day.  Kudos to the bank for monitoring our credit card!

The second thing that happened was that my cell phone chose that very week to die on me!  It started the day after we arrived, with difficulty getting service, then by the next day, it was jumping through my apps without my even pushing a button, and by the 3rd day, I could only randomly make calls or text anyone.  By the time we got to the Verizon store, it was not working.  I had an upgrade coming, and fortunately, I could contact my technologically knowledgeable kids to see what they recommended (Sheila's phone worked, so I used that, and she works with Jim so she has his number in her phone!  Very helpful for calling one's husband to say, oh, by the way, I am buying a new phone!)  So, I bought an iPhone 4S for all of you people out there who know about that stuff.  And I am learning!

It was a wonderful week at the beach!  Very relaxing, peaceful, and the weather was ok - 50's and 60's early in the week; 40's mid-week, but then way too cold by the last day to walk on the beach.  I was not complaining, though - it was VERY cold at home in VA!

 

More Myrtle Beach next time!

Here is my 2013 Reading alliteration.  I gave Betsy my topic descriptions of books I want to read this year, and this is what she came up with:

 

Staying serious with solid and substantial selections on spiritual stretching, salubriousness, self sagas, signing studies, and sewing, stitching, and similar strands, sometimes scattered with short sabbaticals for seemingly silly scoops of stealth, slaying, and subterfuge.

 

Basically, that means that I want to read a lot of non-fiction, including many books I got at the True Woman conference I went to, by great Christian authors, on Biblical Womanhood, as well as books on health-related topics, biographies and autobiographies, Deaf studies, ASL studies, and various needle and fabric arts topics.   All of that will be interspersed with my favorite mindless mysteries and other fictional options.  I might just throw in a Dickens or two sometime during the year!  Most of the books are ones I already own, that I got as part of registration at the True Woman conference or bought there, or have in this book-filled house, or can get at the library.  Not planning on making book purchases this year unless something just jumps into my path and says, "Buy me, buy me!"

 

First up is Voices of the True Woman Movement; A Call to the Counter-Revolution, by Nancy Leigh DeMoss, with contributions from John Piper, Mary Kassian, Joni Eareckson Tada, and Janet Parshall.

I made a Moose quilt for Jim's Christmas present!  I bought the fabric when I was out in Colorado last year on one of my trips.  I had several friends help me design it, figuring out a pattern with the fabric that had uneven panels on it!  I sewed most of it at quilt camp this past November, then finished up the last border when I got home, then had it machine quilted by a friend here who does long arm machine quilting.  Then I sewed the binding on it last week.  I think it is the best Christmas gift I have ever given Jim!

                          

                          

                          

                          

                          

 

More pictures of our Christmas Day next time!

This time last year, my daughter, Betsy, and I decided to spend 2012 reading Charles Dickens.  As many of you know, we like to come up with an alliteration that makes the reading topic of the year more fun!  Well, it used to be the topic of the summer, but I guess we have set a new precedent, because we had an alliteration for the past year and are about to come up with some for this coming year.

And Jim decided to join us!  So, here was 2012's reading alliteration.  It was a long one!

Donna, Daughter, and Dad are Dedicated to Delving into the Delightful, Dreary, and Dark Documents from the Desk of Dickens, BUT, Destined to be Dragged by Dickens' Demanding Dictation, we are Free to Filter with Fiction, Fantasy, Facts, or Further Features that Find our Fancy.

So, although Jim has been reading on his Nook, a book that contains all of Dickens' works and so he is going straight through, and Bets is pretty much doing the same thing, although since she isn't here, I don't really know how she is going about it for sure, my decision was to pick some of Dicken's novels that I had not read before (and I had read quite a few, especially during our homeschooling years), and choose ones that I either had in my possession or could find in the library.  I only got through 5!  Some of them took a LONG time to get through!  Here are the ones I read this year:

Nicholas Nickleby, Old Curiosity Shop, Dombey and Son, Hard Times, and Martin Chuzzlewit.

I did read other books - 30 other books, to be exact!  And the year isn't over yet!  Some were my favorite mindless mysteries, some were for Bible studies, and the majority of them were in Books on CD form - I listened to LOTS of books while I was driving across the country numerous times by myself this year.

Trust me - you can only read so much Dickens without breaks in between.  There are more of his books that I would like to read, though, and so perhaps I will add some to this year's reading on occasion, or maybe I will do a year soon of mostly classics and read some of the others then.  

Betsy is helping me with my alliteration, so I know I will have it before the New Year!  I gave her the subject matter, and she is making up the alliteration.  Stayed tuned!

 

I always seem to be the last person I know to get any Christmas decorations up.  We did get the village up, but that has been it.  So, knowing I was going to have the kiddos over to play today, I knew they would enjoy helping Grandma get some Christmas decorating done!   We put some mini ornaments on one of my mini trees -

                      

 

And we made some felt ornaments that I found at AC Moore - just gluing felt on felt -

                     

They got to take their ornaments home, and they are putting up their tree tonight, they told me!

It was a busy day around here!

Here are some more pieces from my Christmas in the City village.  Remember, it represents Philly to me, so many of the pieces have special significance -

Independence Hall - I keep this one up all year!

                

 

A department store - when I was growing up, it was so much fun to go downtown to Wanamaker's Department store, especially at Christmas time.  This department store reminds me of that!

                

 

The Art Museum - everyone knows of the Philadelphia Art Museum from the Rocky movies!

                

There was a hotel like this one, but it was the Barclay Hotel, on Rittenhouse Square, where we had our wedding reception -

                

And I had to have the automat!  Who knows what an automat is?   We ate many meals out at automats in Philly!

               

 

These next two pictures are of the North Pole Village set.  It is Betsy's.  She left it at home, so the kids decided to make it part of the set up this year - a special shopping area!

               

               

 

And many years ago, the little boys of some family friends, who LOVED going to construction sites, gave me these pieces.  They are not part of Dept 56 sets, but they are very special to me -

               

 

Two different people have told me that they leave their villages up through February to enjoy it longer.  That's what I'll do!  I am soooo tempted to leave it up all year long so that we don't have to put it up again next year!    But I am sure we will need the tables it is sitting on at some point!

I have a Christmas village called Christmas in the City.  It is one of the Department 56 villages.  We haven't put it up for the past 5 or 6 years, because the girls were all gone, Jim was busy, and it is too much for me to do myself.  But this year, my family put it up on Thanksgiving for me!  Even my grandchildren helped!

I got the first piece to my village on my 40th birthday - oh, my - almost 20 years ago!  We still lived in Mississippi!  I had wanted the Christmas in the City village because I grew up in Philadelphia, and so much of that village reminds me of Philly!  

The first piece I got, from the friends who we went out with to celebrate my 40th birthday that year,  was the Doctor's Office because, well, Jim is a doctor!

                               

 

Now I have a large village!

                               

                               

                               

                               

                               

                               

 

Don't ya love that subway stop in the last picture?  I rode the subway everywhere for many years!

 

The Scrooge sign, on the theater, is because every year we are involved in our local production of "Scrooge" and this year it was this past weekend.  It went very well.  We miss having Betsy here, because for years she was in the show, and for two years she directed it, and then before that, Amanda was in it.  Now, it is just Jim, from our family, as part of the cast.  He is in the chorus, plays his psaltery, and dances on Scrooge's casket.  It is such a fun show, very professionally done, and is free, with an offering taken for our local crisis pregnancy center.  I am one of several sign language interpreters.  So, it makes the months leading up to it busy ones for us!

 

More photos of my Christmas village next time!

It has been a couple of busy and emotional weeks here.  I'll start with quilt camp and go backwards and forwards from there.  I have a few pictures from camp.  Not many because my camera ran out of battery and because my computer will only let me upload and choose, on xanga, 8 pictures at a time.

Quilt camp, the one I have gone to for many years, is held at Camp Bethel, in Fincastle, VA.  It is only about 45 minutes from my house, so that is nice!  It is a beautiful place.  We had 25 this year.  We all stay in this building - here are some of us walking out of there to go to the dining building -

                                        

 

Inside there, is one large room where we set up our sewing machines, and then 4 large rooms off of that, with bunk beds.  We each get a lower bunk and use the top one to store our stuff!

                                        

The scenery is beautiful -

                                        

Here is the large dining room where we ate all of our meals -

                                        

Sorry about the lighting there! 

And here are some quilts!

                                        

                                        

                                        

Quilt camp this year was bittersweet.  I love being there, sewing with so many of my very close friends, learning new things, seeing beautiful quilts emerge from everyone's sewing machine, and this one was wonderful for all of that!

But there was so much sadness in the lives of many people who I love, that I was sad and distracted.  First, early that week, my daughter, Suzanne, called to tell me that one of her best friends had died suddenly.  I had met this gal, and she and Suz have been friends for a long time, have traveled together, and spent a lot of time together.  My heart hurt for Suzanne and for the family and other friends of the young woman who died, although there was joy mingled with sadness, that she was now seeing her Savior face to face.  We were also waiting for news of a young woman who lives here, who we have been friends with for many years, a young mother of two little boys, who was losing her very courageous battle with stage 4 breast cancer.  I am teary just writing about it here.  Kim died the first night that I was at quilt camp, and my heart was sad the whole time.  We also rejoiced that Kim knew Jesus as her Lord and Savior, that she had faith and praised the Lord until the very end, and that we are confident she is in Heaven with the Lord she loved and served for her 39 years.  But my heart hurt just the same.  Just before I left for camp, I had news that a young son of another family we know well was diagnosed with a brain tumor at age 8.  He has had surgery this past week to have the tumor removed, is doing well, and his family is hopeful and prayerfully awaiting the results of the pathology report.  And as always, I pray faithfully for my friend Julie's 9 year old grandson with leukemia.

So, I came home from quilt camp that Sunday with lots going on here.  We had a few days of activities to welcome a pastoral candidate to our church - he and his wife and children were here for everyone to meet them and to hear him preach.  That Monday night I hosted a dinner here at my house.  The following day, Tuesday, was the funeral for Kim.  I was privileged to have my grandchildren stay here for the day, so that Amanda could play the piano for the funeral with no other concerns, and having them here cheered me up!

I din't unpack until Wednesday - I didn't even take most of the quilt camp things out of the car!  But slowly, I progressed in getting life back together around here.  I kept the kiddos on Friday too, because I often do, to give Amanda some time for whatever she needs to do.  She is, by the way, expecting Baby #4 at the end of May, and I can announce that on here now because she put it on Facebook this morning!

And now we are almost ready for our annual production of "Scrooge" here, where Jim is in the chorus, dances on Scrooge's casket, and I help interpret it in sign language.  So, that is coming up the week after Thanksgiving!

 

I know that I won't get a post written again before Thanksgiving, so I will say that I am so very thankful for all of the blessings I have!  And I am looking forward to having my family here - we will miss Bets and Andrew, but we will know they are with Andrew's family, and I am thankful that they are well and healthy.