A new choir member?!

La La La La La La La!

It was great!!

Last night was our last concert and it was the best!! We had a big crowd, one of the tv stations was there, and the whole program came off great. What a lot of fun the whole thing was. I was blessed to have such a wonderful group of people to work with. They all worked hard and put a lot into it and at the same time we laughed a lot and had fun. It doesn't get much better than that. For any of you reading this, God bless you and have a wonderful Christmas.

Choir on tree

Here's a picture of the tree during a performance. I just got home from this evening's program. It is going very well. The weather is perfect and all the electronics are cooperating. I have quite a few members out sick with bad colds. John missed a couple of days work this week from the bug and I'm just praying I don't get it. Still have 3 performances to go.

Trying to post a video

You gotta watch this video if I did this right. Makes me want to shovel snow!

We're underway!

Here's a picture of the tree with the lights turned on. I took it last night before everyone arrived and the program started. A photographer took pictures with the choir on the tree and he is going to email me some. I couldn't take any myself because once they start getting on the tree I am busy making sure they are all up there where they need to be. Also, the audience is there watching. This first performance was unadvertised and just for our church family and friends. We had a couple of glitches with the sound system but otherwise it went very well and the people who came to see it loved it. It poured buckets all morning and until about 3pm and then the stormed passed. It's a God thing. Rain is the one thing that would make us have to cancel a performance. In 10 years we have never had to cancel a performance. So....we have until Wednesday night to fix the problems with the monitors, and buy more book lights to replace the ones they dropped on the tree. Next year we are going to mount orchestra lights on the top rail of each panel and get rid of the book lights. By Wednesday I will have spent $400 on new booklights this year! They are absolutely my thorn in the side. I hope you all get to see a nice Christmas program, it makes this season so special and makes memories your kids will never forget.

Completed projects.

Here is a picture of the completed tree structure for the Christmas program. All of the green panels are covered with lights that are run by a computer program. While the choir is singing, they are going on and off in all kinds of formations, like a cross, and just various patterns and tempos to match the music. It is really pretty at night. Hopefully I can get a picture one evening this week with everyone on it. We were going to have a dress rehersal on the tree Monday night but the recording we did last week didn't turn out right and we have to re-record the whole thing tomorrow night. Maybe everyone can get on it Tuesday night.

I also finished my quilt top and sent it off to my aunt to machine quilt for me. I can't wait to see how that turns out. It looks pretty good for a first time effort with no help. I am already contemplating my next one. I told John, if he would get this gun cabinet out of my office, I could set a table up in here for sewing and the dining room table could be used to eat at. Yes, well, since we all know he eats on a TV tray in front of the TV, that isn't a huge priority for him.

Christmas shopping?! Haven't really done much yet. I have thought a lot about it but I can't seem to take action. I guess I think too much. We do have all the lights up on the outside and the tree up inside, so I have made some progress for the season. When we were stringing up the outside lights I was remembering how handy Lucas was for that sort of thing. He liked getting up on the roof and John and I are both getting to the point that neither of us wants to go there. Maybe next year Lucas and Angel could come for Thanksgiving and help hang lights. What a great idea!

I'm nuts!!

I wanted to take advantage of the 50% off coupon for JoAnn's that was only good today plus another coupon that was good until noon. I wanted the bigger cutting mat for cutting out quilts. The one I had worked but was small and I managed to also cut the table cloth along with the quilt pieces. I also was ready to buy the fabric for the back of the quilt (yes, I have the front done). I very patiently stood in line to get the fabric cut from the bolt, and then I patiently stood in the check-out line. That fabric line was long!! When I finally made it to the checker, I gave her my coupons and she informed me I couldn't use the 50% one on the mat because it was already on sale. Really? It didn't say it was on sale. Oh well. Can I use it on the fabric? I got 5 yards and the coupon would only be good on 1 yard. Rats! OK . . . I'll just use the 20% off your total purchases coupon. Sorry, that sale ended at noon. It was 12:15. Excuse me, I've been standing in the fabric line for 45 minutes!! Sorry . . . the computer won't accept the coupon after 12 pm. Thank you very much, have a nice day.

Ok, on with the show. I'm gonna stop by the church on the way home and check on the tree construction. Wow, there were men there working on it. I got out of my car to tell them how good it looks and thank them for working so hard to get it done and they informed me that they were repairing the damage done to it last night by some neighborhood kids. They kicked out several of the light panels. Put their foot right through the middle of each one. The turds! It took 4 men all day to fix their damage. I guess I'm going to need to find someone who will park their RV there for the next month to deter it from happening again. In all the years we've been doing this, we've never had them bother the tree before. On that happy note I decided I should just come home and take a nap. What could go wrong in a nap?! ZZZZZZZ

Out of time!

My time at Women of Faith was wonderful, as I knew it would be. Then I came back home to face the fact that I am running out of time. Above are pictures of the tree going up. Today they started putting the light panels on the front of the tiers. This morning I was up climbing on it trying to determine how many I can get on each row. I have 86 in the choir if they all show up at the same time. I doubt that will actually happen since someone is always sick or something. Last night at rehersal I brought in the narrator and Mary & Joseph to run through it with the choir. It was amazing! We went from beginning to end without stopping and they sound great! Next Monday night we will record it, the following Monday, which will be 12/3, we will do an on the tree rehersal, and then on the 9th we will give the first performance. That is an unadvertised performance for our church family and friends. Then the 12th through the 16th we will give one a night for the public. In my spare time, I'm running all over town looking for more book lights and it occured to me, as I stood in a checkout line, I don't have a lot of time for Christmas shopping. Every year I tell myself I am going to get it done early. Yea, right! Thank goodness for computers.

Girl's night out!

Girls of all ages need time with their girlfriends. One of God's great blessings in my life are my good girlfriends. Girls need time together to encourage each other and share their lives and to laugh until they nearly pee their pants. It's how we all get through the up's and down's in our lives. Noone understands your kid troubles better than your girlfriend, who's either been through or is going through the same thing. I am leaving for Phoenix in the morning for a 3 day trip to Women of Faith with my girlfriends. We have so much fun! We go up on Thursday morning so we can shop and goof off all day and go out to someplace fun for dinner. The conference actually starts on Friday morning and runs all day Friday with a break for dinner and then Friday night and all day Saturday. The speakers are great, the music is amazing and the whole experience just re-charges me. I go home exhausted, with some great memories, and thrilled to be back home so I can share everything with my husband. Girls ~ I highly recommend a little get-away once in a while. Guys ~ let them have the time, believe me you will be rewarded!

I can sew?

I finally broke out the sewing machine today and set everything up on the dining room table. I got my cutting mat and my rotary cutter and my rulers all ready for action. I dug to the way back of the spare room closet for the machine. I was foresighted enough to buy some remnant fabric to practice on before cutting in to the material for the actual project. I cut strips, carefully measuring, made sure I knew where the 1/4 inch mark was on the machine so my seams would be accurate. I really had this all thought out! Then I sat down to sew. Right, how do you thread this thing? OK, I finally got that right after about an hour. What's wrong with the bobbin? The thread keeps getting tangled and jamming the needle. I tore the house apart looking for the owners manual, never found it. I went on line to the web site for Brother and it wanted my model number. There's no model number on my machine ... anywhere! Believe me I looked all over it. I can see the serial number but no model number. Oh well, I finally got it working. Yipee! I sewed strips together and cut them into blocks and sewed the blocks together. I pressed all the seams just right. Amazing, it looks like a quilt. Well, actually, it looks more like a table runner but hey, it was just practice scraps. John just got home from work. He walked in and looked at the table, now buried under my quilting "stuff ". "What are you doing? You actually have the sewing machine out? I didn't know you still had one." "I'm making a quilt" I said proudly and held up the results of my labors. I got the blank stare. "Why on earth would you do that?" "Because I want to?" OH. He'll see. I'm gonna do this for sure now.

Quilting

Since I bought the fabric to make my quilt, I needed a couple of things to get it started. So off I went to JoAnn's. Let's see, my aunt said to get a mat to cut on, a rotary cutter, thread, needles, a ruler, if I have any questions someone there can help me, right? Oh they can help alright! Now, I have to say the rotary cutter is a wonderful thing. Way better than trying to use scissors. And I can certainly understand you need a mat to cut on with it. But wow, I had no idea how expensive they are. I opted for the middle sized mat since the big one was $45.00. There was a woman in the aisle getting one too, she said she had the smaller one and it wasn't big enough for her. Hmmm....we'll see, after all it's only a throw, not a bedspread. After I had my bare neccessities in my cart I spied a beginning quilters book. I'm sure God directed my vision to that. The total for that little jaunt came to $90.00. I will have to keep this up to get my money's worth out of all this stuff. Let's see, I spent $45.00 on fabric plus the "stuff " and I will still need the fabric for the back of the quilt plus the batting for the middle. I should be able to make the thing for a mere $200.00! I saw a quilt in a shop that someone had made and was selling for $600.00. It was a queen size. At the time, I thought "Are they nuts?" Oh, no, they are just trying to recoup their losses and probably pay for the new sewing machine they upgraded to and maybe make the payment on the quilting machine they couldn't live without. Oh yea, I forgot to add in the cost of having mine quilted. Good news there, my aunt said to send it to her when I get it done and she will quilt it for me for free! She has the super duper, so big it has a house of it's own, lazer guided quilting machine. Oh boy! When I was a girl, no one bought fabric for a quilt. We made them from the scraps left over from the clothes we made. I have a quilt my grandmother made and it is fun to look at it and remember who had what dress made out of which fabric, it is a memory quilt. And I also have one my great grandmother made. Every stitch in the quilt, and I mean every one, was done by hand. Imagine the time it must have taken to do that. I remember my grandmother had a room with this big quilting frame set up in it and chairs all around so people could sit and visit while they worked on a quilt. We had some fun times together doing that. Of course, we only had 2 TV stations to watch at that time so there was more time for things like this. I guess we could save money if we all slowed down a bit.

Daily ramblings

I guess I have Christmas on my brain so much because I am so busy getting ready for the big program. Monday the men at church will start building the tree structure the choir stands on for the concerts. It is 35' high. It takes the better part of a month to construct and yesterday we borrowed the big forklift from where John works to get all the materials out of storage and plant the center pole for the tree. I hope to take pictures through the construction to post so you can see it. It is pretty amazing to see. We now have 65 members in the choir and there are more yet to come. I think I will get over 70 this year again. Last year I had 72. My donkey search isn't going to well so maybe I should abandon that idea. I went to see a burro last week that was a BLM adoptee named Marlo. Marlo was a sweetie but he didn't even lead with a halter yet. I don't think he's ready for the bright lights!
My latest new project for all that spare time I don't really have is ....drum roll .....a quilt. I have never made a quilt in my life but my aunt the professional quilter just left today and yesterday when we were in a quilt shop she convinced me I could do this one and I bought all the stuff. Now remember, I said she left. She's gone, not comming back, I'm on my own. Don't anyone be looking for this one under their tree this year. Don't look for any meals to be served on the dining room table for a while either. Well, where else would I set up my quilt shop?! The good news is John prefers to eat on a TV tray in front of the TV. If the quilt thing doesn't work out, I could always make pot holders.

Family tree

I have been researching my family tree for a while now and with the help of some distant cousins I've found on line I'm a lot further along that I thought I'd ever be. It can be quite surprising what you find doing this though. I always knew we didn't talk about my dad's family. It was just something you didn't talk about. Whyever not? After all they were family, right? I loved all the relatives I knew. They were all on my mom's side. We had wonderful times growing up and I always knew they loved me. I loved getting together with my cousins at the holidays and having Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma & Granddad's house. Weren't all families like this? When you're a kid you think the whole world lives just like you do. Life wasn't a complete bed of roses, my dad was an alcoholic and things could get pretty tense at home. But...my extended family was always there for me. They taught me about God, showed me what a happy home life looked like and how happily married people treated each other. They were always my safe place to go. I know I wouldn't have survived the teen age years without them. When I told my mom I was searching daddy's family she said I wouldn't get farther that his dad Fred. Well, I did. Lots farther. Fred was a character, without a doubt. I've learned to find birth records, death records, marriage records, and military records. The last one is the start of a new dilemma. I got my dad's army enlistment record. He enlisted June 10, 1942 in Sacramento, CA. Here's the problem ....on it it states he is a widower! He married my mom in 1943, 6 weeks after they met. I am now on the hunt for a marriage record and a death record. My dad's father Fred had a sister Millie that he kept in touch with over the years so I have friends out there helping me with this search, and we will find it! The real search here is for the daughter it is rumored my father had with his first wife. The story goes that my dad and his wife had a bad automobile accident that killed his wife and almost killed him. They had left the baby with her parents that day and after the accident her parents kept the baby and raised her. None of this was EVER mentioned in my house. I might have a sister out there that I don't know? She would have been raised to think she was an only child. We've missed an entire lifetime of knowing each other. How sad :(

Love my friends

I just love going to church on Sunday now. Well, I always like church, but this time of year is special because each week I get to see another friend I haven't seen in 6 months. Yesterday was great! A lot of good friends back and several more choir memebers. I was especially glad to see Judy Waud. She lost her husband Larry a couple of months ago suddenly and we were all stunned. He sang a solo on the Christmas tree last year. They are from Canada and I wasn't sure she would be able to come back, but her children helped her get down here and all set up for the winter here. She asked me for a copy of the music :). God bless her children for supporting her and being there for her. Family is so important.

Speaking of family .... my aunt and uncle are arriving from Oregon this week for a visit. This is the time of year when people actually want to visit us. John has a list of fix-it's for my uncle and Audrey is hoping my aunt will help us make new curtains for her 5th wheel. Of course, they do have plans of their own. Their real reason for coming is to get dental work done in Mexico. We have an excellent dentist in Mexico that we all go to and the fees are way less than in the states. Dr. Cruces actually lives here in Yuma and has his is lab here but his office is in San Luis. I recently had to have a root canal, yuk, and he did x-rays, the root canal, a filling, and cleaned my teeth for a grand total of $275.00. Anyway, we'll all have some fun and eat too much I'm sure. I know John and Jay will get some golf in and Cecilia and I will have to do some shopping. I love my family and I am so happy when any of them can come for a visit. John told me last night that Don might be here sometime this week too. I guess I better get my rear in gear and do some house work.

Happy Monday everyone

What a Guy!

I'm stunned. He came home, rode his exercise bike, made a toddy, and sat down and read the manual for the new remote! He didn't ask me how, he READ THE MANUAL. Wow!! He got it all figured out in record time. Now I am well aware that he is a very intelligent man and can do anything he sets his mind to but usually that doesn't include stuff like this. What does this demonstrate? It demonstrates his determination to have total control of the TV. For any of you that have visited us, you know he is KING of the remote. If I want to decide what to watch on TV, I go to the bedroom and watch that one. The good news ~ he is quite happy with the new DVR. His only question?....was I sure the old remote wouldn't work the new machine? The moral to this story .... it's hard for a man to part with his remote.

Last Rites

We said good bye to Tivo today and hello to a new DVR. Since we have our service with Direct TV, we have to use their DVR. I have been punching buttons this afternoon, familiarizing myself with this thing. Now, you have to understand....Tivo was very SIMPLE to operate. Amazingly simple! As electronic gadgets go, this new one is not difficult but it is different. I have it figured out, no problem. John, however, is going to hate it. I can already see the writing on the wall. I will have to be within earshot at all times. We are talking about a guy that can't figure out how to get on the internet at home. He can do it at his work because apparently his screen has some kind of link he just clicks on and he's into his email. However, most of them he forwards to me because he can't figure out how to print them out. So....I print them out for him. Now he has a new remote to learn to use. He doesn't like change. I guess none of us really like change very much. Then again I guess he and I make a good team. We work well together. He takes care of me and I take care of him. I'm glad God put him in my life.

THE CAT!

For some reason, I saw the picture of this cat on "Cute Overload" and I immediately thought of Sam. I guess it looks like Sam's kind of cat. I bet Daisy would love him too.

The footer

Ok, I think I got rid of that. Yep, it appears to be gone. Now if I can get rid of the box around the smiley and maybe make it smaller? That would be good.

Smileys

My new project is to get the smileys on this page. I couldn't get them on the email I was trying to write. Oh look! A Donkey!! Yea!!! I wonder if the post is going to show this annoying ad bar at the bottom of the page? I hate that.

The passing of "Tivo"

Alas, our pal "Tivo" croaked today :( For those of you who don't know, Tivo is a DVR and also our Direct TV receiver. A Tivo is a wonderful thing. So easy to use, even I can figure it out, unlike it's predecessor the VCR. I never could get that thing set up to record something when I wasn't home. And setting the clock?! That simply served for YEARS as a flashing night light. But Tivo...now that is truly amazing. I had it mastered in minutes. I have programs we like, that are on when we are not home, set up with a "season pass" which let's it automatically record the program every time it comes on. We had noticed lately that Tivo was not acting quite right. It was getting slow to bring up programming, sometimes getting stuck on fast forward, losing the satelite signal. Did I mention that Tivo lets you pause live programming? What a great feature! I guess you can tell where I'll be at 9 am tomorrow. Yep, the Direct TV store.

I got a lead at church this morning on a "sweet" donkey. I'm going to go pay it a visit tomorrow and see if it is calm and sweet. I even have to go right by the Direct TV store to get to the donkey's house. What luck!!