I'm Back

I'm back. After being gone 10 days on two different trips, I have finally come home. And I've decided I need a lap top so I can blog while I am away. I'm not sure when the $$$ can be put in the budget for such an expenditure, but I've told Santa that it would be a really nice idea to give me a laptop for Christmas.
For my first 3 days away we went to Disneyland for "UEA". In Utah, our educators are given the opportunity to attend workshops for two days in October. The kids are given a 4 day weekend, and it's usually the last fall break before the holiday's arrive. UEA stands for "Utah Education Association", but we like to joke that it really stands for "Utahan's Entering Anaheim". It seems that people from Utah drive in droves to California. From our home in St. George it takes about 5 1/2 hours to make the drive to Southern California. We have tried to guess what percentage of Utahan's comprise the crowds at Disneyland during UEA. Every where we turned we observed someone wearing a BYU or University of Utah tee shirt. We see friends from our current neighborhood, and friends from our old neighborhood when we lived up North. It's like old home week.
This year we went with our good friends Pam and Ray, plus our oldest daughter Aubrey made the drive from Phoenix. Our other children had too many other commitments to join us.

Mr. Cactus, me, Aubrey, Paul, Pam and Ray
Disneyland was dressed up for Halloween.

Entering California Adventure


Mr. Cactus loves Disneyland. I don't think there has been a year of his life he hasn't been to Disneyland or Disney World. Mr. Cactus loves Disneyland so much that when we were first married I suggested he get a job working for Mr. Disney. With an MBA (Masters of Business) in hand he checked out the job opportunities and discovered that everyone starts out as a street sweeper. Mr. Cactus decided to look elsewhere for a job, and just visit Disneyland for fun.

Me with my oldest daughter Aubrey


Paul

Paul and Aubrey. Paul is the youngest of our 5 children, and he and Aubrey are 12 years apart in age. Despite the age difference they are extremely close. We call them "Paulbrey" when they are together. Kind of scary how much they think and act alike. They can almost complete each other's sentences, and have even created their own language. When they are together they laugh and laugh and laugh. Makes a mom happy to see them together.
Not too many pictures of Disneyland. During the last 15 minutes of our trip, I somehow lost my camera. Thanks Aubrey and Pam for e-mailing a few pictures from your camera's.
Tomorrow I'll blog about my 2nd trip, and where I've been for the last week.

Home of the Brave Quilt Project

On her October 3rd post, C. of "A Simple Quilter" wrote of a project called "Home of the Brave Quilt Project". This humanitarian effort provides quilts for the grieveing families who have lost a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan. C. of Ohio put out a request for 9 patch blocks. If we provide the blocks, she will put them together in a quilt. Ohio has lost 186 soldiers so far, and not all have received a quilt.
I belong to a small little group of quilters at our church. We meet once a month and usually work on our own projects. But this month we wanted to support our Ohio soldiers.
If you have a desire to help with this project, go to A Simple Quilter's site (see my side bar). I'm sure she would appreciate any contribution.
First we cut strips 3 1/2 inches long. C. requested the fabrics have a Civil War type look, with muslin in the centers.

Ann and Doris. Ann was the main contributor to this project. She made more 9 patch blocks than anyone else. Thanks Ann for all your help.

Lucille contributed all the muslin centers, along with making the blocks.

Melissa did a lot of the ironing for us. Many hands make light work.

We completed a total of 52 blocks, and I mailed them off today. We send our love from Utah to Ohio.

While we were sewing, a few ladies brought show and tell.

Melissa just finished this Halloween quilt.

Ann made this Christmas quilt as a block of the month. Then she decided it just wasn't her taste. She gave it to her good friend Sherri. Wow. What a nice gift!

Sherri still needs to add buttons and embellishments.

Mr. Cactus

This morning I was reading Nanette's blog called "Freda's Hive". She called her husband "Mr. Hive" as a name to identify him. What a great idea. Boy did that get the old brain waves rolling. I went in to my husband and said "Which would you prefer to be called? Mr. Cactus, or Mr. Needle?"

He laughed and chose "Mr. Cactus" because that really does identify him. He loves St. George and all the red dirt and cactus'. (Me, I'm a tree/ mountain kind of woman).

Which brought to mind another occurrence in our home last night.

In our church we try to meet together as a family each Monday night to have what we call "Family Home Evening". It's a time for family togetherness in this busy world. We have lessons on different subjects, play games, have treats, or go do activities outside our home.

Last night was my turn to do the lesson. We only have one child left at home, our 17 year old son. Last night I chose to talk about making good choices in dating situations.

For my visual aid I brought in a dirty old trap we keep in the backyard to catch "varmit". I mentioned how we each have traps or "temptations" going on in our life, and how we each need to be aware of our own personal traps.

For example, in my mature years, I'm probably not going to go out and be tempted to do drugs, but I still have other things I need to be careful of.

Our son Paul is a big tease. He doesn't let me get very far without his funny interjections. He interrupted me and said "I don't know mom, maybe your quilting blog is a front for a drug running business." To that Mr. Cactus replied "It would give a new meaning to the term "Cactus Needle"!

Oh, those funny boys.

There are days when I feel pretty outnumbered with all this testosterone going on in this house.

(as a side note: when I was trying to select a name for my blog site, I wanted to find something that combined Southern Utah with quilting. Cactus=Southern Utah/ Needle= quilting needle).

My Latest Favorite

I've had this quilt top put together for a few months now. But I finally got it to the quilter, and just got it back. I'm so happy! Linda Brown, a local St. George long arm quilter did the work for me, and I think she did a terrific job.
I have never entered a quilt to be judged, but I'm going to venture out with this one. I've always felt my quilts were just for my own enjoyment and didn't want to go through the painful process of having them so closely scrutinized. But my friends have encouraged me to give it a try, so I will enter it in the Dixie Quilt Guild Show coming up in April 2009. I got the binding sewn on today, and will be finishing the tacking down in the next few days.
I like this quilt so much I even used it in my header when I started this blog.
To tell you a little bit about this pattern: It's called "4th of July" by Judy Niemeyer. The original pattern comes in bright blues, oranges, reds and greens. Because I live in Southern Utah I wanted to make it in Earth colors. I think I will change the name on mine, because it just doesn't look like the 4th of July does it? Any suggestions? I've never made a quilt out of batik's before, so I really was stretching myself when I picked out the fabric.
I had never paper pieced before either. Ricci was kind enough to teach me, and we made this quilt together. Hers is done in the traditional colors, and we plan on hanging our quilts next to each other at the Guild's show. Thank you again Ricci for all your help!

I wanted to show you some up close pictures so you could see the fabulous job Linda did on the custom quilting.

Made me think

I heard this story at church and it made me think about being more compassionate when I observe a person having a lot of struggles.

"A man, traveling through the country, came to a large city, very rich and splendid; he looked at it and said to his guide, 'This must be a very righteous people, for I can only see but one little devil in this great city.'
"The guide replied, 'You do not understand, sir; this city is so perfectly given up to wickedness, corruption, degradation and abomination of every kind that it only requires one devil to keep them all in subjection.'
"Traveling on a little further he came to a rugged path and saw an old man trying to get up the hill side, surrounded by seven great, big, course looking devils.
"'Why,' says the traveller, 'this must be a tremendously wicked old man, only see how many devils there are around him!'
"'This,' replied the guide, 'is the only righteous man in the country and there are seven of the biggest devils trying to turn him out of his path and they all cannot do it.'"
(Deseret News 11 Nov. 1857 by George A. Smith)