Early Baby

We made a fast trip to the hospital thanksgiving night and are still shuffling between the birthing center and home. Janice (DIL #2) has developed preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome. The baby is at 28 weeks and they feel will be strong enough to be delivered--she'll weigh around 3 lbs. Unless the doctor's find a fast cure--we'll have a baby this weekend sometime.

Your prayers are much appreciated.

Thanksgiving--a few days early

I ended up with 27 at my table Sunday dinner. There were two families that didn't show up, so we had plenty of food. Other's knew that they weren't coming, but didn't bother to tell me. Planning for 8 less would've helped...but oh well, it's overwith now.

It was the first year I had brined a turkey. I used Alton Brown's recipe (close to it) and it turned out marvelous. Having my oven turned up to 500 degrees for 30 minutes was something I hadn't done before to cook a turkey, but it turned out really good. I also used his method for carving a turkey...I highly recommend it. I cooked two and there's very little left if that tells you anything!

Yesterday was also DH's 29th wedding anniversary. I told him that there was almost as many people at this feast as there was at our wedding.

Deer season (rifle) started Saturday and two managed to jump into my freezer.

Yes, I've got pictures....somewhere, it might just take a few days to get some downloaded.

New Quilting Blog

Please go over and check out Mary at Quilting in Oz. She's starting a new blog and sews circles around most people I know.


She bakes cinnamon rolls and quilts...now, don't we have something in common?!!

Gobble-Gobble

I like Thanksgiving just about like the rest of the world. We all get together with family and have a good meal and are all thankfull for a good harvest.


This year somebody(and we're not mentioning names) decided that the normal family get together wasn't big enough. I have 37 (thirty-seven) coming for dinner next Sunday. Seems like many are going out of town to see their own families, so they're all coming to MY house beforehand.

Yes, I volunteered to host Thanksgiving this year, but the "normal" group includes roughly 20+ people---depending on if several have dates. I don't mind having a few extra...but HOLY COW!

AND...since I have the coziest home, they all want to come. Oh, I forgot to mention...I'm going to be gone most of Saturday to a baby shower for my newest grandaughter.

Okay...Giz...When can I start my nervous breakdown? Thank goodness for DIL's and SIL's who are great cooks. Can I sent out an invitation that states "bring your own chair"?

AND...I still don't have a credit card to go buy groceries. I've got to go pull some cash...like the good-old-days!

Black Monday

Whoever stole my purse at wallyshop yesterday, I hope you're real proud of yourself. Spend my cash and just try to use the credit cards.


I'm trying real hard not to cry.

Seasonal

They're playing Christmas music in Walmart. No, we don't have a supercenter so I was in the fabric department buying pink flannel. A song registered in my brain and I asked the girl if I was hearing Christmas music...she looked at me and said "Since November 1'st they've been playing it".

What happened to Thanksgiving? Not that I'm going to enjoy the 37 people coming to my house for (the Sunday before) dinner, but do we always skip Thanksgiving? Guessed the relatives missed that memo.

Fast Vacation

If you are every in East Texas, go take a visit to Canton, Texas. It's acres and acres and miles and miles of STUFF! It had been 20 years since we'd been there and there's no way to even describe how much bigger it has gotten.

Here's a few of my treasures :

I should've opened this one up to take a picture, but it's the prettiest blue and the oddest gold combination. Hate to admit it, but I paid $12 for this quilt.
How many Sunbonnet Sue's can a person collect? This is just my second one--first one is purple. The girls are a different pattern than the other one too. Oh, both quilts are hand quilted and this one is hand pieced. It's twin sized, and yes I paid a little more for this one.

These two girls just spoke to me. I'm having TWO granddaughters and these two will be wonderful companions for them. Raggy needs an apron, but that surely won't be hard to make. Holly Hobby....would love to know how old she is and she's spotless, well, they both are.

I also bought two crochted items. one is a tablecloth and the other is a twin-sized bedspread. --both were $10 each. Okay...I've crocheted a lot of things in my lifetime, but to make that big of something for $10?..nope.

I also bought two antique rolling pins and several (many, many, many) other things.

Troy skipped school to go with us...drove us down there (4 hrs) and back. It was a good experience for him, but he said he wasn't ready to go back. It's 12 miles of trails if you go thru it all....and we did it in two days. He got a new pair of boots and jacket(at the western wear outlet), so he was happy. He's also a good carry-person. When you park at Canton, it's at least a mile to go back to the car and Troy gladly carried stuff for me....better than his Dad!

How we spent most of October

This is the farm version of "sewing". It's planting wheat, and it took almost a month to get 1500 acres planted.
Most of this wheat has came up and I'll try to get some new pictures soon.

Most of the time we only have one tractor running, because the driver has a "real" job. He worked evenings and weekends helping.

The neighbor's wheat--that's already green--is only about two weeks ahead of ours.

Keeping eating bread and wheat-products!!

Hello? Anybody home?

If anybody is still listening, I'm going to try to come back. Will have a newsy post soon.... I promise.

Tulsa Stock Show

This is our last Tulsa State Fair. (can you hear me say Halelujah?!) It's 183 miles from my house to the show.
Thirteen (13) classes of pigs with about 40-50 per class. LOTS of pork chops!

Troy was in class 5 (about noon-time) and won 4th in his class. AND...won a showmanship ribbon.

We still have another spring show season to go thru, but our finale will be in OKCity which will be a tad-bit closer to home!




And Traci was suppose to show up...and I never got to see her!

All smiles after the show. First time we have been to Tulsa and neither one of us is sick! The hayfever usually hits bit-time this time of year.

Mama thinks he needs a bigger Showmanship award than just the ribbon!

Quilted and Sold

(Yes, I'm slow...but I'm getting tired and old!)

This project turned out cuter than I ever expected it would. Here are some close-ups of the quilting. Janice (DIL) did the quilting on her Mom's longarm. I couldn't of asked for a better job.

Here is the prize-winner (actually the son, but we know who's gonna claim it). I asked him if I could take a picture with his new quilt and he agreed. He was instructed to hang on tight to the quilt.

If you want to know (and remember that the quilt was auctioned) , it brought $350. Would've loved for it to bring twice that, but it actually brought 3x's what I had invested in it, so it was a success.

Ready for the Quilter

If you're from Oklahoma, you'll get the ORANGE in this. The pattern is called Milky Way and it's ready to be quilted. Hopefully by next week because it's going to be auctioned off at an FFA event for Troy. I have a price in my head that it needs to bring...or it's coming home with me (or I should say Troy, so I don't have to make another one!)

It's approximately 70x80", so it'll make a nice sized lap quilt for somebody.

I was asked "Orange-ya-glad this one is finished?"...and...if anybody finds a star going the wrong way...don't tell me, okay?

Crossroads quilt is on the Bed!

Just got the binding put on this and put it on the bed. So nice to have it finished instead of laying out on my living room floor. It fits perfect on my KSize bed.

The quilting didn't show on the first pictures, so I flipped it over to show what all the gal did. I'm so pleased with this quilt. She even bragged that my 9-patches were square....imagine that?!

I call these lazy-daisies...I'm sure there's a technical name for them, but don't they look good in the 9-patches?!
Cross-hatching and stippling on the outer two borders finished it off. It lays flat and not a pucker one in it....first time for sure! My quilter wrote "ELEPHANT QUILT" on my ticket. Glad I don't have to feed that elephant!

Showing

This is our last County Fair to show at. I've said that we're a Senior this year and I think it finally hit him yesterday that this was "the LAST" county fair.
He won showmanship and placed 2nd in his class....so life is good. Who can resist those dimples!

An Award

I was honored to receive this award from Lori at Mountain Woman at Heart Blog. I'm sure her idea of Mountains and my idea of the hills we have here on the prairie are a little different. You can count the number of trees I see each day on one hand.

She's a busy woman with all of her travels and camping, but there's no way you're gonna get me to love a motorcycle. She always posts the prettiest pictures..so go check her out!

The rules of the award are as follows:

1) Add the logo of the award to your blog

2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you

3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs (this is the hard part as I read so many - it's hard to pick just seven to recommend)

4) Add links to those blogs on your blog (this may take me a day or two to do)

5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs,

Go visit these great sites:

Tracey at OzCountryQuilting: She's a farmgirl in the opposite season as me. Love her pictures.

Linda sewing with her Cat in Alabama. This gal sews and quilts circles around me! She always has something neat to show that her and the Belles has done...and has the cutiest kitty!

Gail at Quite Quilted. I've known her for years....literally. Probably the sweetest person I know in Canada!

Jo and I actually live in the same town. She also gets to hit the antique mall more than me...

Jeanne and I think so much alike I think we were sisters in another life.

Giz is my Wonder-Woman friend. She can stockshow, cook, sew and keep her sanity (more than I can do!)

Kristie is another cowgirl quilter who is fun. Her Dear Jane quilt project is wonderful! Go check out her cat named Donkey.

Last but certainly not Least is AMY at the CalicoCat. Us Gov't employees gotta stay together. Her CalicoKitten is due in December and she still has time to sew and keep up with everything.

I have probably over 500 blogs on my Bloglines list. I'm a scanner...so don't be offended if I don't always comment. Bloggers have become very inspiration to me. ...and there's always something "new to me" out there. Thanks to everyone who reads.

Let me introduce...

My FIRST grandchild is going to be a GIRL! We are tickled PINK! This sweet one is going to arrive at the Koch-household in late January.



AND...more news?!

There's going to be ANOTHER Grandchild coming mid February! (we don't know if it's pink/blue tho--but you know I'll take either!)

Life changes fast around here! and...yes, I've already started sewing.

Friday

Was standing in line at Wally*World last night with the usual buggy full of Gatorade, MtDew, Tide, toilet paper and kitchen cleaner..you know, the usual household stuff.

The gal checking me out said "Man, I'm tired". I stopped putting my stuff on the counter and stared at her.

My first question: "How long have you been married?"
Her answer: "Oh, I'm not married"
My next question: "How many kids do you have?"
I knew what the answer to this one was: "Oh, I don't have any kids...I'm still in college."
Okay..that threw a kink in me because I had three kids....worked full time..and finished a teaching degree. I remember going into the bathroom just so I could study!

My third question: "How many will be at your house for supper?"
She told me that she'd probably go thru the Sonic drive-in and pick up something for just herself.

So, instead of being scarcastic..I said, so you're in school? (We're in a small university town)
Her response was "Yes, I take a few classes....but I still live at home." Meaning, she still has a mama to answer to.

So, THEN I got on my soap box. I told her that when she had been married for almost 30 years, when she has raised three boys, when she had five people to cook supper for AFTER she had worked a 9 hours shift at a paying job and then went and helped her husband in the field....THEN, she could complain that she was tired.

She asked me what all I had done today: (brave soul she is):
Went to work at 7am
After work, went to the field and took the fuel tank to fill it up....spent $800. on farm diesel
Pulled an ammonia tank to the co-op to be refilled (that's another $2K) and needed to hurry my trip thru the store because I had to fix supper for the guys and take it back out to the field.

Her next question?
"So, are boys easier to raise than girls?"
Where this came from, I have no idea.

I told her that I had no idea, but it's what God gave me...so I made the most of it.
I then told her:
We've only had one broken bone
That the ambulance can get to our house in 8 minutes (they've made the trip twice)
That your heart will break when they put your baby in the helicopter
That you need to learn CRP because one of them will test your abilities
That you need to learn first-aid and you will use a medicine chest full of Bacatricin and band-aids monthly
That you should buy stock (not the cow-kind) in Wrangler, Ariat, Mt.Dew, Folgers Coffee, Tide and Miss Clairol
That we only had a few fingers missing
That red dirt will not wash out of white socks
That you had to learn to do background checks on girls who chased your boys.

She just glared at me and then said "I'm tired from listening to you".
I told her that it was at least an honest tired and that if she ever had some free time to come out and follow me (us) around.

She then wanted to know if I had any single boys. I asked her if she knew how to cook, do laundry or could drive a tractor. She didn't answer. I was hoping just to hire her for a day or two to catch me up!

Should be working....

Words that describe:
But I found this and had to play.

Crossroads Quilt

Has anybody else made this quilt and not finished it? It's taken me 8 months --or more-- to finally get it to a point where I actually like it. It's the first mystery quilt that Bonnie did. I don't typically like square quilts and then I didn't make it big enough to suite me. Not Bonnie's fault, but my own. Why didn't I make an extra 100 blocks?! ...and then, I had to go and buy a new mattress (yes, you're right I'm keeping this one) and I want to use it on my own bed...so it's 110" square. It's going to the quilter Monday night, so we'll see what she does with it. Sorry Bonnie...I've renamed mine "Crossroads-Monster".

This is my Senior. I wasn't at home to get a first-day back at school picture, but this was taken about four days before. He had just gotten out of the show ring and he didn't get a good placement He did a good job holding his composure (I would've been crying), and then his EX-girlfriend was standing about 5 feet away. Poor kid, and then Mom has to take his picture. Would've rather taken a picture of him holding a nice blue ribbon, but the green one is stuffed in his back pocket. Another show, another judge is just around the corner. He looks better smiling...thank goodness he doesn't have my kraut-temper!

Life is actually wet here in Western Oklahoma. Things have been slow (thank goodness), but will start back up when we work ground again and the whole growing process starts over. We'll put grain back in the ground in about a month. Everybody keep eating wheat bread!