Resurrecting my Blog. Making a Quilt

So I've decided to make a quilt and document the experience. It's my first quilt. Well, I have to say "art quilt." My previous quilting experience includes a fence rail pattern sunflower quilt top that I have never actually quilted - just pieced the top using the fence rail method which is super easy. Google that if you're at all curious. I also made a little 10" square quilt with an appliqued flower on it. Chelsea drew a picture of a flower and I kept it, copied it, cut it out and made little pieces of fabric for each piece of the flower which I appliqued to another piece of fabric. Then I also made a little quilted cinch bag but my quilting turned out horribly and it wasn't until later that I realized I never dropped the feed dogs on my sewing machine.

So now, I have watched enough YouTube videos on quilting, read some instructional books, looked at all the important quilter's websites, been to the International Quilt Festival in Houston and it's time for me to begin.

Firstly, I snapped this pic with my phone at a doctors office waiting room last year in June when I was thinking about patterns and color and quilts. I don't know why it struck me but later I decided to use it as the inspiration for my first quilt. We'll see what I can do with it.

Chelsea's Prom

I haven't written a blog post this year! But for those of my friends and family who don't do facebook I thought you might enjoy seeing pictures of Chelsea on her prom night.
Click this link and Enjoy!

LOVE

The Brink of 2010

Happy Holidays. Season's Greetings, Happy Kwanza, Merry Christmas, Happy 6th Day of Christmas, Happy New Year, etc. etc.

I love the holidays for a few good reasons but mainly because I always have a week off between Christmas and New Years. It's usually not enough time.

I have to admit that I have not much missed blogging due to Facebook and how easy it is to post little daily updates and read what is going on in everyone else's lives but it doesn't help with my goals which I have strayed far to far from this past year. 2009 was a fantastic year and I'm going to recap it here but there's always room for improvement.

2009 highlights include Chelsea getting her driver's license in March. Getting engaged on the evening of the spring equinox, March 20th in New Braunfels, TX at the St. Frances by the Lake scenic overlook to Chris MacGregor who I've loved for a few years now. New nephew, baby Jackson born on May 2nd. Carmen & Kevin came back from France and spent a few months in the early summer in Houston - lots of great hanging out time. Chris's 20th High School Reunion. Getting married on Galveston beach barefoot in the sand at sunset among all of our friends and family we love on September 26th. Installing and opening a brand new 18 hole disc golf course less than 6 miles from home at Taylor Lake Village. Also, at Christmas time with Chelsea's laptop we are now entirely a Mac household - no PCs left! Woot!

2009 lowlights include very little progress towards goal of selling Chris's house in Seabrook, Kevin and Sophia splitting up, I didn't write a book this year or lose any weight at all, and Chris's company becoming insolvent forcing him to have to look for work at the beginning of the new year. Also my dad spent most of the year in the hospital due to a botched knee surgery but he's out now and starting to walk again.

All in all we're doing great and things are moving along for the MacGregor's. I've had a name change and Chelsea will be a MacGregor (officially) in the next couple of months. She's already starting to use the name though.

In 2010 my new goals for the year include selling Chris's house finally - it's only been on our agenda for three years now; writing more even if it is on this blog; reading more books besides the audio ones I listen to in the car to and from work; working on art and buying a house including moving etc.

Also, Very Important! This year Chelsea will graduate from High School and we'll have to have a huge celebration sometime in early summer! Then she will likely be off to college. She's applying to Sam Houston, University of Houston, & University of Texas. However, as she has not yet made up her mind, she may attend community college for a while to get her basics out cheaply.

So that's it for an end of year blog post. We'll be bringing in the new year with Matt & Julie in the usual way.

With very much love ~ M
Below is our family portrait for 2009 ~

half a year later

Tonight Chris shared with me Google Dashboard which told me I hadn't posted to my blog since May 19th. For shame.

During that time I've gotten married.
http://www.chrismacg.com/wedding/Our_Wedding_Site/The_Wedding/The_Wedding.html

It was lovely. There are more pictures but I haven't even gone through them all.

Plus, we installed a new disc golf course at Taylor Lake Village and the inaugural tournament is tomorrow morning. I'll post pix of it for that too.

I have to say that I totally blame Facebook for my lack of posting in the last several months. I've gotten into Facebook and it is so much easier to post little updates like on Twitter than to write a whole paragraph here regarding what is going on.

I'm going to try to change that though. I need more thoughtful posts and less facebooking.

Oh and it's NaNoWriMo again. My book idea this year is to take the good elements from past book ideas and create a NEW book - a good one. But, so far, I haven't had adequate time to work on my book because of all the disc golf stuff going on to ready for the tournament tomorrow. Once that's over, I anticipate having more time to write.

Love to all ~ M

Of Late...

Many things are happening. So much and so fast that, too often, I forget to blog about it. Here are some pictures though and those are meant to each be worth a thousand words.

Kevin & Sophia started playing disc golf with us and they are fiends for the game! Since their first time out they've already played about 4 games just this month.









The day after they started playing they got Brian and Sheryl out to the Seabrook course for a short 9 holes. That was a lot of fun also.









On one of our recent games Sophia found an expensive type of parrot that was sick and no one wanted to help her to bring the bird home with her to rehabilitate it. The same day was also saw a dead seagull and it's probably never a good idea to pick up dead, sick, or dying birds anyway. However for a short while Sophia was carrying the bird through the course in a Bud Lite 4-pack container hence he got the name Bud or Bud light.




Chris and I had our engagement photos taken by Carmen. It is so wonderful to have Carmen and Kevin back in Houston, TX. Getting to hang out with both of them again after them being in the Northeast for so long and then France, has been amazing. Here's Chris and Kevin jamming out on some instruments neither of them usually plays.







We have posted several of the engagement photos Carmen took on Facebook and on our wedding web site but we haven't publicly shown anyone the one picture we've chosen as the official engagement photo yet. Chelsea took this shot of Carmen taking pictures of us.


That's about it for now.
LOVE

10 Days into May

Life feels a bit like someone pushed the fast forward button. I feel exhausted but happy about all the stuff going on. I'm just going to give a sampling of activities of late.

We picked a beach house for our wedding.

Here is a link to the site and lots a cute pictures of the place. Chris and I drove out to Galveston to make sure the houses were in the same condition as the pictures indicated because of the hurricane. This one isn't even one of the ones we traveled to Galveston for but it was next to one we went to see and looked great.

Today Chris's dad posted to Facebook that it was only 4.5 months til the wedding. Wow. That seems so soon. During that time we also have to move. Crazy.

We also finished our wedding website - link posted to Facebook for friends only. If you follow my blog, you should friend me on Facebook.

Lisa had a girls night and boiled probably 10 lbs of crawfish! It was so delish! We also had watermelon mojitos and smoked from a hookah. Nora was the one who brought the hookah and some type of grape flavored hookah tobacco. It was a strange thing to do because I have smoked cigarettes in my youth but it was nothing like that at all. And the smoke came out grape flavored. We had a ball the whole evening.

My birthday was amazing! Chris replaced my car's windshield for me for my birthday - just what I wanted! I love driving with an unobstructed view now. Unfortunately, the day before it was to be replaced I hit Chris's windshield to kill a mosquito and it must have hit right near an existing rock chip but his windshield now has a crack in it so my view as a passenger with Chris is cracked.

Chelsea got me a lovely lavender scented bubble-bath and some coconut scented shea butter body lotion. I love it. The kids both got me a new pink nano iPod that I STILL haven't loaded with music and books. I keep meaning to but things get in the way. I received a new cuisinart food processor from Peter and Frances, along with a gift check for a spa treatment of my choice which is also partially from Chris' granny! Penny sent me a Tastebook - which is a personalized cook book with several recipes in it. I love it! In fact, everything I got was absolutely amazing. I still have not sent out thank you notes.

The day after my birthday Noelle had baby Jackson.

What a sweet perfect little baby.



Yesterday we went to the Art Car Parade which has become as wonderful a tradition as the Thanksgiving Day Parade. And we don't have to get up as early.

This is the annual Mother's Day event for Chris' mom, Frances. We get lots of cheeses and drinks and head to Allen Parkway. This year Chris and I had made about 5 gallons of sangria for the weekend. Some was for Matt & Julie's party Friday night, we took some to the Art Car Parade and we have a lot left over. We're thinking of freezing it until the Frio River Trip with Kevin and Sophia in July.

A See-Saw of Little Ups & Downs

Really great things have been going on and some really rotten drama at the same time that adds a bit of a sourness to it all.

Friday night was awesome because at work I got free tickets to the Astros game and we all went. There was a huge thunderstorm during and after which flooded a lot of Houston. Chris got us home safely though but my stomach was in knots the whole time and hasn't settled into place yet.

Chris had a birthday which we happily celebrated with his family and then our annual trip. Between Chris's birthday and mine there are 17 days that we get to be the same age. That time is drawing to a close this coming week. Chelsea, Colin, and I got him a 16GB purple iPod nano that he has been eying, a beard trimmer, and a pair of Oakley sunglasses. He also got several things from his family at a combined birthday dinner for him and Peter. Chris and his dad both have birthdays in April; Peter on the 9th and Chris on the 12th. We ate at Star Pizza which was delicious as per usual. Peter got Chris an absolutely fabulous telescope for his birthday! It is wonderful. On a clear night you can easily see the rings of Saturn and two of it's moons. This thing is powerful! I love it.

We took the telescope with us to the group's annual trip. For several years now we have been taking a trip in April to the beach but, thanks to Ike, there are no more rentals on Bolivar so we headed to the river instead. The place we stayed was so perfect and beautiful and idyllic and wonderful that we all said we wouldn't mind getting the exact same house every year.

You can kind of see the house from the back in this photo of Matt, Lisa, and Chris K. It's directly above them on that rocky cliff overhang. Look at the flat roof with windows along the whole wall. That was the back living room. We were right on the edge of the Blanco River.


Then in the next shot this is the view of the Blanco River running by below from the patio area outside of the house we rented.


A section of the riverbed was higher than the rest right here so we could easily cross without getting wet much above mid-calf and only in some places. Below is a shot of the river from directly on the river. Chris took this one with his camera on the tripod which was situated on the bare rock sticking up out of the river. This is apparently called a "rocky bare."











Here's another picture showing the depth of the drop off after the high "rocky bare" ended.


This is Matt, Julie, Caleb, Chris K., Lisa, & Brandi having a swim on Saturday evening.



The lighting was perfect for this shot. I know the water looks green but it's really just a reflection from the trees overhanging on either side. The water was the clearest I've ever been in. FREEZING but clear.







When Chris and I were standing in the water we were surrounded by little fish and we could see straight down to our feet and all the little fish too. It was amazing and refreshing. Chris K. apparently jumped in the river at midnight the first night of the trip but that night Chris and I were so exhausted that we were crashed out by 11:30 and missed it.

Here is a picture of me chilling by the river's edge. We got all these great pictures because Chris and I had already been swimming once that day and didn't want to go again so we played veggie / fruit baseball while they swam.

This is my favorite picture of Caleb from the whole weekend. He had such a great time at the river.




Ah, this was the life! What a weekend it was.


And then for the down side - Chelsea is not doing well in school at all and is in serious danger of failing the 11th grade. It makes me angry and sad and worried and frustrated all at the same time. Chelsea assures me that this progress report doesn't reflect some missing assignements that she has just turned in but I'm nervous. She is on restriction and that always sucks for me too.

My mother still can't wrap her head around the fact that I'm no longer Catholic like she wants me to be and continues to try pulling her tired old guilt routines - this time about my wedding. She told me that she wouldn't be recognizing my marriage because it wouldn't really be one since only a Catholic wedding would lead me to Jesus or some such rubbish.

I think Jesus would be really happy to know that, of all the people wandering the earth, Chris and I both happened to be in the same city at one time, happened to be interested in writing a novel, met, happily found a mutual compatibility, fell in love, and built a relationship and a family out of our little lives. I don't think that has anything to do with who officiates our vow ceremony.

And it IS "OUR" wedding - mine and Chris's. Not my mother's. She had one and planned it the way she wanted. There is no reason why I would plan my own wedding to be something that goes against every fiber of my being and have it religious in any way. I want it to be fun and beautiful.

Anyway, as a result of the fact that I'm not having a Catholic wedding, my mother said that she would not be recognizing my marriage and that she could not celebrate something that isn't even there. (Yes, these are direct quotes and not hyperbole.) So I told my mom that I would not be inviting her to my wedding. There is no reason I could come up with why I would invite someone to my wedding so they could condescend to me about their religious opinions to me during the ceremony and then join in the Celebration of our Marriage for the reception when she would not be "recognizing our marriage."

Then my mom wrote me a lengthy e-mail about her religious views and how I was pretty much damned to hell if I didn't have a catholic wedding and that she couldn't "just be happy for me" because it went against everything she believes in. But that she really wanted to come to the reception for our wedding so she could be with me on that day; but not the ceremony, just the reception.

So I responded to her in no uncertain terms that for the last time, I'm not Catholic, I don't believe in the catholic religion and that I would never have a catholic ceremony for a wedding and if she didn't like it then why did she have a problem with me not inviting her. It would be ridiculous of me to open myself to that type of judgmental manipulation.

Well then my dad writes to me to tell me how I'm so harsh to my mother, that my remarks are vile and I have crossed the line, I should be ashamed, and that he is not coming to my wedding either.

So now neither of my parents will be in attendance at my wedding. And you know what - that might just help it to really be the happiest day of my life. You never know how mysterious God's ways really are.