And the camper is closed : (

It's that time of year.  When the clothes get brought home, the cabinets get cleaned out, the blankets get packed away, and the tears start rolling down our cheeks.  I normally love October but knowing it is the end of our camping season makes that month a little bleaker for me.

The last two weekends have been good though.  Jon came up one night and we sat around the fire for most of the night.  It was so peaceful out there.  Just watching the flames and smelling the wonderful scent coming from the firepit.  Jon did a great job tending the fire.  I had a wonderful night with him.

 This my friends is a HOT fire.  I by hot, I mean H.O.T.

 My little firebug gets a little excited when he plays with fire.

We sat by the fire so long we ran out of space in the fire ring.  I had to grab a shovel the next day to disperse the ashes.

We're still here

I know I haven't posted in awhile but it's because I don't have any pictures and I feel like I can't make a post without pictures.  But I will give you some quick updates.

Ann's soccer team has been doing great.  They have won their last 3 games.  They have already won more games than the team did all of last season.  So they are headed in the right track.  Which is great.  Last night as we were waiting for Ann to come out of the locker room 3 girls came out on crutches.  Isn't that terrible?  I am so thankful that no matter how hard Ann plays she never gets really hurt.  Knock on wood.

Jon has his first hockey game Sunday night somewhere in St. Louis.  I am excited that hockey season has started but they placed this game right in the middle of Brady's birthday party.  So I am not for sure if I am going to make it.  I will have to see.  I hate not going but I hate missing Brady's party.  If I would have had a better heads up I may have been able to juggle things a little better.  Geez.

Ken was on vacation all week and spent it up at the camper.  I joined him once but the rest of the time he was by himself relaxing.  Except for Tuesday when the duplexs sewer line collapsed and he had to come home and fix it.  Which he was not very happy about.  But he fixed it with the help of Jon, Scott Hillman, and dad. So back to the camper he went.  Now he's working so I won't see him for days.

As for me, nothing to report except that Ken got me an awesome new phone.  Now I have one like Ann.  I seem to have become addicted to it so I can't really tell you any of the details from Ann's game yesterday because I kept playing on the phone the whole time  : )

So that's about it.  I will make sure I have my camera with me this weekend so I can post something on here.

The many faces of Jon

Maybe I shouldn't sit around taking pictures of Jon anymore.

My quilt

One of the things I love it do when I have time to just sit around and watch tv is work on my quilt.  My mom taught me how to paper piece a quilt together last year and I am currently on my second one.  Is my first one completely finished, no, but that's just a minor problem.

This one I am doing a flower garden pattern with red white and blue patterns.    Paper piecing takes alot of time and patience.   The first thing I do is find a pattern.

Then I make copies of the pieces I need to cut out.  With the quilt I am working on now I figure I need 560 of these little suckers.  Yes, that is quit a bit of cutting.

I am using a lot of different designs in this quilt all with the same theme.  Some type of red, white, or blue.  A Patriotic quilt.  I am hoping to have it done by next July.

Every piece of material gets a piece of paper sewn onto the middle of it.  This way all my pieces are uniform.

This is what they look like after the paper is sewn into them.  Each "flower" will have the same middle which will tie the quilt together.

By using a whip stitch I sew the pieces together.  After sewing all six pieces to the center one I will have a completed piece.

These are what the final "flower" looks like.  My next step will be to sew all of these together to make a large quilt top.  I will let you know when I get to that part.  As for now, I will keep cutting  : )

Nothing exciting going on here

I wish I could say I have some exciting things to post, but I do not.  I wish I had pictures to post, but I do not.  I wish I saw my family to take pics and do exciting thing, but I do not.

I might have pictures if I could remember to take my camera with  me when I go somewhere.  Like Ann's or Brady's games.  Or to the camper.  Or just sitting in my living room on the computer.  But I never remember the dang thing.   So I say sorry and promise to carry my camera with me this week!

Jon, the guinea pig

Poor Jon.  Since he is pretty much the only one besides me who is home every night he has been sucked into my "fresh food" kick.  Sometimes this works in his favor, sometimes not.  Tonight was not.  I was all excited today about the fact that I was going to try and make homemade macaroni and cheese.  I went straight to the store after work and bought all the ingredients and got started.

First try, I misread the butter amounts and melted a whole stick of butter instead of a half.  After 20 minutes of cooking and wondering why it wasn't thickening up I realized what I did.  Down the drain it went and take 2 was under way.  This time I measured right but I guess I didn't cook the flour and butter long enough because the entire dish tasted like flour.  Ugh.

Good ol' Jon tried some, ate a little and just got himself another pork chop  : ).  Never once complained or rolled his eyes at me.  Which is better than when I asked him to try my peach ice cream.  He got this look of horror on his face and put his hands over his mouth.  After I yelled and threatened him he took a bite (a teeny tiny bite), shrugged his shoulders and walked away.  And this dish turned out awesome!!!

I guess Ken and Ann lucked out tonight.  But I have more recipes to try so watch out Jon  : )  The pizza rolls are in the freezer   : D

Zumba

Do you know what happens when you decide you want to do something your daughter does so you can spend time with her?  If you are unfortunate like me, you begin going to Zumba class.  That's right.  Zumba.

Zumba is a Latin inspired dance fitness program that originated in the 1990's.  It's hip-hop, samba, mambo, belly dancing and all other kinds of crazy stuff mixed into a 1 hour period.  And let me tell you, that hour is LONG!  When I walk out of the building I am dripping in sweat and I swear I hear my leg muscles screaming profanities at me.

But I love it.  It is really a lot of fun even though it is really hard work.  I was scared to try it in a class so I bought it for my Xbox Kinnect.   I was able to to all the workouts even though I didn't always keep up with the little lady on the screen.  So I was very nervous when I went to my first class.  Could I keep up?  Would anybody notice if I zumba'd right out the back door?  But when I walked in and saw that it wasn't a class full of little skinny people, but people like me I started to relax.  Then I started to dance and I have been going every since.  I actually have gotten some friends to go with me which makes it even more fun.  Or funnier.  Because now I have someone to laugh with me about how stupid we look and how evil the instructors are for making us do some of this stuff.  I wonder if I can get a vote on taking out the leg squat routine.  I bet I  would win.