Huge Monday Update

Pull up a chair I have a lot I want to talk about. I completely forgot to post last Monday about our fun weekend away. We went up to Jackson, Michigan which is about an hour and half north of us. We heard about this Beer Festival. It's something we have never done before. I had been to a seafood festival and it was so much fun so I figured this should be fun too. Plus my hubby loves beer and a group of friends talked about going. So since Fred's 40th bday was the 5th of March I said Let's get this party setup. We went up Friday evening after Fred got off work and spent two nights at a friends house. We all put up cots and air mattresses and took over their house. Saturday 3 more friends joined the fun. We ended up having 12 in our group and boy what a blast we had...

 

Just a few thousand people probably attended with us haha. The way it worked is different vendors lined up against the walls and also outside in a huge heated tent. They had all their different beers in containers so you can see what they had available. You were given wooden tokens at the door when you got your tickets. We were given 15 tokens and a small 9oz cup. You gave the vendor a token and they filled your cup with a beer you would like to taste. I think they said there were 150+ beers to try. I didn't think I liked beer and yet I found a use for my 15 tokens. Only 3 I didn't like after getting but luckily with our group there was always someone who would empty your glass for you haha. You would then clean your glass and go for the next one. We had a blast. They also had food vendors setup as well. We had a taxi pick us up at our friends house and deliver us back so no one needed to worry about driving after drinking. We all stayed up late playing Cards Against Humanity and laughing till our sides hurt. It was a perfect way to officially celebrate Fred's birthday. He had a blast. Another weekend of being so thankful how our lives have brought us amazing friends.

During the week I was having a meh time again. I caught a little cold and just caught myself vegging a lot. I worked just a little bit on the March calendar piece from Durene Jones. I noticed my needles just weren't excited about working though so I knew I was just needing the rest a bit.

Friday we got some amazing news. I was finally able to get my mom setup with a health insurance program! What a HUGE relief. It will pay for her medicines, vision, dental, doctor appointments and any future ER visit. It is also amazingly cheap so no worries at all. It's about time. Just needed the right person to talk to and the right questions to answer. What a pain but we got it figured out. Every now and then we just shake our head and say Wow. We can't believe we finally have this taken care of. What an amazing relief for her and our family. No more HUGE medicine charges and future crazy ER bills.

Saturday we went down to the property we will be getting our cabin on at our family campground to work...

 

 

I didn't get a real before picture because my dad had already chewed up a lot of brush. In the middle picture you can see an orange flag toward the very right middle of the photo. The brush originally was out to there even. We pulled and pulled trees and brush piles bigger than both of us to the fires and got the area mostly cleaned out. My dad's tractor wasn't working and most of the rest will be chewed up by it. So he was planning on working on some more Sunday. The next step after this is we are waiting for the ground to dry out so we can get stone delivered that will go under and beside our cabin. We are getting excited as it gets closer to time for our home away from home to be ready.

Dad said he didn't need our help Sunday. So I thankfully took the day off and planned on  participating in the IHSW (International Hermit Stitch Weekend) going on this weekend after all. I had a talk with my needles and with my mojo and said Let's get busy stitching please. Here is where I was on the March piece from the sad first two days of "progress" during the week...

Remember this one I really needed to change up because Durene designed it for Mother's Day and ours isn't until May here in the states. So I hoped to tweak it make it look like a St Patrick's Day piece instead. Here is a reminder of what she designed again...

Here are my changes after working on it yesterday...

What do you think? I was scared to death to change it but I gotta say... I love it! It turned out exactly like I hoped it would. I just need to outline this side and finish the 2nd side border and outline and I will be able to put it together and get it on display.

See I told you this would be a big update. Oh and I also have something else exciting to report. Mom drove finally and it went great! No problems at all. So we can finally get back to mostly normal now and get some appointments taken care of. We got haircuts Friday and now we all need to get new glasses that has been put off way too long. It's a new week. Hope it's a good one for anyone who has read this far. Also I found out about a new to me stitching retreat in Harrisburg, PA this coming Sept. Several of the ladies from the PALs Retreat are going to go and I was also looking through the list and I saw quite a few ladies I would LOVE to meet!! Plus it's by a new to us area of the US we haven't explored. So we are excitingly planning a fun vacation after all this year. We had thought we were taking this year off.

I think I finally remembered everything I wanted to say. I'll finally shut up and get on with reading my emails and blog updates that I have piled up. I hope everyone reading this has a great week. Thanks for listening to me ramble.