A Real Winter




Who's the kid?  Walt and grandson Colby enjoy a very rare snowball fight in our backyard. Snow laid for five days. Unheard of for our climate.



Walt and I went up to Cedar Mountain first of January.
This picture is a few miles from our property.

January had some cold weather.  We did not have it for Christmas, when I like it.  It came after.  It was fun for the children, but I was ready for our St. George climate after a couple of weeks.  I am no longer an Idahoan, but a southern belle these days.  February and beginning of March is like living in Oregon.  The mornings are cloudy and moist, clearing off to blue most afternoons.  Very strange for our part of the woods.  Of course, this would be the year I took a winter gardening class at the college.  I planted in October and gave it a try.  I guess it works most years, but this year it froze and froze again.  The garden was a bust and many of our permanent yard plants were damaged.  So sad.  I planted another winter spring garden. I have beets and peas about three inches high, and broccoli about seven inches.  Maybe I can get something off this one.

Old Friend and a New Creation

Kareen Winder, a friend of more than fifty years, came to St. George with her husband Ken who was attending a business conference.  Kareen and I made plans to spend Wednesday afternoon together.  I always have enjoyed my friendship with her, so I decided to make her a "thank you for being my friend" apron.  Tuesday night Walt has bishopric meetings, so I thought I could whip it up while he was gone, easily having it done by bed time.  Now my thinking has always been, wrong as it may be, that when one is doing something nice for someone else usually things fall into place.  Don't ask me where I came up with that theory, but my apron project was proof it Iis wrong.  I started with selection of material not thinking about the quality the pink material versus the perfection of the color match.  I later found out that the material  had too much stretch and became a nightmare sewing the ruffle flounce, taking twice as long as another apron I made out of the same pattern.  Next my needle broke, that often happens, but this time braking the tip down in the casing where I had to dismantle the bottom of the machine to get it out, and I am mechanically challenged.  Wednesday morning I woke up earlier so I could get it done by 11 a.m. when Kareen was coming.  I sewed the entire ruffle on, taking great pains to be very slow, working each stretch carefully under the foot pushing it with my  little implement I devised.  Ah, beautiful, so I took it out from under the foot and the ruffle fell off!  The thread had broke right when I started the seam! I had been so worried over the stretch, I had not noticed the thread was not there.  This was when I could have cryed, but instead I had a good laugh, cranked up the volume on my pandora radio station, and sang a little louder.  What a comedy of errors and all mine.  I then threw perfection out the window and just pushed to get the apron finished.   I called Kareen to bounce the date a half hour later and got it done.  It was all worth it.  She looked cute in my friendship thank you and we went on to spend a great afternoon together.  As usual, the time flew as we caught up on the happenings of our busy lives.  God has blessed me with such wonderful friends. Kareen is and always will be one of them.