40th Anniversary

        This was taken 40 years ago today at our wedding. 

Here are our parents.  Bill's dad had heart problems and was too ill to travel.  

It was a wedding on a budget for sure but it has lasted!  My brothers had long hair and Bill had hair.  Our parents have all passed and three from the wedding party are gone as well.  The ring bearer, is now in his 40's and his youngest son is about his age in the picture.  The flower girl is a grandmother.  It was a wonderful day and it does seem like it was not so long ago at all!

Christmas Blessings

It will be Christmas day in a few minutes.  I am blessed in so many ways and I am so thankful.  I had a good Christmas Eve with my husband, daughter, and my husband's brother.  We had some traditional foods such as dressing/gravy and sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top.  For dessert we had gingerbread cake with lemon sauce - a traditional holiday dessert for my husband's family.  
Tonight our daughter, Emma, and I went to candlelight service at church and drove around our little town to look at lights.  There is one home that is really something - the  Crazy Light Lady- it has lights timed to music.  Then another home had some sort of projections inside.  One looked like Santa sneaking around in the living room with his sack and then waving out the window.  An upper window had Mrs. Santa  wrapping gifts.  Almost a little spooky but really neat.
I am fortunate to have sisters and brother-in-laws and a brother and a sister-in-law and their families that include lots of nieces and nephews.  While one sister and her family live out of state, the others are a couple of hours away.  We had planned to go to my other sister's home tomorrow and have her wonderful homemade enchiladas and lots of other good food.  Then the adults play a fun filled Chinese Christmas gift exchange.  However our weather is to go from almost balmy today to rain, freezing temperatures, and snow starting around lunch time tomorrow.  We may have 4-5 inches of snow and in our area that causes major traffic problems.  So we have decided it is best to stay home and be safe.  We will miss everyone, especially the newest member, great-great-nephew, Gunner and two adult nephews who live far away.  We will call and find out about all the goings on.
It will be nice to sleep in tomorrow and have a lazy breakfast and see if Santa left anything in our stockings.
Hoping you all have a blessed Christmas!
Since we are all grown up at our house, I will leave you with a few pictures of our "babies" under the Christmas tree.

Christmas stuff and NewFO 2013 Challenge

Christmas Stuff

I am currently working on a Christmas quilt for my family gift exchange.  I need to get the top finished today and get it quilted on Wednesday as I work tomorrow and Thursday.  I will get it bound on Friday.  That's my plan and I'm sticking to it!  We had a Christmas Open House type party on Saturday.  We've been married almost 40 years and have never had that type of party.  I told my sweet husband that was what I wanted for my anniversary gift - a Christmas party!  Worked for him!
So in getting the house ready for a party, my quilting machine was put away and projects stashed. Today I will pull them out again. I have a Tshirt quilt that I need to get the binding on before Christmas so that I can get it delivered to my great niece.  
Here is a peek at the Christmas quilt I am working on....just a peek in case any of my large extended family happens to read this post.

Coco, one of my Christmas kitties from last year, decided that she needed in the picture sitting on the stack of blocks.     
                                                                                  2013 NewFO Challenge

I am joining Barbara for her NewFO 2013 Challenge at her blog, Cat Patches
 
In January, I will be taking 2 classes from Bonnie Hunter http://quiltville.blogspot.com/ when she comes to Texas.  Teresa, my quilting friend from McKinney, will be taking the classes too.  Yea, lots of fun planned!
One class is Virginia Bound, from Bonnie's book, Scraps and Shirttails.
The second class is Bricks in the Barnyard, from her book, Scraps and Shirttails II.

I imagine that I will be working on these for several weeks to get them finished.  Most likely I will have many more FOs by then!