Fall - A changing of seasons

Fall is the changing of so many things. Not just the leaves, grass, trees, etc. As I think back on the last few autumm's we've had, it was the season of the biggest changes for my family. If you had told me five years ago where I would be today, you could have knocked me down with a feather! :0

Fall 2004 - We were entrenched in politics. We lived, breathed and ate politics! My eldest sister worked for an official campaign and my dad worked for a state party in a tech position. The rest of us were volunteers. The late nights, the long hours. More often than not, we were in the depths of despair when each election came around, and while that election was no exception, it was somehow different. Our presidential candidate won, though he did not take our state and most of the good candidates statewide lost.

Fall 2005 was the culmination of a tragedy that began in January. It was with the heaviest hearts that we realized we could not do anything more about it. The healing and rebuilding came next. Yes, I could say it was a long, painful process, but it's not over. We are still suffering the devastation. But, God is merciful. He is our hope! We can look back and begin to see the blessings in the aftermath.

Fall 2006 was a joyous time for my family! My oldest brother "brought a girl home to meet the family"! In actuality, she flew to our town. :) Wanting our yard to be perfect for his girl, he supplied us with sod to lay in the backyard that he'd sprayed out a few months before. While we still jokingly resent the work we did, we had such a good time doing it! The excitement of gaining a sister-in-law grew for all of us. They were engaged and began wedding plans in earnest!

Fall 2007 brought the most dramatic change for all of us. We packed up the entire house, loaded it into two trucks and three vehicles and we were off for a new place, a new town and a new state. It was thrilling, hard work, and slightly frightening. We'd been in one place for over eleven years. One becomes attached to the same old; the familiar. I headed back "home" for a month to finish up my job and then I joined the family on Thanksgiving Day. Thus began life without my three oldest brothers within a few miles.

This Fall is an exciting time. I'm finally an aunt!!! I've longed to be an aunt for many years and now that it's finally happened, it's as grand as I'd imagined. And will be even grander when I get to meet my little nephew and the second one arrives! In just over a week, my four sisters and I are flying to West Virginia to visit my best friend and her funny sisters. We'll be attending our first ball, too! So, we are making ball gowns and learning dances.

My younger sister arrived home after six weeks living with my brother and sister-in-law and helping take care of the nephew, the house, canning, etc. That is the longest she has ever been away from her parents and we are all adjusting back into somewhat of a routine. She came with my older brother when he moved all his belongings up here in anticipation of moving here next month. I am very close to this particular brother, so I'm completely delighted that he will be nearby again! Plus, it's just strange doing some things without him!

Stay tuned for more fall memories...

Plans

In the not too distant future I hope to really "start" this blog. But, I'm too busy sewing, trying to keep my creations blog updated, and tackling Fall tasks and projects. For now, it will have to be content with quick-y things until I can feed it something of more substance.

The Big Read

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.

2) Italicize those you intend to read.

3) Underline the books you LOVE.

4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)WATCHING MOVIES DOES NOT COUNT!!!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (not every word, but enough)

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte's Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Of all the dreams that ere I had...

...this was the last I expected to come true! (Sung to the tune of "The Parting Glass") ;)

A motherload of fabric given to me!

The neighbor has been telling us to come up and get whatever of her fabric that we want, because she cannot sew anymore due to an injury some fifteen years ago. She first told us this spring, but due to two month-long trips that I took and other various and sundry delays, we weren't able to go up until last Friday and then, I only was able to take two of my sisters with me.

After oohing and aahing over it for a few hours (seriously!), we were persuaded to just "take it all home and decide there!" So, we loaded all nine garbage bags full (relative, you understand - we didn't want to put our backs out!) into her truck and down the mountain we went! After a quick mailbox stop, we got it all out and into the living room.

My older sister was actually the more shocked between her and Mum, but the neighbor called the next day to make sure Mum was still speaking to her! As two of my younger sisters are beyond-their-wildest-dreams excited and so busy making use of some yardage, Mum wasn't in the least upset and took it in stride! She's even planning a few projects of her own!

I was able to choose some fabric for one sister-in-law and my other sister-in-law took all she thought she could use. I've saved some for my out-of-town sister and what we do with everything nobody particular wants has yet to be decided!

I anticipate that I shall be quite busy sewing all winter long and perhaps for a few years to come!

What a Labor Day!

It's official! I'm an aunt! :D

After too many years of longing for nieces and nephews, I finally have one: a nephew! My eldest brothers' son was born around 6:30pm last night and bears his father, grandfather and (late) great-grandfathers' name. Yep, he's the fourth! And, boy will he have big shoes to fill!

All of the family is ecstatic! Not only is he the first grandchild on both sides, but he is also the first great-grandchild! He will probably be one spoiled child, but a well-behaved spoiled child. My brother and his wife will be wonderful parents!

Quote

"People were poorer and had not the comforts, amusements, or knowledge we have today; but they were happier. Which seems to suggest that happiness depends more upon the state of mind - and body, perhaps - than upon circumstances and events."-Flora Thompson, Lark Rise

The past is still vivid

I enjoy uplifting movies. I enjoy sad movies. I enjoy ecstatically happy movies. I enjoy ponderous movies. I can pretty much enjoy at least one movie in each genre. But, it's the movies (or character's) that really touch people or remind them of their past that they remember the most; all their life sometimes.

I am not emotional. I do not cry during movies. I will occasionally tear up a little, but no out-and-out tears from this girl. I don't cry over much in life to be perfectly honest. Maybe it's my father's genes. "I am very British" I like to say.

But it's my father who teared up at the end of Zero Hour with Dana Andrews.

I think I would too if I lost my own father at a tender age to an airline crash...