Next week we are celebrating our 25th anniversary. My dear hubby asked me if I’d like to go on a road trip with him and then took 25 days off of work until he was told he had mandatory training on the second day of our upcoming trip. So we are leaving tomorrow for Nauvoo, Illinois on the first leg of our trip. We’ll be visiting new friends in Missouri and visiting LDS church sites there and hopefully a visit to Hamilton and the Missouri Star Quilt Shop!

After Nauvoo, it’s Chillicothe, Ohio, and the Hopewell ruins there. Then on to North Carolina and a visit with one of my Gentry cousins who lives in the original Mayberry, Mt. Airy, NC! Next stop is Raleigh, NC, and another cousin to meet and visit. Then it’s off to the east coast and a long drive down to St. Augustine, FL and heading back towards Utah via two stops in Florida with other Gentry cousins and up the gulf coast to Texas and a visit with my brother in law and his family before heading home to Utah. All in 23 days. We know we can do it because we’ve driven from Utah to Yosemite in one day!  Tomorrow, we leave when he gets home from his training and plan on being in Cheyenne by the middle of the night and Nebraska in the morning. One sleeps while the other drives so that we can get to where we need to be. We once took our kids to Canada via Washington state and did the grand circle in 6 days. Over 2500 miles were driven in those 6 days and the kids still loved us when we got home because we stopped at a lot of neat places along the way. Guess we’ll be pushing it a bit here and there on this trip to get to where we need to go but hey, life is meant to be an adventure and this will definitely be one big adventure!

See you when I get home!

I’ve got a new passion. It’s called birding. I never thought I’d love anything as much as I love quilting and family history but birding is my escape from life right now. There’s no other way to explain it. I’m a bit envious of birds. You see they can fly away from things that are pressing down on them. Me, with my PTSD, Anxiety disorder and seasonal affective disorder, can’t. I’m stuck inside during the winter and a lot during the summer months. So driving around in a vehicle in search of the different birds that are migrating through our area has given me a reason to get outside again. I’m starting to feel more like my old self too. That self that loved adventure and would try anything. Then life kicked me in the teeth a few times and I lost my self in the hum drum routine of raising kids, working at a dead end job that gave me little satisfaction. I can see why so many people want to escape from their lives. I’ve often wondered how my life would have been if I’d chosen a different road when I was way younger. But then I think of my children and grandchildren and the lovely man I ended up with and I wouldn’t change it at all. I just would change the health issues I’ve had. I think that’s been the hardest part of growing old. Your body betrays you. So back to birding and the reason for this post – I seem to have a small group of followers who want to see my photos so I’m going to add them here – just a few but enough to let you see what I’m doing. Enjoy!

I’ve been out of contact for quite a while due to health issues. Finally getting my mojo back! If you’re getting towards 60 like I am, you know what I mean by loosing track of time!

To catch you up on what’s been going on since last summer — well, I had a knee replacement in August that didn’t go well. So I spent five days in the hospital before spending 10 days in a rehab place then home to finish my rehab on my own. It’s been a long road due to falling right after I got released from rehab and then again a few weeks ago at Zion’s National Park when I missed stepping down from the curb because I was taking pictures with my cell phone. Note: do not ever walk while taking photos! LOL!

Anyway, I was getting my knee better but I’ve been plagued with stomach aches for months. Nothing seemed to work  until the nurse practitioner I see, suggested a CT of my abdomen and found that my umbilical hernia was now an inny and attaching itself to my stomach wall which is why I was having so much pain. So into emergency surgery to fix that. I’m 11 days out and feeling so much better. Glad I was such a complainer too because apparently, I could have bled out and they would have found me dead. I wouldn’t have known that I was bleeding internally either until it was too late to help me. So note to anyone who has belly button hernias – don’t let them get bad, get them fixed!

Today I woke up to snow on the ground. Yes, it’s April and we are still getting snow storms here in Utah. However, the sun is out, it’s melting and the sky is clear and I believe it’s going to be a beautiful day! Time to get back to working on my Splendid Sampler quilt and my Yoyoville quilt and my Nauvoo Temple quilt and my Solstice quilt. Can’t tell I’m a bit behind now can you!

In the meantime between surgeries, I got back into my photography. I love love to take pictures of anything that moves me, be it a bird, a cat, a dog, a person or some weird object out in a field someplace. So my dear husband worked some overtime so that we could afford a really nice camera and lens kit. So I’ve been driving around, taking bird pictures. I leave you with a photo of my latest victim…a wood duck!