Wow, it’s been awhile since I posted an update to my WordPress page. Life and a multitude of surgeries have been keeping me away from quilting. I’ve had three knee replacements in the past 18 months. Emergency hernia repair surgery last Spring and to make my schedule even more hectic – I started volunteering as a Wildlife transporter for several wildlife rehabilitation centers here in Utah. That has really been taking up a lot of my time.

One of my favorite rescues was this little river otter found along I-15 in Utah county last summer. It was taken to the local animal shelter who contacted the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah in Ogden for help. I was then asked to pick it up and transport it to their facility in Ogden where they named him Oscar and after months of care and rehab, he was deemed non-releasable so they found him a home with a mate at the Alameda zoo in New Mexico where he will live out his life, raising babies with his new mate, Susie. I’m glad I was able to help get him help. It gives me a great feeling if I’m able to see a positive outcome for the animals I transport.

I have been working on redoing a room in our basement that will be my new quilt room. I am downsizing my stash and library so that as I move things, it all has a place to go. Part of my decluttering phase of life as my husband gets ready to retire next Spring and we hit the road with a little trailer. My life is going to be going through another stage as we get used to being with each other 24/7 for the first time in 20 years. He’s been working nights for all but one year of that time and was away on three deployments before retiring from the US Army National Guard after 39 years in the military. So other that his days off, I’ve had the house to myself and have been able to follow my own whims with my time. I think I’m getting a little stressed out by that big change too. I’m so used to doing my own thing by myself but I know he loves that same things I do that we should be okay. I’ll probably drop him off at a museum while I look around the quilt shops. Lol!

I will leave you with a picture of my last quilt that I won top 5 of the nation last year! It was part of the Northcott Fabric company’s Pony Express Challenge. I was able to get it quilted and sent back to New Jersey where it was picked out of all submissions as one of 5 to go to Canada for the final pick. I got a Fat Quarter bundle back with my quilt after the challenge was finished last November! I will be putting it into the local county and state fairs this year!

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!