Life

All Things New

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LDSVenus

 

Well, I finally heard from my temp employer that my job will end December 11th.  So I’m busy looking for another job as there is no guarantee that there will be another long term temp job from the temp agency.   So it will be out with the old and in with the new, hopefully soon.  My youngest son is working on fixing a car for me so that when the one I am driving gives out (and it has some major problems, but hey it’s 21 years old ;P), I won’t be car-less.

 My 3 year old grand daughter went to Church with me today.  Even tho’ Sacrament meeting is 1 hr & 10 min long, she is very good and patient, I know it has to be boring listening to adults speak, I do bring paper and crayons and her mom sends a snack to help with the boring part :).  She loves the nursery that she gets to attend after Sacrament meeting is over,  she calls it her “church school”.  She’s very excited to go to class and sing and play with her “friends”.  Today, I stayed after church for a few min to practice a solo that I will be singing for our Ward Christmas party.  I wasn’t sure she would be thrilled because listening to someone sing when you’re 3 years old can be pretty boring.  But she sat quietly and listened to me go through my solo “Oh Holy Night” with the pianist.  She then looked at me with her sweet little wide eyes and said, “That was awesome Grandma, how did you do that?”  I just chuckled and told her that Heavenly Father put the music in me and all I had to do was to let it out.  3 year olds are so funny and awesome.

I’m almost finished with the 2nd spool of Llama roving.  Soon I will be plying and getting a skein of yarn ready to give my son.  It’s very soft stuff, but it is slower than I thought because I have to stop and pick out a little vm (vegetable matter) as I spin, so it slows me up a bit, but I have enjoyed the softness of this fiber :).  I hope my son will enjoy knitting with it.

Nauvoo

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Nauvoo TempleI went with some friends yesterday to the Nauvoo Temple, in Nauvoo, IL.  It is as amazingly beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside.  It has a spectacular spiral staircase in one of the corners that seems to go on forever, the other 3 corners have a square type staircase that is also beautiful.  Spirial staircases are not allowed anymore for safety reasons, but they were able to get special permission to keep the one.  The peace inside was also amazing.  I’m so glad I was able to go.

The picture is from the Temple website, I’m sorry that I forgot to take my camera to get a my own picture of the outside of the Temple and the Temple grounds which were very beautiful as well.

I saw alot of sheep on the way to and from the Temple :), all I could think about when I saw them was spinning some of their fleece ;P.  On the way home we stoped in Kalona, IA at the Stringtown Country Store, which is run by the Amish.  They sell bulk spices and other things.  It was interesting and fun and I brought some often used spices home with me.  I was also able to find the freeze dried yeast that I like to bake with so much.  All in all it was a very good day.  I also found an email waiting for me when I got home, from the classmates site that I had just rejoined, from a long lost friend that I had been praying to find, I was so happy to hear from her.

I may not have much in the eyes of some of the world, no fancy home or car, no expensive clothes, jewlery or things, but I feel very blessed and very happy with what I have, because I see others with less.  I have a job, for the time being, that supports me, a safe place to lay my head at night, food on my table and an older vehicle, that tho it needs a lot of work, is blessed to run and gets me safely to church, work, home and errands,  I also have things to do and things to give to others, what more could I want?

The Illusive Flu Shot

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Venus5ab

 

 

I took off of work early today to go to a flu shot clinic at my local grocery store.  You know the regular flu shot, not the H1N1 (swine flu).  Everyone else has had their flu shot clinics earlier in the fall and for some reason they either didn’t make enough vaccine or people are paranoid and flocking to get them, so I thought, I’m lucky to find one that is getting in some more vaccine.  WRONG.  I went at 3pm because the clinic was suppose to be from 3 pm to 6 pm and they had said to get there early because they might run out.  I went in and waited in line and when my turn came to be waited on, I was told that they didn’t get their vaccine in and that they had posted a sign in the store last week end.  Last week end I shopped at their store in another area, so I didn’t see the sign.  I lost 1 1/2 hrs of work and no flu shot,  sigh.  I’d go to a Dr to get it, but Im just working a temp job and I don’t have insurance so I don’t have a Dr and the free clinic doesn’t offer them.  I hope I don’t get the flu this winter, sigh.  I’ll be glad when I find a permanent job and can have regular benefits again.

Back to spinning the Llama.

Floodstock

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click on picture for larger image

click on picture for larger image

 

My son and his friend Dustin invited me to go to the Farmer’s Market with them this morning.  It is once a month in the down town area.  I thought Farmer’s Market, ok, vegetables etc, plus I had seen people working on the item in the picture while driving home from work every day for the last several weeks (I will describe it better in a min.)  So I thought sure.  Well it was awesome, they had a rock band performing old Beatles songs, many vendors selling everything from fresh produce to meat, to crafts, baked goods, a guy who did some awesome items with those ballons you twist into shapes.  I’m going back next month and taking my camera with me, and more money :P.  So be prepared for an update next month.

Ok, the picture.  It is a sand sculpture, yep, I said sand!  It says Floodstock on it (yeah, a take off on Woodstock).  It’s celebrating the recovery from the terrible flood that they had last year that devistated the downtown area.  It’s a way of saying, WE ARE BACK.  There are still buildings in the downtown area that are being or need to be renovated, but the work is coming along.  The business I work at is right there in the downtown area and they just recently finished their renovation from the damage the flood caused.

Click on picture for larger image

Click on picture for larger image

 

This small hand embroidered pillow is what I bought today, of course because I spin, but also because sheep are just so darn cute :P.  Besides it was made by a friend of mine from my church who had a vendor booth set up there. 🙂  I also bought some turnips, because I love them and it was cheaper to buy fresh ones than the ones in the store that have the paraffin covering to keep them fresh.  

 

 

 I do have to say that Cedar Rapids has something going on all the time.  I wanted to go to the Freedom Festival tonight up at Kirkwood Community College because 3 Dog Night was going to be there playing, but there are too many things needing my attention.  I’m sorry to have missed seeing one of my all time favorite Rock groups.  Maybe next time.

Birthdays

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madison-1austin-2

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADDI AND AUSTIN!

I really need to get some updated pictures from my daughter!!  Anyway we celebrate birthdays today for my daughter’s last two children which are 2 years and a week apart.  Since Austin will be 1 she figured it would be ok to celebrate them together since he won’t notice the difference this year anyway.   Anyway I get to go have fun at Chuck E Cheese today.  🙂

Amazing how fast children grow.  You have your own and then all of a sudden you have grand children that age.  But it’s much nicer having grand children.  You get to spend time with them and leave them with their mother and go home to peace and quite :P.

I’m hoping to be finished spinning with the green and red superwash merino this evening.  As soon as I get it plyed and set I will put a picture up of the skein (probably tomorrow or Monday).  Since I am spinning the two colors together and it already looks like green and red candy cane stripes together, I am wondering what the two plyed together will look like.  Someone at the spinning group, that I finally got to go to last week (it was fun), said they thought it might turn out looking cabled after plying the two singles together.  I look forward to seeing  :).  It’s an experiment anyway.

Summer Cold

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Renaissance Fair

Renaissance Fair

Once again it is renaissance fair time.  I won’t get to go to the one in Amana, IA, this week end tho’.  My wonderful grandson shared something with me last week end.  His cold (I love him anyway) ;P.  I started not feeling well on Monday and had the scratchy throat yesterday and the coughing has started in earnest today.   My co-workers are teasing me about the coughing, but I told them they might not be in such a teasing mood by the time the coughing stops.  If it goes into bronchitis (which frequently happens because I have asthma) I will be sick with a cough for about 6 to 8 weeks, I’m sure my apt neighbors will be thrilled at night as well, as I’ll be coughing all night long too.  sigh.  I try so hard to avoid this every year for this reason.  It is not tons of fun.  My plan is to try and get as much rest as I can.  This will also affect my singing in the choir :(, did I ever mention that I sing?

My job is going well and I enjoy it a lot, still have hopes that it might turn into a permanent job.   I think I will go make myself  some herbal tea for my cough.

Happy Mother’s Day

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Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day

 

 

Hope all my friends are having a wonderful Mother’s Day.  I miss my mom and wish I could tell her Happy Mother’s Day, so all of you who still have your mom around, be sure and let her know how much you love her.

I have gotten another full pattern finished and have started the 4th pattern on the afghan.  It’s getting bigger and coming along.  My goodness, it is so soft. 🙂

My children got together about 1 pm yesterday afternoon and I wondered why they were all together and didn’t have me come over.  They had my grand-daughter call me about 5 pm telling me that her mom needed me to come over to help her with something.  I went over and they were all in the back yard, so I walked back there.  They had prepared a garden for me and even had some plants and seeds for me to plant, they’d had to cut small trees out of the garden area and pull a ton of prickly weeds.   I had told them that I sure missed having my vegetable garden to work in and eat from.  What a wonderful Mother’s Day gift.  You need to know that my children were never fond of working in the garden as children, because I use to send them out to pull weeds when they got into trouble :P.   So for them to have prepared a garden for me touched me deeply.  They each have  flower and/or herb gardens that they enjoy tending so I guess it wasn’t a horrible thing to have them work in the vegetable garden when they got into trouble as children ;P.

Progress on the afghan

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click on picture for larger image

click on picture for larger image

 

 

 

Lest you think that I am not working on the afghan for my grand daughter here is a picture of it’s progress (see son, I am knitting on it :).)  Each full pattern takes just a little less than a full skein of this yarn.  I wish they hadn’t discontinued it, it’s such a wonderfully soft yarn and I would have made other things with it after knitting this afghan, because it’s a pleasure to knit with. 

My job is going fine, I’m settling in with my duties and find I’m comfortable with the detail work and learning what pages go with each item.  As soon as the bank gets a phone and computer at my desk my duties will increase a bit because right now I can’t call the insurance companies to have them correct loan numbers etc or look things up in the banks system so the processors are having to do that when I find things that need attention, but I’m happy with my job. 🙂  I wish that the temp service had told me tho, that my first check would be a hard copy being mailed from out of state and not direct deposit so I wouldn’t have expected my check in my account.  It didn’t come in yesterday, so hopefully it will come in the mail today.  My checking account is hungry and I need to feed it ;P.

Hope everyone is having a great May, gosh this year is sure going by so fast.  I hope the spring and summer and fall stay a little longer and the winter is a little shorter tho :P.  Gotta take my car in, hopefully next week end to see what is rattling and sounding like it wants to fall out of the front end of my car, the roads here are just shaking  my poor little car to death.  Don’t want to be driving and have something just fall out :P.

Life on the Fast track

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My Balcony

My Balcony

 

 

Ahhh, Spring!!  The birds are singing and it’s beautiful with the trees flowering and leafing out here and yesterday was hot as heck!!  We’ve been in the 50’s and 60’s until Thursday when we hit upper 70’s and yesterday we were mid 80’s,  Sheesh.  This week will be back in the 60’s again, thank goodness because the air conditioning isn’t working yet at the bank I’m working at.  They are still doing repair and rebuild work after the big flood here in Cedar Rapids last year.   Anyway this is a picture of my balcony.  It’s not screened in like my apt in TN but it is so wonderful to have a balcony again.  I have a place to put my plants outside and to sit and spin or knit (when it isn’t raining or way to hot.  I didn’t go out on my balcony in TN when it was way to hot either ;P).  

 My life has been a bit busy this last week.  8 to 5  job and I have to get up at 5:45 (get ready, make lunch, take care of Thor) because I have to leave by 7:15.  I am working down town (about 16 to 17 min from where I live) and there is no parking lot at the bank, only metered parking on the street, so I had to pay for a parking permit to park in a parkade and walk 3 blocks to work.  I really don’t mind the walk (and there is a skywalk that goes from building to building so I won’t get wet if it rains, but it’s a bit of a meandering walk that takes an extra 7 min or so to walk), just hate having to leave 15 or more min earlier :P.  Tons of stuff to learn in the new job (isn’t that always the case? :P) and that leaves me drained when I get home.  Had a couple of evening things I had to attend to this last week and still try to get to bed between 9 and 9:30 pm so I can start all over again at 5:45 am the next morning.  It’ll be much better after I adjust to the new stuff and time period.  Saturdays are busy too with laundry and errands, but I’ll get a routine down, put some fun back in my life and it will all be good. 🙂

click on picture for larger image

click on picture for larger image

 

 

This is something my sister has been working on.  It’s called silver clay.  I’d never heard of it but they put silver powder (yeah the real stuff!) in clay and she said you have to fire it after you have finished making whatever it is you are going to make with it.  I think she did a wonderful job.   She’s rather crafty too (making things, not sly – sly to me is not a good thing to be, ie decietful, full of trickery :P), guess crafting things runs in my family :).

 

Oh yeah, to my son who just finished his 4th blanket in the last month!!    PFFFT 😛  I’m working on Jade’s afghan, I did some rows today :P.  Should have some evening time to work on it this coming week :).

Happy TEA Party Day

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venus5ab1 

 

My son has his web hosting site up and running and I’m switching over so this is my first post on his hosting site.  He’s decided to go with Word Press for the blogging part.  It’s a lot different than what I was use to at Yahoo, but I’m learning it.  If you are interested in changing hosting servers, you can contact my son, I have a link to his website in my blog roll.  I like the fact that if I have any problems, I don’t have to be connected to an out of the country service rep (that has a hard time with American slang or phrasing), I can just go over to his house and yell at him :P.  JUST KIDDING SON!!!

My unpacking is coming along and I’m just waiting for the back ground check to come in, should be today or tomorrow, so that I can start working at the bank.  Hopefully this position will turn out to be a temp to hire job and not just a long term temp job, because it pays well and I enjoyed working with the mortgage title company, this will be a bit different but I’m excited about it anyway :).

Oh yeah, happy TEA Party Day!!!  TEA = Taxed Enough Already!