Cross-Stitching My Way Thru This Week...

Monday, October 6th, my busyness was getting the Relief Society announcements posted via eMail and on Facebook. I also labeled pictures and did my weekly Blog entry. I usually do this on Sunday but, alas, I did not do this on Sunday, so it fell to a Monday 'to do' item.

Claude received a birthday package in the mail from Nissa. She does know her dad! 

I was able to connect with Velvett Bossio, a dear friend, who has been very ill. And with Laura, my BFF, who is recuperating from her cancer treatments. And with Kris who is my sister-in-law. She is married to Claude's brother, Cordell. Cordell would have surgery on Tuesday and I just wanted Kris to know we were thinking of them.

Tuesday, October 7th, we had rain through the night and it rained all day long. It was a slow kind of rain that can really soak into the ground. It was a very welcome rain. Our poor grass needed it and the plants needed a really good drink as cooler weather sets in and they get ready for their winter nap. 

I found myself in the kitchen baking cookies!! Claude took over the kitchen several years ago. It truly is set up for him to be the cook. However, I posted last week that we ate at an Amish restaurant and bakery and we finished our meal by purchasing Sour Cream Cookies. A friend from our motorcycling days commented on my Facebook post that Sour Cream Cookies were something her mother baked and loved. I asked if it was a recipe she could share. It turns out, her sister has the recipe card framed and hanging in her home. Diane contacted her sister. Her sister took a picture and sent it to Diane. Diane messaged me the recipe card picture. On Tuesday, I baked these cookies. They were soooo good. Our love of Sour Cream cookies baked by the Amish started in Maryland when they opened an Amish Market in Germantown, Maryland. We were immediately hooked on these cookies. Diane's recipe comes the closest to that Germantown recipe we fell in love with. I did not put icing on the top of ours. Trying to save us from a little bit of sugar. Claude said if I had, these would have tasted the same to him. Here is a picture of the cookies I baked and the recipe Diane sent. Yum!!

Cordell had his surgery and did well. 

I messaged with Fred who is an good motorcycling buddy. His wife Bevy has the beginnings of dementia. I shared some of my experiences with my Mom. He is at that spot now. It is a long journey. 

In the afternoon, we watch Pres. Russell M. Nelson's funeral. He was 101 years old when he passed the previous week. He was the Prophet and President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We will be using quotes from his teachings for years to come. Such a good and faithful man. 

In the evening, Claude made homemade vegetable soup from whatever we had on hand. It was so good with Mrs. Schubert's rolls. Yum...again!!

Wednesday, October 8th, I started in earnest on an embroidery project. This will be a Christmas gift for Katelyn per her request. More on that later.

Thursday, October 9th, I spent my day working on my cross-stitch project. Claude had errands outside. When he came home, he brought me a Whopper Junior from Burger King. The man knows what I like!

In the evening, I went to the church for our October Relief Society activity, "Pumpkin Crafts". We even had pumpkin flavored cake and cookies. It was a fun evening. I loved that some of the ladies came with no intention of making the craft. They just wanted to be with the other ladies. That is a win-win. 

Okay, I'm not in any of these pictures. That is because I am always behind the camera. I also started a pumpkin. However, I was crocheting a square to make my pumpkin out of and did not finish the square. I brought it home and will finish it when I finish my cross-stitch pattern. 

Friday, October 10th, we started our day with a biscuit run to Bojangles with a nice long chat in the Jeep. Love these morning biscuit/chat sessions.

I went to work on my cross-stitch project until about 2:30pm. Claude came home with 100 euros from our trip to Greece. There was no time in the airport to make the change back to US dollars. Claude found a place in Lexington that could make that change for us. We drove to Nicholasville and newspaper taped over the front door. It seems this business was now closed. Ugh. I keep telling Claude to hold on to then in case we go back to euro-land again. He is not wanting to do that. The trip was not wasted. We went to Schlotzsky's for our big meal-o-the-day. 

Home to cross-stitch some more.

Saturday, October 11th, was another mostly cross-stitch day. In the evening, Laura sent me a text wondering how I was doing. I told her I was immersed in my Christmas present cross-stitch. I sent her these two pictures. The first is the picture from Etsy where I purchased the pattern. The second is my progress as of when I sent her the text last night. A long way to go, but I will get there. 

Sunday, October 12th, was our 'early morning'. Claude has a 7am Zoom meeting usually on the first Sunday of each month. This month, we had General Conference on the first Sunday so the meeting was postponed to this Sunday. That means a 6am wake-up call for Claude. I reset my alarm and sleep until 7:30am. We are home for a good sacrament meeting and Relief Society lesson. Claude picked Arby's for lunch. Now he is napping and I am Blogging and getting things set up for my Relief Society presidency meeting this evening. I spend my afternoon cross-stitching.

Life is good!

Yardwork, New Adventures, Music and a Birthday...

Monday, September 29th, well, life was to be back to 'normal'. We had been home from our Greece trip for a week. Time to work on our yard!! Fortunately, there had been little water so the grass wasn't horribly high. Unfortunately, in Kentucky, we need much more water. Claude would cut, trim and blow that grass. I set to work on the flower beds and weeded all of them and cut back the irises, Lucifer plant and the flowering plants in the back yard flower bed. Other plants will need to be cut back before winter but they can stay green a little bit longer.

We wanted to get flu shots when we came home from Greece. We had been encouraged to also get an RSV shot. This is a shot that was given to young kids and youth. Now they have found that older people benefit from it as well. We are officially in that category. I checked with CVS and they had openings for both of us in 45 minutes from when I checked. We quickly got dressed in other clothes and headed to CVS. We would each get the RSV shot in our left arm and the Flu shot in our right arm. 

Then we observed our tradition of going out for a burger if we work in the yard. This time, Burger King was our burger place of choice. Yum. 

Tuesday, September 30th, my arms would be sore for Tuesday and Wednesday. This is usual and I plan on two quiet days after we get the vaccine. To keep it quiet, we started our day at Bojangles for a biscuit.

I would get the Relief Society October newsletter sent via eMail and Facebook and send announcement for Relief Society for the Sunday bulletin for the month of October. I also did the tiny bit of ironing I had been saving. I was successful in finding a windbreaker on Walmart's website and ordering it. My little gray one is really showing its wear. So sad. And, I printed the newly released hymns for our binder on the piano. 

Wednesday, October 1st, I was awake about 6am. Ugh!! I went to my laptop and prepared and history entry for Relief Society for the month of September. I would spend the rest of my reading my Dan Brown novel "Secret of Secrets". 

We did manage to put pins in our map for Greece and Turkey. Yeah us!!

Thursday, October 2nd, my arms were a little better but still very sore. I also had red blotches on the RSV arm. Nothing I was overly concerned about. 

Claude had an ophthalmologist appointment in the morning. We waited until that was finished to see if we would make a little road trip this day. If he had his eyes dilated, we would wait. If he did not have his eyes dilated, we would head west for a day trip. He did not have his eyes dilated. He had a great visit and his eye pressure was the lowest it has ever been. Dr. Richardson was very, very happy. So was Claude!

We knew there was a 'Stonehenge' replica in Mundordsville, Kentucky. We wanted to see this. It is actually in someone's yard. They collected all the large stones near them and placed them to make this Stonehenge. It was very cool to see.

I found three possible places for a unique lunch. We opted for Farmwald's Restaurant and Amish Bakery in Horse Cave, Kentucky. It was about 10 minutes away from Stonehenge. We each ordered a Roast Beef Manhattan sandwich. This was toasted sourdough bread with roast beef on top covered with mashed potatoes and gravy. It was a heavy meal but it was our meal of the day. Very good. We purchased some sour cream cookies and a loaf of sour dough bread. 

I was texting with Bailey. She has overlaid her calendar on my calendar so we know when she has musical things. I could tell from her calendar she had class things all afternoon. We were about one hour away from Campbellsville University. Turns out, her afternoon classes were canceled and she was playing pickleball with a friend. We hurried over and picked her up at Gosser Music where all her music classes are held. We went to Cook Out and had a shake together. Then hurried her back for her classes. How fun to see Bailey and to get a hug. 

Friday, October 3rd, Katelyn and Drew started their weekend getaway. They farmed their four little ones to family and took off from Muskegon to Detroit. They went to Chelsea and visited with Jake for a bit. Katelyn said she had not seen her uncle since 2019. Wow!! This is Drew, Katelyn and Jake. 

I was not able to get to sleep the night prior. When I finally went to bed, I ended up sleeping in a bit. Then I spent my day reading my Dan Brown novel and doing the laundry.

Saturday, October 4th, my Big Guy turned 76 years old. I posted this on our family Facebook page: "Yep. I would trek anywhere with this fella. Today, we need to pause and say Happy Birthday to our patriarch. He loves us all fiercely. Here's to another adventure around the sun Big Guy!! May it bring you lots of joy. Love Ya Bunches! DLP and still your Best Friend." (DLP was Claude's nickname for me before and when we were first married. It stands for Damn Little Pest! Yep, he loves me!)

Our biscuit breakfast this day would be at Chick-filA. Claude loves their chicken mini-biscuits. Then we were off for Campbellsville...again. This time it was to watch Bailey perform with the TMB (Tiger Marching Band) for their Homecoming.

We arrived early and found a McDonald's to park at so we could return Jake's birthday call to his dad. Then we headed to the campus of Campbellsville University. We found parking and hiked a few blocks to watch a bit of the Huddle. This is held on the green space in front of Bailey's dorm. This is where all the TMB gathers before performances on game day. There is a blue dot under Bailey in the following Huddle pictures.

The TMB moves from this location to a plaza in front of the football stadium. They will perform again in what they call PITP (Party in the Plaza). These pictures are from PITP. Again, a blue dot under Bailey. This band has lots of movement and dance steps. The cheerleaders perform as well as flags and batons. 

We then moved to the field to watch the band and the game. Campellsville University would play University of the Cumberlands. This are pre-game pictures. My videos are too long for the Blog to post. Ugh! The first picture is the band performing and the second picture is the band and cheerleaders making a path for the football time to enter the field. 

TMB has special bleachers at the end of the field. I'll just comment here that it was a hot day and there was no shade on any bleacher. We were grateful for our stadium seats as the bleachers have no section with backs on the seats. 

This ended up being a tight game. Here is a pictorial view of the game.  

It was a very long first half with all those touch downs and a lot of flags on the plays. It was Homecoming so the first order of business was the band playing quiet music while the Homecoming Court was introduced and the winners were announced. No picture or video of that. 

Then the TMB started their half-time show. It amazes me they learned all these routines and music for this. 

After the band performed at half-time, we met Bailey down by the concession stand. She was guzzling Gaterade. Bless the bands heart. We enjoyed seeing our girl. She headed back to the stadium during the third quarter and we headed for home. Claude would get a birthday dinner at his restaurant of choice. He chose Cinco de Mayo in Georgetown. Yum!  

Meanwhile, in Detroit, the Ropers were feasting on sports. They first went to a University of Michigan football game. 

Then they changed clothes and headed to watch the Detroit Red Wings play. This is Drew's favorite team. He was very happy to be at this game.

When we got home, we had DVR's General Conference sessions for Saturday. Well, we had two of the three. Claude checked it before we left for Campbellsville and the TV was set to record all three sessions. For some reason, not sure why, we only got the morning and afternoon sessions. We would watch those Saturday night. Excellent conference.

Sunday, October, 5th, we were able to watch the two Sunday sessions of General Conference. We went for Jimmy John's between. I spent the between times reading my Dan Brown novel "Secret of Secrets" and I managed to finish it. Whew! I thought I had it all figured out until the very end and he threw me a curve. 

We have been alternating between watching the Mentalist series and Castle. This evening we finished a season of the Mentalist.