What happened to July?

Gosh, I can't believe that I haven't posted for over a month. Hmmm...maybe it was because I was gone for almost three weeks. Of course, it is always my goal to spend as little time as possible in Houston during the summer. I was in Minneapolis for the first week of July, visiting my daughter. She and her fiance have just moved, and I went up to help them get situated (and clean the old apartment...like I said, anything to get out of Houston!) I was home for a week, then took a trip to the Jersey shore for a long "girls' weekend" during which I gave my friend Nancy this Susan Branch table runner as a birthday present.
I got the embroidery card when I bought my Bernina but this is the first time I have ever done anything with it. I was pleased with the result. After I got home from New Jersey I managed to get in a few work days, and then my brother and sister and their four kids came to visit. We had a great time, went to Schlitterbahn in Galveston and the Houston Museum of Natural Science, where a butterfly landed on my hair (when did I get those fat rolls on my neck?)

The day my siblings and their families left, Mike and I flew to Minneapolis. He had a two day meeting at the Saint Paul Hotel, where we spent Friday night, and then we moved on to our old standby, the LeBlanc House B&B, in northeast Minneapolis. We had a wonderful visit with our kids and their SOs. We ate at a great regional restaurant, Heartland, and Kate and I made some great progress on the wedding invitations at the Paper Depot. I picked up my dress at the Wedding Shoppe and Mike got fitted for his tux, so things are falling into place. We left on Tuesday, the day before the bridge collapse. What a horrific event...how fortunate is was that more lives were not lost.

Well, I have FINALLY finished piecing the blocks for the wedding quilt. I found that spending a long time at the sewing machine tended to really tense up my neck and shoulders. I remember seeing several elaborate and expensive devices at the quilt show designed to tilt your sewing machine towards you so that you don't have to lean over it. I remember someone suggesting to me that you could do this with rubber door wedges. Well, it works like a charm...puts you in a much more ergonomic position...give it a try! So now I am really psyched to assemble the quilt top, but I am working full time for the next three weeks. Oh well, there is the wedding thing to pay for...