Home Town Hero

Eight years ago we fell in love with a teacher at our middle school. Over the years all of our boys had him. Our oldest credits his desire to teach in athletics to him. Today our friend was lauded as a hero.....I always knew he was!

Check it out at Today on NBC

(Several years ago Coach Reese took a promotion to another school in the district. We miss him at our school, but are glad he was there for Kaylee.)

Ouch

I can't believe I broke my finger while quilting. How crazy does that sound.

Much like a school girl jumping rope and getting smacked in the head when she misjudges the rotation, I got smacked by my long arm while picking threads off of a quilt top. See the marks on my finger? That is the shape of the hopper foot. It must have hit my hand as it came up.

Two days later my finger looked like this. As of that point it really didn't hurt much. The swelling was deadening the nerves. All of that has changed now.

After I got up off of the floor and eventually finished the customer quilt I was working on, I turned my attention back to this pretty little thing. I made it from two charm packs of Robin Pandolph's Things Desired and about two yards of back ground fabric. Thinking about a new baby coming into the world seemed to make my finger less twitchy.

I finished binding it today. I cant believe how awkward it is to sew without using my middle finger, nor how much stress that actually put on my middle finger.

All I have left to do is add a label. Did I mention that am left handed....hmmmm.

On the up side I've lost 3 more pounds since the incident. That brings me to a grand total of 45 pounds since I started dieting in June. It doesn't seem real. I wonder how many calories mending bones takes...

See the large woman to the right of the handsome lad in black? The one in a blue shirt whose arms look all puffy and pale? She doesn't live here any more.

I can put my arms down!

What a very long day

I am sitting on a bed in a hotel room in Big Spring, Texas. That is roughly 100 miles past No Where and not quite all the way to No Place Special. I think the next town over is Don't Blink or You'll Miss It. I'm here, with my family (my three sons and husband) because my less than academically adroit son managed to land a sweet deal.
Noah, my oldest son and recent high school graduate, spoke his first words about the same time as any other kid. To the average stranger on the street there is nothing special about my boy. They don't see his quirky sense of humor, sparkling blue eyes, and bow shaped mouth. They don't see my father and brothers the way I do. That's one of the things that I love about being a mom....seeing the men that I've loved reflected in my boys. Because of these men, my grandfather, father, and three brothers I refuse to believe that men are the low down dirty dogs that the world makes them out to be. I know that they can be, but I also know that they are capable of more....oh so much more. When I see those same superlative character traits in my boys it makes my heart sing. On those days I am proud to be a mom.
From the moment he could do more than sleep, poop, and cry, Noah has had a love affair with sport. His first word? "Ball" The moon was a ball. We had big balls, little balls, squishy balls, and golf balls. You name it and we had one. The things seemed to multiply like rabbits. We had great fun playing catch and fetch and anything else that you could play with a ball. In a pinch we could play air ball.

Unfortunately, Noah has always been equally enthusiastic, (that isn't really the right word, but it is the closest I can come to something that implies an intricate and deep seated entwining of body and soul with something so I'll go with that) when it comes to getting injured. My boy was born via cesarian section because he had managed to get his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. He tripped over his shadow and split his forehead open on a corner of the bathroom wall as a toddler...and again when he was in elementary school. He has broken his ankle, jammed fingers, gotten multiple concussions (to the point where the school system instituted new rules about students returning to sport after having one) and broken his collar bone. He now has a five inch scar where the surgeon went in to screw his clavicle back together. I don't get excited anymore when he says he hurt himself. All of these injuries resulted in his being banned from participation in interscholastic competitions his senior year. That was a bitter, bitter pill to swallow.
Having spent many hours on the proverbial bench, and being banned from participation, Noah turned to athletic training. Despite the fact that it has a predominantly female demographic, or perhaps because it does?, my boy loves it. In what other field can you be in the middle of any and every sporting event and yet not get clinked on the head, tackled, or otherwise injured by yourself or the opponent?! It is a match made in heaven. Thus I sit on the edge of a bed in a hotel room on the interstate in Next to Nowhere, Texas while my boys play paint ball on the television.

We spent the day at new student orientation. I would say that they haven't changed much in the past 30 years. It was an awful lot like the one I went to. Kids and administrations are pretty much the same as they have always been. However, where I had a student ID (aka a laminated photograph of myself that I might have used for a book mark if at all), a physical room key, and access to a coin operated public telephone (calling home required calling collect...can you even do that now?). Today's students have electronic IDs that incorporate room keys, debit cards and
THIS POST INTERRUPTED BY TAKE OUT

FOLLOWED BY SEVERAL HOURS OF SLEEP AND HOURS OF DRIVING