how do you live so happily while i am sad and broken down?

 I may have just done a cartwheel in my parents' front yard.  Maybe.  You can't prove anything.

I forget, because I don't often come home this time of year, how beautiful Missouri is in the spring.  I don't think I've ever been anywhere like my parents' yard - it smells so good, and the grass is like carpet, and there are catalpa tree blooms on the ground like snow.  I'm putting some pictures up on tumblr, but they don't do it justice.  

This weekend was both sad and happy, wishing for different circumstances but glad to be with my family.  My sister is holding up pretty well, so far at least, and I'm glad I could stay this week and be with her.  She had to go run some errands with some of her boyfriend's friends this afternoon, but she is on her way home and we're going to make cookies.

http://www.tumblr.com/blog/sosaysbeth 

Sorry I missed out on posting yesterday - I had trouble getting my phone to sync the photos up.

Anyway, you didn't miss much :)

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Today's Instagram filter is Earlybird.

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Several people on my flist have been doing this, so of course I thought I'd wait til they were all done and over it and then do it myself. Because I'm awesome at being late to the party like that.
ETA: Instagram Filter - Lo-Fi
( Pics Ahoy! )

Day 11: A photo of you taken recently

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( Future days )

Day 09: A photo you took
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The elevators at the Marriott in downtown Atlanta.

( Future days )

Part 1

&

Part 2

What? It's not Christmas yet, I'm still on time!

In the 'Have You Ever' meme, mrsquizzical asked about me piecing a quilt.

Before I was old enough to go to school, my mom worked so I stayed with my grandmother instead of going to preschool. Grandmother lived next door to us, and she was big on not letting TV rot your brain, so as a three year old, I learned to read, write, and generally entertain myself. I particularly liked gluing stuff to other stuff - this was hours of entertainment. Grandmother never seemed to care what I ruined, as long as I was having fun doing it.

I also spent a lot of time with her while she did her errands and hobbies. We went to church, to the bank (they always gave me free candy through the drive-thru window, I remember them fondly. Plus you had to drive through the middle of a building to do it, which was inherently cool), to deliver meals on wheels. And she had a quilting circle. She would give me a pattern piece and tell me how many she wanted, and I would diligently pin and cut and count til I had the right number. Then she showed me how to thread the needles and tie knots, and I would sew pieces together and give them to her, and she would put them in the right place in her squares.

And then once a week, she would set up a big quilting loom in her basement, and all her quilting friends would come over. I helped sometimes, but I was too little for most of it. I remember clearly though, lying on my back under the table and watching all their needles going in and out in tiny delicate stitches as they put everything together. I have one of her quilts, a wedding quilt, that I plan to hang on a wall in my guest room one day soon.

So it's not exactly the same as putting one together on my own, but I figured it was close enough to count, and it gave me the skills to make this, which I did over the weekend:

So I'm in Dallas now. The flight was a bit excruciating, between the screaming baby behind me and his 8-year-old brother kicking the back of my seat and then sitting on the tarmac at DFW for almost two hours because the hydrolics broke when we landed and they couldn't steer the plane. Good times.

In other news:

Pictures from Merida

Pictures from the Halloween Party