Happy New Year! & Happy Anniversary to Rob and I~

Well it’s a new year…YAY! 2017 was full of adventures in travel, life and business. I have learned lots..grown in many ways….and experienced lots of new things. I am glad for the good, bad & ugly. But it’s been a brutal year and I am thankful for a new beginning.

It’s also my anniversary. Rob and I have been married for 15 years. Kudos to us! LOL! I won’t bore you with all of the gory…er I mean gooey…details.  Rob and I started on a rocky road and by all accounts –>we should not have made it this far. Honestly, without God we wouldn’t have. We don’t have this perfect fairy tale love story.

What we do have is hard work…communication issues (even still) and enough in common to talk about. LOL We are pretty opposite in just about every other subject…other than politics and religion. So I guess our core values are pretty much the same…..but I am hard worker bee that will work until I fall. Rob wants to work just enough to get by. I want to aim high and shoot for goals and constantly strive to be better. Rob doesn’t know why anyone does that. I want to go on vacation and see all there is to see..he wants to lounge by the pool, sleep in late and drink fruity girly drinks. Somehow we make it work with our core values. Although, its frustrating for either one of us having to deal with all of the opposites we have going on at any given moment. I guess that’s the spice of life? I try to tell myself that anyway.

Rob and I have a comfortable routine. We text pretty much all through the day. He comes home to dinner. We all sit down together. We share our day & any news. We each do whatever we do for a few hours and then we spend an hour or so in the hot tub before he goes to bed.  In the hot tub we discuss our troubles, share our future plans and discuss whatever is on our minds. I love this routine. Rob is my best friend. My greatest fan, biggest supporter and my comfort. I miss him terribly when I am away from him. Not for any other reason that I am comfortable and feel safe with him. I don’t have to worry so much when he is around because I know he would protect me from anything. That is comforting to me. I think he doesn’t understand that…when I venture off to places and I feel a little more vulnerable without him. Obviously, I don’t stop myself from doing things. That would be unhealthy.

Rob and I don’t really have “friends”….as in couples that we hang with. We are each other’s friend. We aren’t those people that go hang out with other couples ect. We have at different times. But it’s really difficult to find other couples that we both jive with… and honestly we just like being together because we have been so worn out from parenting that we had nothing left to give anyone else. So when you are investing in your family…you can’t really invest in anyone else. We had too many kids -close in age- that needed us.  We have our separate friends. Well I do…Rob doesn’t really hang with anyone. He spent all of his time with our boys. They were his best friends and now that they are gone..I think we are all a little lost in different ways. So we are all finding our new normal…and our quiet comfortable routine is nice. I just wish Rob would go to one of my movies for a change! instead I have to go to his dumb movies and die a little inside each time. LOL But We are both excited because my brother and his boyfriend are moving here…and we will have “built-in” friends. LOL We all get along well and we are already planning dinners, BBQ’s and Christmas parties. Rob will say “Oh maybe when your brother moves here we can do this or that….” I think we are all saying that because we are all excited for this next chapter.

This last year we invested in a new computerized quilting machine with the hopes of Rob eventually staying home and working with me. He is really good at the computer quilting. To be honest I am not good at it….I am technology challenged. Taking time to learn things that I can do, on my own,  without a computer grinds on my last nerve…I get impatient when I don’t know the systems. Anyhow….on top of that I am super proud of Rob because it’s his turn to advance himself. He is not only helping in my business but he is now a college student. He starts college this week. Rob has a physical job that he needs to change. His body is falling apart. He no longer has 6 kids at home to feed and he deserves to better himself so that he can have a more gentle work environment and give his body a break. So he is studying computer IT stuff and also finishing his 2 year degree ( he only needs one class to do that). It’s time. Rob’s work is under a massive amount of changes and I am not sure he can even finish out the year there. I am praying that he can last long enough to get through his courses…or we can build up the computer quilting enough for him to be home full time. Insurance is our biggest hurdle..just like most of us. But I feel good inside that we can afford to pay for his college courses and help him find a new job that will help preserve what he has left of his body.

But while he has been on vacation he did finish this vintage quilt top:

I asked him to quilt Baptist fans on this quilt. That is not an easy design computer or not because it’s traditionally a hand quilted design. I have  template that I had been using (pre-computer) but as many of you may have seen those are not “traditional” fans because they don’t connect. There is always a gap. These fans are perfect!

This was just as difficult on the computer..But Rob completed it like a pro. There are no gaps or overlapping and all of the fans line up perfectly. On top of that this quilt top started in the 1900’s..was added to with feed sacks from the 1930’s and who knows what else..so there were a ton of pleats and loose-ness…so he was making adjustments and keeping the pleats and puckers at bay like a pro. It turned out beautiful. I am super proud of him and happy with this quilt. I love all things vintage and I picked up the top for a good price. So I did use 2 layers of batting. A cotton and an 80/20. I was trying to help keep the puckers at bay with batting. I used cotton based battings so that after it’s bound I will wash and dry it and it will get that vintage crinkly look. So sometimes Rob will show me something on the computerized system that he wants to teach me…and He will say “these are tips from the pro”…..The irony in that. *eyeroll*

YOu can see the elements of these blocks. they would be easy to reproduce….and they are pretty blocks. You can also see in the pictures that there were some mistake blocks. I honestly thought about fixing those….but thought that the flaws make it beautiful.

So here’s to a new year…a happy anniversary and a sunny disposition on everything ahead!

blessings

xoxox

Charisma