Pattern mania

A lovely lady from church brought her patterns from her business to church to give away. They sat there for weeks and weeks and finally I took them home. GL is excited about all the costumes and will be getting a lot of kids' clothes patterns. ML will be getting women's patterns and kids' clothes as well. But since there were over 400 patterns in the group, what to do with the rest? I'm thinking about it. Right now, I'm tripping over pattern boxes in the living room. I actually love patterns. I love pulling out the instructions on patterns just to see how something is put together. Especially Vogue. They use so many fascinating techniques.

Other news is that my dad's 90th birthday approaches and my trip to Louisiana and Texas. Sure wish Michael could come with me but he says it's impossible.

We called S, our six-year-old grandson, for his birthday on Friday. "I love you a billion and six," he exclaimed. "There are a billion and six people on the earth and I love you that many!" What a cutie. He likes his birthday better than any one I know. One year he wanted us to sing the birthday song for him over and over. We'd finish and he'd say "Again, again!" Pretty cute. We gave him a corduroy coat and he was even excited about that. Luckily GL also included a big box o' Nerds in the present or else we might have dropped in our popularity rating.

Shipping to MF in the Czech Republic is always a challenge but I lucked out. Her husband N is coming to Dallas/Fort Worth next week, so I only have to ship the patterns that far. I'm also including some Christmas presents. When your kids live in Europe, you have to think ahead. MF and I had lined up their Christmas presents from the grandparents and their birthday presents. But I didn't have anything for the grownups. So I'll ship that to Texas too.

We're in the process of refinancing our mortgage. I know, I know. We just moved in last year. But the rates are advantageous enough that we can reduce our mortgage from 30 year to 15. Every time I think about the fact that the Denton house was close to being paid for, I makes me slightly ill. I mentioned this to a friend at church today. He's a real estate appraiser and we were talking about the ten-year-old kid who appraised my house. Okay not ten, but he looked no older than twenty or so. I asked him how long he'd been appraising houses and he said, "Not too long." Anyway, back to my story. I told him how hard it was to give up the perfect house. He looked at me and said, "From what I can tell about you, any house you and Michael could live in together would be the perfect house." What a great compliment. But I still hold to the fact that if this house in PA is perfect, then the house in Texas was perfecter.