Candlelight, crochet and Valentine's Day!!!

Hello?  Anyone still here?

Whenever I go some time without putting up a blog post, and I don't mean the Happy Homemaker Monday, but a proper chatty post, I feel like when someone returns to their summer house and needs to clean off the cobwebs and give it a good dusting.

It's been crazy.

I don't need to tell you that, you all are aware of what's been going on around here.

Good news is that we are all finally over the sickness and back to normal.  Yay!!!

So what does that mean?  Well for one, it means I can get back to being and feeling like my normal old self, in all areas of my life, including blogging.

The weather here has been deplorable.  Yesterday was 85 degrees, beautiful, hot and made me believe that maybe, just maybe, Spring was around the corner.

Fast forward to today.  Woke up to cloudy skies, high winds and 30 degrees.  I would cry but it's not even worth it, one thing I've learned with Texas is that it will do whatever it wants to when it comes to weather.



So where have I been and what have I been doing?

Cooking for one.  This week I was able to get back to fixing meals and I've even managed to record them every day, and will share them in a video on Sunday.

I've also been going to Physical Therapy twice a week.  On Tuesday I was in quite a lot of pain, I woke up already stiff and sore and it was cold that day, so I'm not sure if that was exacerbating the problem, but let's just say that I was not able to do much of anything at my PT appointment.  They actually ended up taping my arm with what I now refer to as their "magic tape".

Oh my word did that help.  It doesn't seem like it will, but it pretty much pulls your arm into it's natural position, and because it does that, it is allowing my shoulder to heal without my arm feeling so heavy all the time.  It's hard to explain, but if you've suffered with shoulder issues, you will know exactly what I'm talking about.

If you want to see more pictures, be sure to follow my Instagram account, I tend to share more daily pics over there.  :)

Valentine's Day came about this week too.  I will tell you that my husband and I don't usually celebrate, we find it a bit of an unnecessary holiday but once in a while we'll give each other a little something on that day.

This year we ended up giving each other a card and some chocolates, and I got a rose as well, which I absolutely love :)

We also gave both the kids a box of chocolates from each of us.  I know it's Valentine's Day but we always include the kids :)

I made a yummy dinner of ribs, steak fries and baked beans and chocolate covered strawberries for dessert.  It was just the 4 of us, but after weeks of being unwell and not able to share meals, it was wonderful to have us all at the table enjoying a meal together.

I've managed to get finished with the big block part of the Elements CAL, this is Part 10, all I have left to do now is make the 8 smaller squares that will go around the blanket.

I don't know if it's the yarn I'm using or the pattern itself, but I've never had such issues with curling and twisting as I've had with this pattern.  I can see that some rows don't line up as they should and no amount of blocking is fixing it.  I'm trying one more blocking technique "wet blocking" and then leaving it be.

Also need to pick up more yarn as I'm down to the very last bit of this skein, and I think I may only get one square out of it, if I'm lucky.

In other news, my anxiety is finally under control and I'm no longer living in a fight or flight state of panic.  I'm still reading my devotionals every night, making sure to spend time with the Lord and to just let go of the paranoia that seemed to engulf me for a week or so.

Life is so difficult on it's own, without us adding more to it, because that's exactly what I was doing, adding non realistic, imaginary issues to worry about.  The what if's and oh no's were exhausting.

We have a lot to look forward to this year, my niece is having her baby girl.  She is due the very first week of July, but as we all know, it could be last week of June or even a few days after her due date.  We're hoping to make it down to San Diego to see them around the time, that is if Curt can get the time off, if he can't it will just be me and my brother and sister in law.

In August, my stepmom is coming to visit and I'm so excited, I haven't seen her since 2008 :)

Jasmine is still looking into joining the Air Force, even though plans had to be put on hold the past month while she was extremely sick with the Flu.

My husband and I will be celebrating our 20th wedding Anniversary in August as well.

So yes, a year full of happenings and things to look forward to.

I can choose to focus on what if's and imaginary problems, or I can choose God, choose peace and just live life to the fullest, and that's what I plan to do :)