Crochet Me Crazy

Thanks to all that commented on my doily! I haven't had any time to crochet or do anything really. There is quite an update though....on Saturday, my husband, Jeff got thrown from a horse at the stables and is injured. It was pretty darn scary. His horse is the skittish type and he bolted and started bucking before Jeff got all the way on him. Jeff went flying. He was "unconscious" for about 5 minutes. He wasn't really "unconscious" like he was out of it but we didn't realize until later because he doesn't remember hitting the ground or getting up. He kept saying he was okay. Well, I had him checked out by the EMT in the state park and then decided to take him to the ER that night just to be sure. They put 5 staples in the gash in his head. He cracked his ribs and he's limping around because he hit on his hip. I borrowed some crutches for him to help him get around a little better. He's a pretty pathetic sight but I'm so thankful to God that it wasn't worse. He's somewhat better today but not so much. Well, we knew it would happen eventually. We think we've figured out why Wishes (the horse) bolted. Jeff has some tic-tacs in his back pocket. Our trail horses wouldn't react to those but Wishes is a spooky horse. So, needless to say Jeff has to mend a bit before he can start doing the rides again. The owners grandson and Alison are doing the rides right now and I'm still up there working. Jeff has been hobbling up there some. I'm just real tired because by the time I get home, I just want to wash all that dirt off of me and relax. Got to find some crock pot recipes so I can have some dinner already ready by the time I get home! Pray that we don't have a fire here! It is soooo dry and very, very windy and all these campers with their campfires ...not a good combination.

Well, I hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day weekend! I'm making it quick tonight so I get can get back home and go to bed!

Yay! I finished my doily! I'm so proud of it! I can't believe how fast I was able to make that! It took me less than two weeks. I think I could finish one in a week on a normal schedule without all the dance rehearsals I had last week. I have another pattern I want to try but I may try to get a little more done on my cross stitch before I start another one...then, again, I may not have time to work on much of anything since we start working at the stables full time starting tomorrow.

Looks like we will be in the state park for at least another week or two. Jeff went to town and came home with an 18 foot trailor loaded with pipe on Wednesday. He was down there all day today at the stables the getting the water lines put in for the sites. Jeff talked to the park today and they said we are fine right now and they don't have anyone coming to our site right now so that's good. We're just going to have to about kill ourselves trying to get all those trees watered when we get home in the evenings from the stables. I helped Jeff water the trees last night. THAT was not EASY! We had to double the water yesterday (2 buckets per tree). It's hard to find water hydrants when there are campers everywhere so we had to haul 5 gallon buckets to most of the trees. There are 50 something trees to water! The park is supposed to be getting a big 250 gallon water tank for us to haul in a truck. That will make it a lot easier.

Boy, is it hot here! The past 3 days have been over 100 degrees and heat indexes of over 104 degrees. I'm having a hard time keeping the RV cool. We only have one AC and it has a really hard time keeping up on these extremely hot days. Today, I went and jumped in the river with Alison to cool off. Someone stole our tube while we were there.

Well, hopefully we'll have a busy day tomorrow at the stables! I hope the heat doesn't keep people away! Will update when I can!

This past Saturday was Alison's ballet! She did beautifully and she won the award in her class of "Most Improved" this year and got a plaque.




Her Nana & Papaw came for the show.

Yesterday, we spent the day in Kerrville. Michael got his new lenses in his glasses. It feels good to get that taken care of! I got Alison's hair trimmed and after we left, I saw that it is totally uneven! I could have done better than that! I didn't want to go back and have her fix it because Alison was so worried about the cutting off too much. I'm going to even it out myself.

Today, I'm sitting down here on the internet while I'm waiting for my clothes to wash and dry. Today, I'll spend cleaning up from the chaos of the last week.

Here I sit back at the Visitor's Center accessing the internet. Life is busy. The park is planting 80 some-odd new trees. We are taking on the job of watering them at least every other day. They only have half of them planted right now. It took Jeff & Michael about 2 hours to put 5 gallons of water on them yesterday. We're getting our 24 hours a week of volunteer hours in the park and also trying to make the mad rush to get stuff done we need to get done before Memorial Weekend when summer season starts and we work every day at the stables. Jeff has two outside jobs he wanted to do. Also, we are close to homelessness. The stables are putting in an RV site for us but time is running out. Jeff is out running around trying to find information about what kind of electricity cable they need to run. He said it looks like it might be expensive. Anyway...we'll just wait and take it as it comes I guess. Not much else we can do at this point in time. The park is pretty full and it doesn't look like they have a spot for us for the whole summer.

Michael is into a new craft right now. He's now making stuff out of leather.




He's quite good at it. It's pretty expensive to get supplies though. He put in an application for a job at the State Park. He checked on his application yesterday and the park superintendent said they'll let him know in about a week. They have budget cuts going on right now but he said they are thinking about letting someone go. It will be great for Michael if he gets that job. It will be his first real job and the pay is good for a kid his age. It's over minimum wage and he'll get lots of hours in the sumer. I told him if he does a good job, he could eventually get hired on full time and that's a great job out here. You are working for the state and get benefits. It's a good job for someone like Michael. His picture is on the Texas Outdoor Family facebook page from when he helped them when they were here a few weeks ago. He said that counts as his yearly picture! He hates having his picture taken!

The river is very low and the kids are trying to milk the last bit of swimming out of it. People keep saying they will eventually shut the river down if we don't get rain soon. Everything is dead or dying. Pray for rain for us!

Well, I'm still working on my cross stitch. I got me a magnifier to hang around my neck so that helps. I miss crocheting though. I love thread crochet but I'm not very good at it. I was tinkering around with the thread on the snowflakes but I've been looking around at my patterns for a pretty but easy doily pattern. I don't want a lot of clusters or treble crochets. I'm not that good at working with thread so I want to stick with basic stitches right now. I finally found this one!



It's an interesting design but only has basic stitches. I started on it this afternoon and so far so good. It should be my best doily yet. I've only made two others before and on my first one, my stitches were much too loose.

Here's a fun picture of Michael at the stables:

I don't have easy internet access here since we moved into the State Park. We can drive over to the visitor's center and access the public internet but it is extremely slow. A lot of nights I'm too tired to drive down and sit in the car waiting for stuff to load. Right now, Alison and I are here in the truck using the internet while Jeff and Michael are running around in the park on the "Gator" getting some hours in. Last summer while we were here in the park, our site was in the maintenance area where we had internet access. This time we are out in the park with the campers so we don't have it. I'm so happy that I have great water pressure here though! It's the best we've ever had in the RV. Alison and I are loving it! Another perk is free laundry so no more laundry headaches for the next 2 weeks! We only have 2 weeks here before we will have to move on again. I'm learning God's lessons on flexibility very well.

What was supposed to be a slow day at the stables today actually turned into a better day than yesterday! We actually had unsaddled a little early thinking it was over and then some people drove up so we re-saddled two horses to take the 2 kids out. You just can't predict it! We got home late because we hung around a little late so we treated ourselves to dinner at a local cafe. We took the long way home down the river road. The river is soo low. We are really praying for rain here. We got an inch last week after such a long drought. We need MORE!! The stables is having trouble finding hay for the horses. If anyone knows where there some GOOD hay at a reasonable prices, drop me and email and pass the info on. They buy very large quantities of hay for 31 horses plus goats. They have bought from as far as Colorado before.

This next week will be really busy because Alison has dance class every day this week and longer classes as well. The big performance is this next weekend!

Well, here is the new view from our window.



There was a lot of people in the park this weekend but our campground is pretty much empty today. There are only about 3 campers in our part this week. We haven't really gotten to start park host duties yet. Jeff was gone most of the day today working goats. He did get back early enough to go get our "Gator" issued to us so Jeff and Michael went and picked up trash this evening while Alison and I were at dance.

I need to figure out what I'm going to crochet. My mind seems to be in a state of disorganization right now. I have a hard time being creative when I'm like this. On the flip side though, if I could get myself into a project, it would help me to organize my brain.

Well, to make a long story short....the kids went over the room last night and were there a short time before they came home bewildered and upset. They didn't know what they had done. They said Randy, one of the camp workers came into the room and said very little to them but they knew he was drunk, talking slow, and slurring. He told them to give him the key and leave. They asked what they had done wrong and he wouldn't tell them. Jeff went over to his RV to get the key and to get our milk the kids were supposed to bring home. He wouldn't give Jeff the key back nor would he give Jeff an explanation either but Jeff was able to confirm that he was indeed drunk and slurring his speech. I suspect he knew he couldn't talk clearly and didn't want to talk to Jeff. We were very upset that he came over there to confront our children in the condition he was in. We went over to the office this morning to talk to them and find out what the problem with the kids was. They gave us a long list of silly stuff written on a piece of paper .... stuff like they forgot a sock over there....an empty box in the walk way by the kitchen door....lights left on...TV left on. They even had that they had left the AC on last night when in fact, Michael tried to go turn it off but Randy wouldn't let him. He said he would get it...then apparently left it on and the kids are blamed. Apparently, they were being too loud. We apologized for anything they had done but asked them why we are just now hearing of this stuff. We can't do anything about it they don't tell us or the kids. Jeff has been in the office many times this week and no one has said anything! I told them I'm not making excuses for my kids, however, I have a big problem with the fact that Randy came over there in that condition. He should have sent a sober camp host over to do whatever they felt they needed to do or come and talk to us. I told the owner that Randy needs to not ever come near my kids again when he's drunk like that again. It really scared Alison quite a bit because he was acting so strange! The owner said he was happy with how Randy handled it and made no apologies whatsoever. He said if we feel that way about Randy's behavior then we needed to leave....so, that is what we did. We spent a couple of hours checking on place and then went to the State Park. We will be park hosting until the end of the month. It's all find because the kids are happy to be back in the park. Michael already put in an 8 hour day on Saturday while we were all working at the stables. He was helping with a park program some outsiders put on for some first time campers. He was very helpful to them because they didn't know anything about the state park and Michael was able to answer their questions. So anyway, the big adjustment is that I don't have internet again unless we get in the truck and drive to it. I can still pick up my old signal that we had at the RV park we were in if we drive to the river! So, Alison and Jeff and I are all sitting down here by the river with our lap tops right now! LOL!

In my search to find new recies to bring to the stables this summer, I tried this recipe yesterday.

Alyson's Broccoli Salad Recipe - Allrecipes.com

It really was very good except that it was just WAY too sweet for me. The bacon and sunflower seeds were awesome. I think I will make this again only leave out the raisins and cut the sugar in the dressing in half. I also used red wine vinegar and it was fine.

Wow, I've never been much of a "bird watcher" but we have been have been having so many unusual birds that I have never seen before coming around the camp site! We've been having so much fun watching them! Michael said he thinks a Sherman-Williams Factory must have exploded! I am having a seriously hard time getting pictures of them! As I am typing a bright yellow bird just flew by! These bright colored birds are so pretty!




There is this green bird. The color in the picture isn't so good.





There has also been a solid purplish blue colored bird coming around that I haven't been able to get a picture of. The Finches, Doves and Red Birds aren't as shy as these bright colored birds.

A boy the kids met last year in the park is back camping in the park this week. They have been trying to finish school early so they can go to the river and hang out with him. He went with the kids to youth last night. They have another set of friends they met last year coming in the next few weeks too.

Well, Alison's ballet class is working really hard to get ready for the big show on the 21st! Today they got to try on their costumes. Alison is a fairy.



Well, I am still making a few snowflakes because they are a quick and easy thing to do but I have started another project.



When we were in Houston, I bought a cross stitch kit while we were at Hobby Lobby!



I've started on it but I think I'm too blind to do cross stitch. I have a hard time seeing that chart and the stitches I'm trying to do. I don't enjoy it half as much as crocheting!