My mother is having back surgery today. Her lower back was fused years ago and now it needs fusing above that. Her bending days are over. I'm in OKC for a couple of weeks doing my best to be helpful. If nothing else, I can lift and bend :-). I'll post as I can.

My oldest son writes. In fact, (in my humble opinion) Christopher writes very well!  So for today I'm going to share my son Christopher's blog with you (photo above from his 9th post). If you read his first post in this sequence, you'll find out that his topic for the year is taken from the book, This Book Will Change Your Life. I wonder if it will?

Be warned that he often uses 'adult' language which doesn't bother me but may bother you. I hope you enjoy his blog.

…but mostly of Australians who I have never met. The flooding in Queensland is amazing in its destruction. I have read reports and have been keeping up as best I can but nothing brings it home quite like this video that I found on Pam Holland's blog:

Australians are truly amazing people and once it dries out I'm sure they will overcome this disaster. Until then, my thoughts are with you. And, to the people who shot that video: I hope the water did not get to your car in the front of that building!

As I type this I'm hearing that the winter weather is going to be much worse on our east coast. To all of you who end up snowed in, I hope you stay warm and dry and that you have some applique to keep you busy.

I saw this on Design Sponge: Luke Aleckson made snowshoes from rigid plastic bread trays in 2005. You can see his post here on Printeresting.

When I posted about the snow in north Texas yesterday, I hadn't watched the news for a few days. Who knew the east coast was snowed under!? Not me. Anyway, for those of you who still have snow (ours is gone) this is an interesting idea…

By now many of you have gotten our latest eNewsletter announcing our new fabric collection, Daisies & Dots. If you're not on the newsletter list, be sure to visit our home page and jump from there to see what's new. There's a new pincushion video, there is a new free pattern, there's all sorts of fun stuff!

In other news, it snowed in north Texas yesterday! Steve did not jump in the pool. His plan is to jump in at least once a month and he's already been in twice since January 1. It may be the end of February before he braves the cold water again. Those of you who live where it snows a lot will laugh, but this snowfall has shut down most of north Texas, at least for Monday morning. Yet another excuse not to go to the gym.

I am not a wine connoisseur. I'll admit right here that there is a lot of cheap red wine that tastes just dandy to me.

Since there are a lot of inexpensive wines on the shelf I often resort to buying wine by how cute the label is. Friends (thank you, Carol and David!) gave us this bottle of Bubo.

The label makes me want to draw! And I love the shade of green on the foil/plastic around the top of the bottle. Wouldn't that be pretty in fabric?

And, because enquiring minds might want to know, Bubo is tasty!

See a close-up of the label below. I may have to begin soaking off and saving the best labels!

Some years ago I organized our good family photos into albums. I am not by nature a scrapbooker so my albums are pretty plain. They live in a cabinet and I rarely think of them. However, on Saturday, Jeff’s last day here, I pulled out the albums and we had a really good time going over them. Here are a few:

That’s my mom holding me in 1956! As I was filling in this sort of detail, I realized that I should have written a lot of it IN THE ALBUM! I can see I’m going to have to go back and do that.

These are my grandparents, Mabel and Dan Eckroat, on their honeymoon. They travelled often in their lives.

This is a Christmas picture with my dad, his sister, Helen, and my grandparents. I remember most of that furniture.

Here’s Jeff when he was 6 or 7. He was on a hike with Steve and Christopher. He has his tough guy face on!

And that’s Jeff on the right, sailing in Boston harbor. We took him for a week of sailing lessons when he was in high school instead of him going on the class trip to Europe that he had no interest in.

You know what else I realized on Saturday? I quit printing pictures just as our grandchildren came on the scene. I have lots of digital images but really, it’s not the same. I’m going to have to bite the bullet and make some more albums. I may have them printed in books (I know I can do that) or not. Either way, I have a new thing on the to do list.