Hope those of you in the US are enjoying your holiday weekend! The kids are preparing to go back to school on Wednesday (yippee!) and we're getting our last swims in at the town pool. Here's a photo of DH with Mackenzie and Logan as we were leaving yesterday.

I haven't had a chance to do ANYTHING quilt-related, so I'm going through a bit of withdrawal right now. On Saturday, we went to a barbeque at my Mom's house and I had a chance to catch up with my brothers and sisters. Two of my siblings have needed to visit the emergency room in recent weeks because of incidents involving alcohol. My brother Erik was trying to break up a fight at a bar when he fell and broke his leg - and needed surgery to repair it, which cost a whopping $12,000. His out-of-pocket expense for that one will be $3,000. And my sister Sara was in a car during a fight between a friend and the girl's boyfriend. Well, the boyfriend was drunk and wound up slamming the car door in anger - and caught Sara's ear in it. She needed stitches to close up the wound. I just don't understand why my siblings need to have alcohol to have a good time. At least my kids are seeing for themselves the harmful effects of abusing alcohol.

Well, the plan for today is to (1) finish shopping for school supplies/clothes, (2) swim for a little while, and (3) cut out my Christmas Patches Tablecloth. Here's a photo of one that I saw at the retreat back in 2003. (My apologies to whoever's butt I caught in the picture!) I would like to have all 100 of the hourglass blocks pieced before I leave, so that I can just worry about sewing the rows during class time. I was able to find ALL of the original fabrics, and have been looking forward to sewing this one for a long time :) I'll report my progress tomorrow...