Sister, Sister

What a wonderful day we had with Sherry. I did not get as many pictures as I wanted to, and what I got is grainy and blurry, but here it is....

This is Sherry holding Shane and Emerson. Tori (14) is sitting to the left (she is Sherry's granddaughter from her oldest daughter Stephanie).

Here is my nephew David...I wish you could see his face better. He has this Brad Pitt look about him. He is the spitting image of his Dad, Chris, who died in the plane crash.
Here he is with his wife Val. She is as beautiful inside as she is out!Shane was tired and crabby for a big part of the day.Bud and Rachel were very excited to see him. They spent a difficult 6 months helping this little guy get through the addiction stage. There is a special love there.Shane is very tiny, but the drug use has nothing to do with size here. It is a genetic component. There are some effects and some of them are not showing yet, but size is not one of them. Shane is VERY advanced in his fine motor skills. Sherry likens them to that of a raccoon...LOLWe had a dinner of homemade lasagna and white bread fresh from the oven. My mother in love came too and brought the most wonderful German chocolate cake! It was heaven! The softball game was cancelled due to rain, so we stayed in. We also celebrated Rachel's 25th birthday which was last Tuesday, but we had not had opportunity until now. She is a gem of a daughter in law! We are so blessed by her in so many ways.Emerson getting ready to go home and to bed.The rain made it chilly outside!
Cousins......A big sister and her little brother.....What a treat to see Sherry and a small part of her family. She attended her 40th High School Class Reunion while she was here. She was nervous about attending alone, but as soon as she walked into the room she was mobbed by her former classmates, who knew she would be the life of the party as she always was!! They were right! She still lights up an entire room just walking into it!
Sherry and her family are going up north for a while before heading home to Colorado. Next time we will go there.
I took a couple of garden pics yesterday morning....
Here are the tomato plants. Look how tall they are (Zach is exactly 4 ft tall). They are LOADED with green tomatoes!And then there is the "weed". We are keeping it just for the fun of it. It is tall too. The stalk is a bright red color! Kind of a cool looking weed.That is it. I am spending the day in the sewing room working on little baskets. I need to make a trip to another LQS as I have picked over the pastels at the little one near my home. I need very little fabric for one little basket. I wonder if they will sell me a fat 8th?
Have a wonderfully productive day!

Company

Sweetheart's sister Sherry is in town from Colorado. The above pic is Sherry and I in her loft sewing room in Colorado about 9 years ago. Sherry and I have been very close over the years...more like sisters than sisters in law. She has been a spiritual mentor to me and also was the person who started me quilting! You can read about that here. She changed my life in more ways than one!

Sherry lost her husband in a plane crash about 18 years ago. She was with him in the 4 seater piper plane when it crashed. Devastation is too light a word. Since then she has remarried and adopted 2 little boys and lost her husband of 17 years to cancer...instead of re writing it all, you can read Sherry's story here. She is an incredible woman.Her littlest guy is about the tiniest kid I have ever seen. There may be a rare form of dwarfism, but testing is not concluded. He is so sweet! He LOVES Kyle.It was hard to get a good pic of him...he moves A LOT!His name is Shane and he is a big part of our lives. My Rachel cared for him the first 6 months of his life. The state would not let Sherry take him to Colorado until rights were terminated. He has the same womb as Charlotte and Zachary. I was called to "come pick up your baby" almost 3 years ago. I was so freaked out I smoked 3 packs of cigarettes that day!! I have not had one since, so I can thank Shane for me being a non-smoker again! The guilt racked me. How could I NOT go get him? Yet, I had 2 VERY needy children and an adult "child" who needed me. Could I be stretched that thin? I was told the baby was very little and very crack addicted, but he could come "home" the next day. I called Sweetheart who instantly said, "NO". He was not being harsh...we could end up having 6 more kids if we took all her babies. There had to be a family who wanted a baby, right? I called Sherry. Before I could say anything, she told me how Conner (her then 5 year old) got up that morning and said, "I had a dream last night that you got on a plane and went to get my new brother...he has brown hair." Long story short....Sherry got on a plane the next day and came to get her new son. Since the state would not release him to her because she was out of state (she is a biological great aunt to the baby) they wanted to release him to me. Ok, so I KNEW if I did that he would never leave here. Rachel said, "I will take him." So she did. We thought it would be a few weeks, but it turned into 6 months. Sherry came out to Illinois every month for 1 week to bond with the baby and make court appearances. Finally she took her baby home. It was during all of this that her husband became ill with esophageal cancer. He had never smoked a cigarette in his life. He was a computer software designer and lots of this type of cancer is showing up in "computer guys". Now I have always had a twinge of guilt. I could have kept another sibling together (there are 5 and I have numbers 3 and 4). Still I know God had a plan. The first 4 kids all look alike...dark hair, dark eyes (except Charlotte has dark blue eyes). Shaney's brown baby hair turned white blonde and he has light blue eyes and looks JUST like Conner and Sherry! When I saw him the other day, my twinge of guilt lifted. He is exactly where he belongs!!

Today, Sherry, her son David, his beautiful wife Valerie, her granddaughter Tori, and the 2 boys will spend the day with us and go to the softball game to watch Sweetheart and Kyle play. We were unable to celebrate Rachel's birthday, so we will do that today.She went to a concert over the weekend and had a great time. We will have a cake and an early dinner since my son has to be at work at 4pm. It will be a fun day of family!

There will be no time to machine sew, though I did get another row on the basket quilt. The big baskets are a breeze!!!!
I will be able to hand quilt while visiting this afternoon. DeNiece's runner is taking longer than I thought, as I am putting some extra dense quilting on it. Still, I am at the end...just a border to go and it is finished! I will try to take some good pics of Sherry and her family along with Rachel's birthday pics. Have a wonderful Tuesday!!