Home Again

I'm back! (Although you didn't even know I was away). We were in Orlando for five days to attend the wedding of a very good friend and to get in a short vacation before we start the work of moving our children to various places in August. We enjoyed strolling around Lake Eola in Orlando, wandering on Park Avenue in Winter Park, and eating dinner at the Millenia Mall.


We spent one day at Universal since my daughter wanted to see the new Harry Potter area. I am so not a rollercoaster person which is one of the two reasons my family has never visited Disney World. (The other reason is that when they were younger, my kids were not good at waiting in line.) But I was brave and went on the Dueling Dragons ride which turned me upside down a time or two. I kept telling myself that I had been through childbirth three times and really, how much worse could a rollercoaster ride be. My daughter is an amusement park veteran and advised me to sit on my sandals so I wouldn't lose them during the ride--who knew?? I was white-knuckled the entire time (all of three minutes??) and it took about five minutes for my heart rate to return to normal, but I survived. The Harry Potter ride inside Hogwarts is very cool. I'm sure we weren't more than three or four feet off the ground at any time so I felt safer. It was like an Imax movie on steroids since we really were flying with Harry and getting "venom" spit on us from spiders. Wish I could have talked my family into standing in line to go on the ride again.


We also spent a day in St. Augustine since I feel I'm not a responsible parent if I don't drag my children to some historical place or another when we're on vacation. It would have been nice to have more time to spend in St. Augustine or to have gone when it was cooler since there are several museums that looked interesting. We chose to visit the Fountain of Youth site and got to drink some of the water that Ponce de Leon thought would keep him young. It has a lot of minerals in it, including sulphur which, of course, gives it a distinctive odor. We also took the trolley tour which gave a good overview of the area, but I wish that we had had time to see Flagler College which has a number of Tiffany windows. That, and the quilt shop we drove by on the tour.


The wedding was lovely and the bride was gorgeous. The couple got married on the 6th anniversary of their first date--in his toast, the best man questioned why they couldn't have started dating in January instead of July since the air conditioning failed just as we were heading into the reception. It got fixed but not before I lost approximately five pounds in water weight.


During some time relaxing in our hotel room, I listened to podcasts from Quilting for the Rest of Us which I discovered through Denise's blog and finished stitching Bloom. It's stitched on 19 count antique ivory cork linen with Watercolours. Very fun to do and very fast to stitch. I'll be turning it into a pillow sometime soon, I think. The "Doubles" part of the chart is that crossstitch chart is accompanied by directions for doing the design in wool applique. Since this will appeal to those of you who come to look at my quilts and those who stitch, and since it's my 100th post, I'll be giving this chart away to anyone who leaves a comment by midnight on August 8. (Please don't post this giveaway on other blogs.)