My weekend began Friday at noon when my laptop decided to go on strike at a client site. Their IT person was stumped so I headed home and spent the next 12 hours troubleshooting in hopes of making the client's deadline. At 2:30am I thought I had solved the problem and headed to bed because I had to get up at 6:30am for a half day photo class. In which remarkably I stayed awake. Started to work on client's project Saturday evening only to discover I was still having issues with my design software and finally got a pop-up message telling me to contact the manufacturer. I did that Sunday morning and finally was up and running again. Finished the client's work and headed over to some friend's home for dinner and some relaxation. Got home last night about 10pm and crashed. Today we have our annual Memorial Day block party (at our house). That will go until about 8pm. Then, back in the trenches tomorrow. Jodi-

Linda, it sounds like you will be really busy this weekend - you will be meeting yourself coming and going! Congrats Jackie on the upcoming wedding - good luck picking out a pattern & fabrics. Our big neighborhood garage sale is June 4 & we will be camping the 26th-June 1 so I will be trying to get things organized before & after. Not too much sewing going on here - my mom & MIL are still here (since May 6) and they leave on Monday. I did finish FM quilting a graduation quilt & pillowcase. Mom sewed the binding for me - God bless her! We have church potluck tonight & 2 graduations and neighbors for dinner tomorrow. It's been raining here in CO all month - we were 6" behind in needed rain when the month started and we are ahead now ... seems like we will be in for a wet summer. Sue

Dh and I have lived in our current house for our entire marriage, 17 years. Truthfully, it was being built when we got married, so we lived in an apt for 2 months, then my parents for a month then it was ready. We live on the outskirts of a waterfront tourist town. We were supposed to be here for 3 years. Dh was in the Navy and this was not supposed to be our forever home as we anticipated being transferred by the Navy. However, dh realized the Navy was not meant to be his career as he didn't want to constantly move once we had kids. We wanted to live close to one of our families, but unfortunately, they live on opposite coasts. He is from the San Francisco Bay Area, and I am from the Wash DC area. Since it was the height of the tech boom at the time dh was getting out of the Navy, and we simply could not afford a home in the Silicon Valley, he got a job here, which fortunately is only 25 minutes from my parents. And here we've stayed. It is NOT my dream home. I don't even really like it. It was small when we moved in, and even smaller after having four kids! We looked around at moving to a different home, but absolutely love our neighbors and our community so finding a home that fit our needs was very difficult. We live in a high COL so home prices made it hard to find something that fit our desires while still being affordable. 10 years ago, we added on and while the space has helped, it hasn't changed the fact that our floorplan isn't desirable to us. We live in a waterfront community with very strict building codes, so we worked within that and have maxed out what we can do w/o completely gutting the house and starting over. With four kids in private school and one off to college in four years, I've pretty much resigned myself that we won't be moving anytime soon, nor can we really afford at this point to do any major changes that would help. I am constantly looking at houses for sale in the area, but the only affordable ones are in tract home subdivisions and that's not type of community we desire. So we make do with what we have. And it's not that my house is bad, but it's not set up well for entertaining, something I'd love to do more often, we had to give up our fabulous screened porch when we added on and cannot add another due to space constraints. I miss that terribly. On the bright side, we have wonderful neighbors, live in a waterfront neighborhood so the kids can fish, swim, kayak, ride their bikes freely (community is a peninsula w/no through traffic), etc. My dream is to move into the historic district in our tourist town where we can walk and bike everywhere. We live 5 miles from there now, but not on bike-friendly roads (though dh is an avid biker and rides them, no way my kids can). There are some really fabulous Arts & Crafts cottages, as well as many other architecturally interesting homes that date back to the 1700s. My hope is to move into one of them some day and have that be our forever home, with a second home in another climate. I wish I could love this home and think of it as my forever home, but it is not ideal for aging. We have three floors, with bedrooms all on the third floor as the garage/rec room are "under" the main living level. My parents still live in the house I grew up - they are going on 50 years there. They will stay until it's too much for them as it's perfect for aging, a rancher. All that said, as much as I want to move, the idea of moving is dreadful to me, which is probably one of the reasons I haven't really pushed for it. The thought of trying to keep my home in "show" condition with four kids, a huge dog that sheds, well, not fun. So perhaps a small part of me continues to find something undesirable about any of the houses I'm always looking at. I figure if I'm going to go through the hassle, the house has to be pretty close to what I want! Love all the interesting stories!

Marilyn, are you building a new barn "from scratch"? That's quite a job. Your dinners sound good and I'm sure Jody appreciates them. I am going to make your cake with the candied fruit in it this year for sure. I bought the fruit quite a while ago. Hope it's still good, although I can't see how it could go bad. Raven, LOL! Harry used to call his lab work visiting the vampires, too. That shrimp po-boy sure sounds yummy. Shirley, I think asked you about your sisters before--I have 5 also. I have one brother, too. Yeah, I'm not big on sauerkraut, but that's just me. Alisande, the recipe sounds good and the picture looks good. Did you like it? I think I'd like it on rice better than mashed potatoes.