A Very Busy Week

This week was totally busy. I wasn't hardly home at all! A few months ago a friend of ours, who is the chaplain for the county jail in a neighboring county, asked us to come do music for a revival he was holding at the jail. He had asked an other pastor friend to preach. We didn't know what the schedule would be we only knew what time we were supposed to be there for the first service. We had to leave home about 10:30 so we knew we would be gone most of the day. We only had one service at noon and then we had the afternoon free. My mom, my sisters and I all decided we needed to do some shopping so we headed to some stores for the afternoon. We met back with the pastor's family and the visiting pastor for supper. That evening we had two more services.
Tuesday promised to be even busier - and it was. My dad and I had an appointment in Peru (which is about 25 minutes from our house). We had to be there by 11. We got there before 11 and thankfully we were able to get in quite a bit early since our time was short. We were headed out to the car by 11:08 so we had enough time to get to Kokomo for the service. Wrong! We had a flat tire. It didn't take too much time to change it, but it was still more time than we had. Thankfully a state trooper (we were at the State Police Headquarters) came out to help so it went faster.
When we got on the road we got a call from one of the pastors saying that plans had been changed and we didn't have a service at noon after all. That was wonderful news because we weren't going to make it anyway. Now we had time to go get a new tire. We drove straight to a tire shop left the car and then walked over to get lunch. It didn't take long for the tire to be changed so we still had time before the next service which was at 2:30.
We did more shopping that afternoon while we were waiting for the next services. I actually found something that day. I was looking for some t-shirts and I found one. I wanted more but couldn't find any more so one is OK.
On with my very long story...
Again we all got together for supper and then headed back to the jail for two more services. That night we didn't get home until 11:00. Amanda and I had to leave for Kentucky at 7:00 the next morning! I had gotten mostly packed before I left that morning but I still had some stuff to do.
We got up just before 6:30 the next morning (I never get up any earlier than I have to) and Rhenda was supposed to be here to pick us up at 7:00. We were ready.
I guess maybe I should explain where we were going... Rhenda (our neighbor) asked Amanda and me to go with her to the Quilt Show in Padukah, KY. We of course jumped at the chance even though I don't think I had ever heard of the quilt show before. I had NOOOOO idea that there were as many quilts and quilters in the world as there are! I guess I am getting ahead of my self here... We got to Padukah about 2:30 I think. We went to the quilt museum first. It was amazing. There were some absolutely beautiful quilts there!! I can't even imagine the amount of time and work that went into them. My favorite section was the miniature quilts. They were quilts made to scale - just a really small scale! Some of the pieces of fabric were SO tiny! I can't even imagine trying to work with anything that small!
After the museum we just walked around and went into a few fabric shops. There were so many beautiful fabrics! I was amazed at the whole thing!
Our hotel was over an hour away from Padukah. By the time we ate supper and got to the hotel we were all tired!
The next day we got to the show about 10:00. There were masses of people. When we went to pay we started walking towards the end of the line and we walked, and walked , and walked... We finally reached the end of the line. I was please with how quickly we made it through line. We were only in line for 11 minutes.
And then for the quilts...! Wow! I won't even try to describe them. There were far too many. Many of them were beautiful, some were just impressive because of the skill it took to make them and some were just ugly! I like traditional quilts and there is a trend to make quilts like modern art. They are kind of strange. Some were kind of neat. I will try to post some pictures at some point. Amanda's camera batteries went dead so she couldn't get pictures of all of the quilts.
I had NO idea how long it would take to go through that place. We went through the actual quilt show in a couple of hours then we went out to eat our lunch that we had brought. When we came in I just thought there was one more room to look through before we went onto the next thing. Wrong! Every time we thought that we had reached the end there was more. The building was massive. We walked and walked and walked down the hallway towards the rest of the vendors. There were little building like things inside the building. They had tables and chairs sitting on the roof tops. Along the hallway were room that had little shops in them. I was totally on quilt/fabric overload by the time we got through with that!!
When we left we went to a huge fabric store down there. They had gorgeous fabric. I think I would have enjoyed it a whole lot more if there hadn't been so many people and I hadn't been so tired. It was still a really neat place though. I would love to go back again sometime when it isn't quilt show week. I did buy some beautiful fabric there.
On the way back to the hotel I called my cousin who just lives a little over an hour away from where we were staying and asked if she knew of any good Chinese restaurants. She told us which was her favorite. We went there and it was SO good. We all loved the food. It was a nice place. They had a pretty patio that we sat in to eat. The wind made it a little cool but they put a heater next to our table so it wasn't too bad.
Friday morning my Aunt Sue met us for breakfast while Erin (my cousin) was in class at her college. When we were done we went across the street to yet an other fabric store. Erin finished her classes about 11:00 and came and picked us up. Rhenda wanted to go back to the hotel while we ran our errands. We had to go to the bridal store so I could try on my bridesmaid's dress for Erin's wedding. It fit. Yea! Well, it almost fit. The straps have to be shortened and the bottom has to be cut off four inches and hemmed. I knew we would have to do that because those dresses are made for people who are 5'8". I am only 5'3". We did a few other little things and then met with Rhenda again for lunch. We went to Steak and Shake. We had to go back to the bridal shop to pick up my dress because I talked to Mom and we decided that she could adjust the straps and I already knew we could do the rolled hem. That way we save over $30 having them alter it. I just had to ask exactly how they were going to do the hem. I am picky (and so is Erin) about all the hems matching. I don't like it when some are an inch deep and some are a half an inch, some are hand sown, some by machine, some straight stitched some blind hemmed... You get the point.
Anyway, back to my story.
We had to say good bye to Erin and Aunt Sue after that. They had to do more wedding shopping and we were going to stop by Grandpa's so we could see him, Norma, and Uncle Bob.
The funniest thing happened when we got to Grandpa's house. When we pulled up there was a little Amish girl sitting in a chair beside his barn. I thought "What in the world!" We waved and said "Hi". When we got inside we asked Grandpa what was going on and he said that an Amish family had just moved in next door and their goats had gotten out and had eaten a bunch of Norma's flowers. Grandpa went over to tell them and the mother sent this little girl over to watch the goats until her dad got home to fix the fence. We were very entertained watching her while we sat and talked in the living room. She was hilarious. She would sit in every position imaginable in the chair. At one point she had her head under the arm of the chair and was hanging upside down. She kept running back and forth from one side of the barn to the other because Grandpa had told her to make sure the goats didn't go on the other side. Uncle Bob decided she might like a candy bar so he grabbed one out of the candy dish on the coffee table (Grandpa has always kept a stash of snickers bars one hand) and took it out to her. You should have seen her when he took it to her. I think she had it in her mouth before he had turned around.
We were only able to stay about an hour and a half at Grandpa and Norma's. I wish we could have stayed longer but I am thankful for the time we had!
On the trip home we stopped and got an audio book from Cracker Barrel and listened to it all the way home. It made the trip go faster! We didn't get home until 11:30.
Tonight we went to Peru for a birthday party. One of the ladies in our church is turning 25 tomorrow. We had a nice time with everyone. I had met quite a bit of her family but there were many people I hadn't met. There were lots of kids! She has three kids and she has 3 siblings that are about the ages of her kids and then there were nieces and nephews. Wow! It was kind of funny to watch them when they would go from one room to an other. It was like a train!
I guess that is the end of my VERY long story. Congratulations if you made it all the way through! :)