What I've been doing....

 Not too much but some progress.

All the original 36 flowering snowball and shoo fly blocks are pieced. Time to dig into the next pile to get to the 49 block total I think this quilt wanted. Stubborn thing! At least the next set are all cut and most are marked for hand piecing.

I've also been adding thread to the cross stitch. 

On tap today - the dog has been walked. Big thanks to the neighbor driving by and warning me of the bear in the area headed our way. We modified our route a bit this morning to avoid it and thankfully did not see him. I have a feeling my Bear dog is about the same size as that bear would be. (just under 90 pounds) Grateful we did not meet up with it! Note to self, bring phone with me, cued up to a loud horn sound.

I'll make breakfast and then we will head over to visit my FIL. Hopefully all the things he requested have arrived for delivery to him. When home, I'm going to sew! I have 4 rows of 15 sewn together for the birds in the air quilt. Time to add another 4 rows. I'm hopeful for more, but will be happy with that amount.

I got a bite on the futon in the front room. I put it and the mattress up for sale again a few weeks ago and someone bought the mattress with the pretty cover. She did not want the futon and said I could relist as she would just bring it to the trash. I said, OK. Relisted it Saturday and got a bite last night. Hope that is out of the house this weekend! I think no rain Saturday, so I'll put a coffee table and an extra tv (that was given to us as MIL thinks we are the place to gift all old things, grrr) out by the end of the driveway with a free sign. We live on a busy road, so they should go fast. 

Saturday should be a quiet day - Emily is gone all day to a game up at FSU with the band. Aidan has a ACT test in the morning and will probably go to lunch with buddies after. He is getting pretty independent so should be fine next year at college. 

Lets see, I asked hubby for ideas for dinner. He listed the ones he liked and since the kids say 'whatever', I went with his ideas!

Monday -(this was my addition) French Dips with baked sweet potato fries. I saw a digital coupon at Publix for $11+ off a beef shoulder in the bag, which was also on sale at 6.99 a pound (was in the $8 range) I had to look up the cut, more beefy flavor than a chuck roast but needs slow cooking. I called and verified then went to the store and got one. A little over 7 pounds came down to $37 after the coupons. Not bad. I did the work to cut off a bunch of the fat and silver skin. One cut went into the crock pot for french dips - and I should have cut it bigger as Emily ate most of it! Another is a 2.25 pound roast that is seal a mealed in the freezer. Another is 2.5 pound of chunks for stew beef. Not bad with the price of things now a days.

Tuesday - hubby requested meatloaf. I had picked up a big bag of russets, so did 4 baked potato and also made mashed potato and a bag of frozen peas with it. Hubby and kids like mashed and peas together. They are weird!

Wednesday - I had chicken fajitas down, but needed to cook up some brussel sprouts. I made 2 meals. Aidan and I like a brussel sprout, butternut squash and bacon dish, while the other 2 like a mexican skillet meal with chicken and minute rice with onion, peppers, corn, salsa and cheese on top. It is quick - takes about 20 minutes to make.

The kids take leftovers for lunches, especially when they like the meals. I'm down to 1 baked potato - I think Aidan was taking those for lunches. 

Tonight he wanted beef stroganoff which I serve over egg noodles. I'll have a salad on the side with it.

Friday, I have fish taco's on the menu, but we will see how many leftovers we have left. Emily is late that day and I think Aidan is as well now that Academic club started. The sponsor asked him to be captain of the Varsity team as he is the geography guy, so will be up on the panel the most for questions. He was quite pleased. 

Wow, this is quite the rambling post! Another update is we got new internet. They came last week and instead of fiber that they said was available (it's not) they have a cable modem. Hmmm. It is 1GB.  They came again on Tuesday and pulled the cable (it took forever for them to get it to the house from the box by the road. Lots of roots!). They got it hooked up inside to the existing cable in the house. Fast, but not as expected. We had DISH at one time and Greg asked if I remembered if we have multiple tv's on it (so we had a splitter). Yup. The guy went up in the attic and pulled that off. Boom, 1GB! Greg already had a mesh network installed in the house (cement walls do not work well with wifi), so he hooked it to that. Much faster and no drops at work for me! We will keep the other for a month in tandem just to make sure the new one is stable. Aidan should be much happier playing his games on the computer - especially his F1 driving one.