Great mail day!

I participated in an exchange in one of my yahoo groups and received my exchange package from Rachel today! She stitched a wonderful Bent Creek Patriotic piece for me and framed it! I love the piece and am thrilled to have it as this is the only patriotic piece I have to display for the 4th. I hated to email her to tell her I had received it because I had to tell her the glass she had mounted the stitching on was shattered so I was gonna have to re-mount it on mat board. She had that thing wrapped very very well so I'm really surprised that it was broken. I'm betting at some point on it's journey it ended up underneath some heavy packages and got crushed. I'm still surprised though because she had it wrapped so well. She was telling me a while back that she mounts her stitching on the glass that comes in the frames instead of matboard. She does this so she won't have to cut mat board for it and she doesn't like glass covering her stitched pieces anyway so she'd might as well put the glass to good use :). Luckily I have plenty of mat board on hand so I was able to re-mount it and frame it quickly. I love the red frame she picked out for it! She stitched this piece on 40 ct. fabric. My poor sad eyes would never let me stitch on a count so small...LOL! Besides the wonderful stitched piece she sent me, she also sent me a wonderful kit from M Designs called Checkered Liberty...this is a really great kit! I plan to start it soon...I LOVE the gingham fabric that it came with and am really looking forward to stitching it :). She also sent me a skein of Weeks in Independance Day and Old Glory...really great colors! I especially like the Old Glory :). She also made me a wonderful pair of patriotic earrings! Rachel's in to beading and is very very good at it! I love long earrings and they're perfect! They have a pretty red star on them with 3 blue crystals dangling from them. Thanks so much for such a wonderful package, Rachel! My new framed flag is proudly being displayed in the living room :).

Her package came on a really good day. I've been feeling blah since I got back from Chicago. Mike's been applying for jobs when he has time for a while now. Unfortunately the hiring process for things he's been applying for take a really long time. I really wish it would just be done. I was actually a little depressed to be coming back to Texas after my trip. I've lived here since I was 5 and I'm just ready to go somewhere else. Don't get me wrong, I'd never want to live in Chicago, it's just that I've been to several different places and well....Texas is just Texas to me these days. I'm still hoping that whatever he gets will be close to the ocean. I'd be happy as a pig in slop if I lived near the ocean :). I hated to leave Florida last summer because I love the ocean so much and I hated to leave Chicago because Lake Michigan reminded me of the ocean. Of course all of this feeling blah could totally be related to PMS and I may be all better in a few days...LOL!

We're not going on a vacation together this summer because we're saving up for a big one next summer. Our tentative plan is to go on a cruise. I REALLY want to go on that Disney cruise but it's pretty expensive. I guess it's not so bad to do the 3 or 4 day cruise but when you take in to account that we have to fly in to Orlando it is. After the 23 hour drive from hell to Orlando last summer, that'll NEVER happen again...LOL! I wish Mike could take time off in December! You can cruise really cheap in November and December! Postal employees here (or could be anywhere for that matter, I'm not sure) aren't allowed to take any time off in December. If he could, we could go when the kids are out for winter break. We're hoping to cruise to Mexico I think. Wherever we do decide to cruise to, the plan is to leave from Port Canaveral so we can spend a night on Cocoa Beach again. My heart belongs to the ocean...I hope when we're old we can retire at Cocoa Beach :).

I've got to finish folding the laundry. When Mike gets home from work we're gonna watch Ghost Rider :).