Thank you thank you

Thank you for all the comments of well wishes! They mean a lot to me! I promise to be good and keep most of the wedding details off here, except the cross stitch related parts, but I thought I should share the big news.

I didn't talk about what happened the rest of our vacation. My fingers were kinda flippy on Monday--still getting used to the weight of the ring, LOL.

The rest of our trip was lovely. The weather got much better. Sunday we went into Ocean City and walked the boardwalk. We couldn't leave without a tub of Fisher's Popcorn, could we? Plus, my lovely husband to be was jonesing for a sports fix. Our other team, based on the fact that we live not far from their training camp, and we both loathe the Redskins (as all good Dallas fans do), is the Baltimore Ravens, and they were playing, so he wanted to have lunch at a place with a TV. I, of course, had to go to Salty Yarns. It really is a lovely shop. They had a gorgeous display of fall things in the big picture window in the rear of the store. I was good, though. I only bought a few charts that I hadn't seen before, Carousel Charts pendant design for my secret sister, and the Ornament issue.

And I have pored over that issue. It's a good one, at least to me it seems like it is. I have already picked about 20 ornaments to stitch. ANNNNDDDD, I sat my little butt down and read how to actually properly finish an ornament. No surprise . . . I haven't been doing it right. Instead of attaching the fabric to two pieces of foamcore and then glueing that together, I was supposed to sew the front and back together, shove the piece of foamcore in there and sew it closed. Is my face ever red. No wonder my ornaments look so bad. I am so sorry if anyone reading has ever been an exchange partner of mine and got one of my poorly constructed ornaments.

We went back to the campground and spent the evening vegging. HTB asked if I was hungry (I just realized how often we ate this weekend, we were shoving food in our mouths every couple hours, LOL. How will I ever be a slim bride at this rate?) and I asked him to hold off. Well, these cute little Sika deer came walking through the campsite. One little doe was so curious. She walked right up to me. I sat very quietly and very still and she was probably two inches from my hands, so close I could feel her breath on my fingers. A very cool experience, another one that we will keep in our hearts' memories, not in a photo album. It was amazing how many animals visited us while we were there. HTB couldn't believe it. The practical side of me says they were just on their way from here to there, my fanciful side thinks maybe they wanted to give their blessing to us. It's a nice thought, anyway.

It was hard to leave again. We promised to come back every year. Hopefully, one day, we'll bring our children to teach them about the place their parents loved separately from childhood, and where we fell in love as adults and where we vowed to make a go as a family. That would be nice.

Of course we loaded up on good Eastern Shore produce--peaches, nectarines, melons, apples--on the way back. We've had to resort to Safeway produce lately, which is very disappointing, so it was a pleasure to stand over the sink last night and eat a good watermelon.

And now . . . I'm in a stitching funk. I have probably put in 100 stitches since we've been home. I just can't settle in to work on things. I think I did 15 stitches on vacation, but not any more than that. So that means I haven't done much of anything since last Wednesday. I think HTB is starting to worry--he can't believe it's been this long without stitching for me. I know I'll get back into it, I have to, I have ornaments to make for Halloween, but I'm still in a whirling hazy daze right now. Perhaps stitching will bring me back into focus. I'm going to try it today.