Today some stitching pictures.

The Michigan area stitchers started our Patricia Ann Designs SAL this weekend. It's the third week of every month and I started it at the GTG at Delphine's house on Saturday. Even though I was there the entire day I didn't' get much done:



The design is called "Twilight Star" and I had a hard time working with the 4 strands of BF. Nasty stuff on it's own, put 4 strands together and it's a pain.

I would have gotten more done if I hadn't talked, laughed, and ate so much, but it was really a lot of fun!

Here is my latest progress picture of my Elf Fairy:



I work on her mostly in the afternoon's while the boys are in school and with so many days off and 1/2 days so far this month she hasn't had a lot of time.

Here is my second ornament of the month:



It's a Lori Birmingham design and was meant to go along with 2 other Snowmen and done on banding to hang on a a bellpull but I decided to do them individually. I got the pattern/charms in a grab bag and I suspected that it had been opened and I think I am right because some of the "special" stitching instructions were missing. I had to use the model picture and guess on some of the backstitching colors and how many strands to do his scarf with. I think he turned out nice though! You can't tell from the picture but there is BF with the white and he's kind of sparkly too. I think most of my ornaments will be snowmen this year. I just love them so I declared 2006 the year of the "Snowman". I have two more of the Lori Birmingham's plus a cute Cooler Design studio freebie. I'll have to hunt down a few more to complete one for every month of the year.

Here is my big goal for the 2006...To finish this "Sapphire Celtic Cross" by Mike Vickery:



I'd like to give it to my MIL for Christmas this year. It's not a hard design and it has such wonderful colors in it but it's filled with 1/4 stitches and what feels like miles of BS. Still I'm determined to finish it and my goal is to be done by October so I have time for framing. It should be easy if I stay focused(snicker)

DH and I have had a kind of rough month. We've been doing a lot of fighting which is unusual for us. In fact we had one of our biggest fights of our marriage. It got so heated that I asked him to leave, and he did, and spent the night on his moms couch. We've done some patching up from there but it's still so frustrating that he doesn't hear me until I'm really, really mad.

The money situation doesn't help I'm sure. We are still struggling and it didn't help that we had major problems with our car. The water pump went one morning while DH was on the way to work. He had to have a tow and along with that there was a bunch of other stuff that had to be done. We were without a car for about 4 days(which is hard) and it was a lot more money than we had at the moment. My MIL was awesome though and stepped in and paid for the car repairs and told us to pay us back when we could. It's hard to take money from family but I don't know what we would of done without her help.

I try to make myself feel better by reminding myself that in 17 years of being together this is only the 3rd time we've asked for help and it's been almost 10 years since the last time we needed help so I guess it's not to bad...Still don't like it. I have to say that DH handled it really well. He didn't call me until he was already at work after his brother was kind enough to pick him up. He had already worked out how to get to work while the car was being repaired and had already talked to his mom about some financial help. By the time I heard about it, it was all worked out. He never did tell me the final total, I have a ballpark idea but he just told me it was handled. I'm glad he did that because if I knew the exact amount it would drive me crazy with worry.

The last major hurdle is tax time. With collecting unemployment I'm worried that we may end up owing uncle sam. He is not the kindest of creditors! We have the W-2's so I suspect we will do the taxes this weekend. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed.

It could be worse, we still have a roof over a head, money for food and while we keep the temp pretty low in the house it is warmer than a box. We just have to keep plugging away and we will eventually just make our way out of it.

Report cards for both boys come home sometime this week. I'm looking forward to seeing what Donovan's teacher has to say this time around. She was so positive on his last one and had only good things to say at the parent conferences. He seems to be doing excellent in reading and spelling. Every week they are given 20 spelling words to learn. During the week they practice them by writing sentences so he is doing awesome with sentence structure. On Friday's they are tested on 15 of the words and his last 5 tests have been 100%(before that he never missed more than 2 words). His reading is great, even if he still doesn't really like to do it(which is frustrating since I'm such an avid reader and he sees both DH and I reading on almost a daily basis). He is still a bit shaky in math, still doesn't always understand money but he's willing to try.

I'm looking forward to hearing from the speech therapist and how she feels G is progressing. He seems to be doing better to us and it seems like more people are understanding him. He loves going and seeing her. They seem to play a lot of games which G loves and he says she likes to hear his stories. I worried that he would not like it but so far it's "fun" for him and seems to be helping.