Only one more day before we officially begin retreating -- can't wait! Tomorrow we'll head up to Crystal Lake to a great OLD quilt shop, the kind with wooden floors & 15 foot ceilings. We'll meet up with our friend Lynn for lunch, then wander the little shops in town for a bit before heading back here to the grocery for supplies for the week's lunches & breakfasts. I'll cook some spicy sesame noodles for Patty's & my dinner (her DH will be playing softball) & then I can get some more cutting done on my balloon quilt. Tuesday morning, Verna arrives! Woo hoo!!! Terry will join us, depending on her MIL's situation, & we'll be off & running. Dinner will be at Cheesecake Factory, then we'll head to guild (our local, Sarah's Grove Quilters Circle) for a program on maintaing our sewing machines. With Verna & me in attendance, the total of people there will jump to about 25!
Wednesday we'll be making a last pilgrimmage to our old favorite, Calico in Racine, WI. It'll be the last time we'll get to wander through that darling old house, visit with Kathy, Jane & Linda, & get some great deals as they close down their store. sigh. We'll stop at the Jelly Belly factory store on the way home. Goodie! We will have started our crockpot salsa chicken before we left home, so it will be waiting for us on our return. Thursday, it will be all sewing, all the time. Ditto for Friday, I'm thinking. Thursday night we'll head over to Lou Malnati's for some of their individual deep dish pizzas & some fabulous Lou's salad with gorgonzola dressing. Friday's dinner will be carried in by Patty's DH from Portillo's -- I'll be having their wonderful fruit & chicken salad with poppyseed dressing. SO yummy! Saturday morning, Verna will head back to IN. That night, my DH & I will join Patty & hers in meeting our couples gourmet group for dinner at the Ram. I expect lots of hugs & laughter all week. Are you jealous yet? Well, why not?!?!? I look forward to this week all year long & we do have a great time. It's exhausting, & sometimes I don't even get much done, but the "fellowship" as my friend, Mary, says, is soul-satisfying & feeds me for the next 12 months.
I promise, I'll start posting pictures on Tuesday. I did quite a bit of sewing today & got the top of my 13 Colonies put together. I'll be looking for a border & back for it tomorrow. Happy, happy, joy, joy!

Rather than aggravate the repetetive motion injury damage I did to my shoulder, with all the tiny square trimming I did on Sunday & again yesterday, I decided to get some of the magazine quilt patterns into page protectors. Eventually I'll get them sorted into binders so they'll all be easier to locate when I want a new project. Looking at the patterns as I put them into the page protectors was really satisfying -- almost like going shopping, if you can believe that. So many pretty quilts; so many fun projects ahead! Nice.
As I headed down to Faith's for a haircut this morning, the Plowboys sign jumped out at me: Asparagus 99 cents! Woo hoo! After a quick stop at Ralph's (for which we'll now get 10 cents/gallon off on the next fill-up!), I headed for Plowboys & got some oranges & lemons to go with my asparagus. This is such a season of promise, & the strawberries & asparagus are just the beginning of the wonderful warm-weather bounty of SoCal. It just makes me happy thinking about it!