Tropical Storm Eagle makes an Impression

Life was moving at a brisk pace that spring of 2015.  Being a 4 sport family always keeps us busily swimming along.  On top of that our daughter was graduating that year, keeping us with our head just barely above water.  Since we hadn't drowned yet, though, we thought, 'what a great time to start an Eagle Scout Project.'  Of course, it had actually been started in February.  The problem was we couldn't get ahold of the guy in charge to give us the thumbs up on turning up the dirt and creating gardens on our base.  It turns out he had a very good reason for not answer repeated attempts to get a hold of him.  He had died.  Yep, died!  Of course he was brought back to life and given a quadruple bypass and was recovering in a hospital, but that was none of our business, so nobody would tell us that.  They just kept telling me to leave messages, and try calling and then try coming by and then email and then come by and so on.  Sam and I made so many attempts to get ahold of the guy that we almost gave up in despair. Finally someone told us that he would be back the next day.  We arrived and asked about creating gardens for Sam's Eagle scout project.  It was now the beginning of May.  The waves were already thrashing us, but we persisted, now that we had put so much effort into it.  And to our amazement he readily agreed, took us out soon after to see the plots, and to see what supplies he could give us.

We settled on a date and got to work on the proposal. 

That is where things got all kinds of crazy!  Pretty soon we were threatened with drowning.  If we didn't get a garden going by the end of May there was no point in it.  We only had 2 weeks to do that in and nobody seemed to be in a hurry to help us except  the base contractor who was ready and willing to supply everything immediately.  Finally desperate calls and meetings took place in an effort to save us, but it seemed all would be lost.  We had already advertised that there would be community gardens and had people signed up for plots.  We were going to have to put these gardens in one way or another, but it might not count for anything towards an Eagle.  I wrung my hands up until Wednesday the 20th, fearing all was lost, when suddenly I got a call that help was on the way, just hold out a little longer.  And then miraculously it came, Roger Carbajal had swooped in and made the rescue.  The project was a go.  The day of the project went smoothly with lots of helpers

and we now have two beautiful community gardens that serve our base.

But as you can imagine with all that,

a visit from Mom and Dad, 

 Frühlingsfest (spring festival)

 Hohenzollern Castle

making two quilts,

 Hand binding- first time for that!

 T-shirt quilt- my first time making such a thing.

I combined two images I saw for quilts to make this one up in my head.  I hand quilted it- yep, first time hand quilting too!

and doing graduation announcements

all at the same time, emotions, tension and exhaustion was running high.  At times like those, I am so grateful for thoughtful friends!  Dear Candace Adair came to my rescue and brought dinner for the family one day, just because!

For just a tropical storm there seemed a lot of rescue work going on, don't you think? We just might need to upgrade this storm!