Every year, once a year, my neighborhood has a block party. This is the ninth consecutive year and we have watched our children grow from toddlers to college and post graduate students. We were one of the first homes in the neighborhood and have been here 15 years, almost 16. Our daughter was only four when we moved in and at the first block party our son was three; where does the time go? Our gathering begins about 3:00 p.m. and we go until whenever; we used to close off our street, which is a cul-de-sac, but now that we don't play games with little kids in the street any more, we gather on the lawns between two neighbors. We have done it all though, ice cream truck and a clown for the little ones to games and a DJ. Now, the kids are older and as much as we don't think we have aged, we also are nine years older. The best party is we all get together and talk and talk and talk and all get along. We have about 20 families gathering together and we have a fantastic caterer who has been with us since the first year! We already have talked about doing something big for the 10th year next year!
As we were sitting outside with the chimineas roaring and the sky dark, someone noticed a bright light coming down from the sky like a flashlight, then it disapaited....it was truly something no one had ever seen anything like it in their lives and it was a little bit eerie. Needless to say, the alien stories started to run rampant and the jokes began with, "did you count everyone to see if anyone is missing." We kept our eyes to the sky the rest of the night always glancing upwards to see if light was shining down to us again.
This morning one of our neighbors came around and handed out a cnn.com article about what we saw. http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/09/20/strange.lights/index.html is the link. Below a picture taken from the article on the experimental rocket launched by NASA from Virginia which prompted hundreds of calls from New Jersey to Massachusetts.
This was truly a once in a lifetime experience, and we certainly had our laughs, stories and theories running wild last night. We have also had various animals call our peaceful wooded neighborhood home; right now I saw a bobcat cross in front of my car on my way to work Thursday morning, another neighbor had it on her porch; we have fox, deer, turkeys, and any kind of bird you would like to see.
My brother-in-law had this visitor the other day--you can see his bird feeder laying on the ground. Another neighbor said they saw a moose on their way to work at 6:45 a.m. close to the center of town.
Well, tomorrow I will return with all quilting items--I have a lot--probably will take a few of posts to get through!
I will leave you with one bit of exciting news: at about 4:30 p.m. I had a phone call from The Newtown Quilt Shop--I was the winner of their Shop Hop gift. Each of the 18 shops had a basket worth $150.00. Newtown, however, chose to provide a $150.00 gift card to their shop and I won! I am so excited, I get to go shopping and gather fabric for a couple of projects I want to begin--it really is the best gift of all because I can chose what I wish to buy! Thank you so much Julie from Newtown Quilts for drawing my name!
So until tomorrow, I will say, quiltingly yours,
