to ohio memaw and pawpaw go

Yes, it's true - Memaw and PawPaw are moving to Ohio on Friday. PawPaw got a job offer/promotion to move to Ohio and he accepted and now come Friday they will no longer live ten minutes away from us. I haven't told Britton much, mainly because her long-term memory can't be counted on for details, and I don't want to keep explaining it to her and making her upset. She's older now, and understands when the hub goes on a trip. But the problem? She also knows that when the hub is on a trip he's coming back home. And they aren't.

It's not the first time we haven't lived near family. In fact, since the hub and I went to law school, we've never lived near family, save the three months we lived in Virginia Beach. When we had Britton, we were at best a four hour plane ride from anyone related to either of us. And it was hard. Because it doesn't matter how often family calls, or how many friends you have (we had so few in Oklahoma it was embarrassing), having family around is just different.

In true Carrie fashion (yes, I did just pull out a third person!), I made Memaw a quilt. She had shown up at my house months ago with some tan fat quarters and no plan on what to make with them. So she handed them to me to make something. I was contemplating an Ohio Stars quilt pattern (oh, the serendipity), but instead went with the Swoon quilt. The pattern looks like this (linked up here):



But I don't buy patterns so I pulled out my graph paper and figured out the pattern of just one block. And made it big.



Sadie helped out too....



Love the two sets of legs behind the quilt...



Who's Mommy's quilt holder helper? Britton!



I used all the tans as mosaic blocks within the pattern. It just worked.



Come Friday I will have lost my quilting buddy! Memaw taught me to quilt and has been my sounding board ever since. We are going to miss them but I also know that Ohio will be a new fun adventure. The hub goes there often for business and has always told me how beautiful the region is, even before we knew they were moving. And Sadie was born in Ohio, so we've got the family connection, you know? We will still visit each other, but we all know it won't be the same. But such is life - it goes on, whether you want it to or not.