Forty years ago today, I gave birth to my favorite son, Mark. When Stephanie got married, she made my life easy, by marrying someone with the same birthday!!

You can see that Mark started out as a hunk and has never changed. Mark is a landscape designer in San Francisco. He does remarkable work, always coming up with a design to suit the home and the owners. One of the things I will miss about our home here is all the wonderful work that he has done for us. Mark is a much loved person by everyone who knows him. He is generally happy and loving. Our dog, Maggie, goes nuts every time he comes to visit. He has endured some hard knocks in life – but he always seems to bounce back. Mark, Dad and I love you very much and are looking forward to celebrating with you next week-end.

The reason Mark is not here to celebrate his birthday is that he is with Jack, Stephanie, Mia, Milo and Jaime because he likes to celebrate with his bother-in-law. This is Jack with Steph and Mia, when she was a baby.

We often say that one of the best things about our six years in North Carolina was having Jack come in to our family. He is an architect, fabulous husband to Stephanie and the greatest Dad in the world to Mia and Milo. One thing I love about Jack is his love of puns, puzzles of all kinds and playing Scrabble (and someday, I am going to beat him!) Happy birthday, Jack! We love you, too, and look forward to spending more time with you and the family.

Well, it isn’t really all about the two guys. I wanted to share some wonderful liturgical textiles with you. Today is the first Sunday in Lent and at our church, we celebrated mass in the parish hall with these wonderful liturgical hangings. The images are painted on a burlap type fabric. It really was beautiful and serene.

Today was our last Sunday at Incarnation and it was a bittersweet time. Yesterday, I stayed in bed all day as I caught one of those airline colds. I’m feeling better today and even got a small travel poster art quilt almost finished. It is for the Quilt Art challenge. I know I should be packing, but I needed some creative time. I’ll show it when I get the quilting done.