Christmas 2012 and a blog hop ...

... I hope everyone had a good Christmas?  I'm sorry I have been a bit quiet, but read on, and you might understand why.

My Christmas went like this:

Sunday 23 December: my sister arrives for the holiday and is ill overnight
Monday 24 December: Mr Fixit not feeling brilliant all day.  Chatterbox (DGS2) has also been quite poorly with a chest infection.  Cos of all the unwell-ness, we cancelled our traditional family takeaway dinner that evening.
Tuesday 25 December: Mr Fixit, my sister and Chatterbox all felt well enough that we could go out for Christmas lunch.  Chatterbox didn't eat anything and gradually felt worse as the day went on. My father started to feel unwell.
Wednesday 26 December: Father felt better and we went out for lunch.  My sister started to feel ill again (different illness to Christmas Eve). Father had a funny turn in the night.
Thursday 27 December: Sister feeling better and ready to go home.  Her youngest son came up to collect her as arranged.  They got everything in the car, which promptly broke!  Steering gone.  Call the AA.  Car needs to go to a garage to have the broken widget and thingy fixed.  Call sister's oldest son, who left work early, drove for nearly 3 hours to collect his mother and brother.  He arrived, we loaded his car, and off they went.  Poor K, the driver, had another 3 hour drive to get them home, so they arrived about 11pm and he had to be at work at 6am the next day.
Friday 28th December: Father feeling better so came in for lunch. Garage arrived to take away the broken car.
Saturday 29 December:  Mr Fixit and I wandered round in a bit of a daze, trying to get ready for son and family to arrive tomorrow.
Sunday 30 December: son is on his way, and we're doing nothing!

On a completely different note, Mrs Pickles is hosting a Quilting Secrets blog hop which starts today. She has invited six of us to share some quilting secrets with everyone.  The secrets might be some tips on technique, organisation, anything really that we think might help others, specially those who are fairly new to quilting.

The hostesses are as follows:
31 December: Christine from Quilt Monster Closet
01 January: Linda from Buzzing and Bumbling
02 January: Barbara from Cat Patches
03 January: Melissa from Sew BitterSweet Designs
04 January: Sharon from Vrooman's Quilts
05 January: Me
06 January: our hostess herself, Mrs Pickles from Mrs Pickles Garden

I know that there will be a great giveaway at each stop during the week.  Be warned though, these giveaways will each only last for 24 hours. Also, if you post about the hop, with the button (you can go here to get the code) and let Mrs Pickles know, you might win a special little something from her.