Needles

Had a good day. Donated blood this morning and found out that, because of previous donations given throughout my college years, I have given a gallon of blood. This, of course, is only the blood collected through what was formerly Stewart Regional Blood Center (and is now Carter BloodCare). I remember doing several of the mobile donations and I think some of those were Red Cross. Either way, I thought that was pretty cool. I’ve set up my email reminder to alert me at the end of February to go back and give again; I’m 1/6th of the way through my goal of donating six times this year!

After donating, we packed up and headed over to Flint to visit with some friends. We never get to see these folks, so it was cool getting time to spend time with all of them. One couple have an older son—he’s ten to my boy’s five—and he’s always been kind of impatient with Harrison. This time, though, the boys played and I think they’re finally getting near enough in age and capability that they can kind of be friends, which I thought was cool since we like the parents so much. The other couple have a girl who is about a year older than Laura and the two babies really seemed to enjoy each other’s company. They did that ‘I’m playing near you but not necessarily with you’ thing and occasionally one would look over at the other one and decide to go visit and see what was up. Margaret really enjoyed giving Laura her bottle and basically treating her like she was a giant, live baby doll, which was really cute. We, of course, like this couple a lot, too, so it’s cool that we all got to hang out and be families together.

Now I’m working on Laura’s dress, hoping to get it done before too long. I’ve got the bodice pretty much done and hopefully the skirt shouldn’t take too long. I wish I had pink serger thread because the white is kind of showing up a little, but in the grand scheme of things, I guess it’s not really that big a deal. Maybe I’ll put some ribbon or something along the seams that have the serger thread showing. I don’t know—I’ll wing it when I get to that part.