It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week
with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

It’s been a busy few days, and I was thinking of skipping FFF this week. But then several favorites came to mind.

1. A sweet gesture. When we get Chinese take-out, we look at the fortune cookie messages just for fun. When my husband opened his, he said, “Nope, too late. She’s already here,” and then laid this in front of me.

2. Easy meals. I keep a couple of frozen meals or Hamburger Helper on hand for days when dinnertime comes and I need something simple, quick, and easy. I forgot a couple of those things until I went to get something else out of the freezer, so it was a nice surprise and a relief for this week.

3. Ticking off a to-do list. I have rather a sizeable one today, but got the idea (thank you, Lord!) to race through several of the smaller things on the list first thing this morning. That makes me feel more optimistic about the rest of it.

4. Anticipation. And why all this busyness and to-do lists? My oldest son is coming for a visit! I know he won’t care if everything on my list gets done—he’s seen the house at it’s worst and has helped me clean it for company in the past. But you know how it is. Suddenly you want spring cleaning done as well as half a dozen projects that have been sitting on the back burner. Still, I know it’s better to leave some things undone than to be frenzied or exhausted when he gets here. I have my list divided into musts and hope-tos. And it wouldn’t be a disaster if even some of the musts aren’t done, especially since I did the bathrooms yesterday. 🙂

5. One project done. I had a couple of Scripture verses I wanted to incorporate into the guest room decorating. I’m working on a beachy/coastal theme in there. I found several ideas on Pinterest and Etsy and even got a couple of inexpensive printable downloads on Etsy. But they ended up looking green, when I preferred blue—and I don’t know how to adjust the coloring. So then I looked up free wave clip art and made my own. Even these are greener than I want, but they’ll do. (Sorry for the shadow.)

Now I just need to get them hung up.

Time to get back at it—hope you are having a good week!

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week
with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

It has been a good week for staying indoors. Here are some highlights from the beginning of August:

1. Dinner out and free pie. I had plans to meet a friend for lunch at O’Charley’s for their free pie Wednesday. Unfortunately, my friend texted me the day before that she was sick. I was sad that she wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t get together. And I had my taste buds all set for that pie. So I asked my husband if he wanted to take his wife out for dinner and pie, and he indulged me.

2. Dinners and a celebration. My and my son daughter-in-law invited us to their place Sunday night for enchiladas. Then yesterday she texted me to say she could bring over dinner Thursday night. I was a little surprised, since they had just made dinner for us so recently. Come to find out, the meal was a celebration of my 15th blogging anniversary, along with pink roses and a sweet card.

3. Lunch take-out. I didn’t intend to make my faves all about food this week, but not having to cook is always a favorite. There’s an Asian restaurant we like, but it’s a little too far out for takeout generally. However, it’s not far from our church, so we swung by there after the Sunday morning service to get lunch and bring it home.

4. An overdue haircut. The stylists at the place I go have always done an okay job, but I finally found one who does the layering the way I like it best.

5. A little project. I saw this idea of shells and fairy lights in a Mason jar, but when I saw this lantern in Hobby Lobby, I loved it. Thankfully it was half off and I had a gift card. I had a container of potpourri with shells and little blue balls and flowers that I filled the lantern with.

Bonus: An inspirational movie. I mentioned in my book review for Unconditional by Eva Marie Everson that I had watched the movie the book was based on. Jim came in for the last part of it. I thought it was very good, all the more so for being based on true events.

How was your first week of August?

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week
with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

Not just another week, but another month is coming to an end. It’s time to stop for a few minutes and appreciate the good things of the week.

1. Watching the Olympic opening ceremonies with the family. I made spaghetti, Mittu made Oreo cupcakes. We didn’t realize Team USA wouldn’t be coming into the stadium until near the end, so everyone here had to go before that happened. But it was a fun evening.

2. Olympic gymnastics. I’m not much of a sports fan, but I do like watching gymnastics in the summer Olympics and figure skating in the winter. I’ve caught a couple of the swim meets as well.

3. The retirement home service our church does once a month has occurred often enough now that some of the residents recognize us. The ones who come out regularly seem a cheerful bunch. The lady Jim and I have talked with the most wasn’t there this time. We were told her leg was hurting to the point of being unable to walk (she had a hip replacement after a bad fall a few years ago). An aide offered to take us to her room, but her son was with her and we didn’t want to intrude. I sent her a card this week and ordered a book for her—when it comes in I’ll see if I can go over and visit her in her room.

4. My patient husband hung a big piece of art work and a couple of shelves in our new guest room on Saturday. I can handle a hammer and nail, but I appreciate his help with things that need more than that.

5. Jeopardy! episodes on YouTube. Jeopardy! has had a series of guest hosts for the last several months since Alex Trebek passed away. The one I was most looking forward to, Levar Burton, is hosting this week. But our local station isn’t showing this week’s episodes due to the Olympic Zone program. The Jeopardy! web site seems to only have old episodes. I was pretty bummed about not being able to see them until someone suggested they might be on YouTube. And they were, at least the first couple! I hope they will all be eventually.

Anything interesting happen for you this week?

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week
with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

The days go by so quickly, we often forget what happened even a day before. That’s one reason I love the Friday’s Fave Five. I appreciate this pause in the week to ponder and remember the good things God has allowed, lest we not only forget them, but forget to thank Him.

1. A good performance review for my youngest son. Mamas always like to hear good things about their children, no matter what age. 🙂 But this was especially gratifying since a previous review didn’t point out anything being done wrong, but mentioned “not stepping up” without really defining what was meant. Apparently that has been rectified now. They told him he was one of their top performers.

2. Jason’s birthday. A fun time to gather as a family (online with our oldest) and celebrate our middle son. Mittu made a wonderful S’mores cake.

I didn’t realize Timothy was partly in the picture—didn’t mean to cut him off! I think Mittu took a better one with Jason and Timothy behind the cake, but I haven’t seen it yet.

3. Shared produce. A neighbor gave us some squash, zucchini, and bell peppers from her garden.

4. A successful new recipe. Several weeks ago, the store had “breakfast steaks” on sale. I am not sure what that designation means, except that the steak slices were very thin. We don’t often have steak, but I couldn’t pass them up at these prices. I put them in the freezer until this week. I used the aforementioned bell peppers to make this version of pepper steak. It was very good!

5. IT techs in the family. I’ve been having trouble with my computer going dark and then coming back on with a notice about “display driver AMD stopped responding but recovered.” It’s been happening so often, it’s hard to get anything done. A few times it didn’t come back on until we restarted the computer. My husband consulted with my oldest son, took the computer apart, blew the dust out, and tried a couple of other measures like replacing a cable. They think it might be the video card, so one is on order. I’m thankful I have people in the family to deal with things like that. I’m thankful, too, to have a laptop while I am waiting on the desktop. I don’t usually get along quite as well with my laptop, but we’re doing okay—maybe using it more has helped me get to know it better.

Thank you for your kind comments about my ear infection last week. I’ve been using antibiotic drops and am about 95% better. Hopefully by the time I am finished with them, the infection will be completely gone.

That’s about it for my week. How was yours?

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week
with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

I’m running a little late today, so I’ll jump right in . . .

1. Relief, at least temporarily. I’ve had an earache for the past three days. Wednesday night we got ear wax drops that my husband patiently administered, and then he flushed the ear with distilled water. It felt better that night and the next morning. But then it started hurting again. No wonder babies cry with earaches. I’m late this morning because I wanted to call the doctor’s office to see if I could get in today and see if this is an infection. I got ready to go first thing in case they had an opening right away. But they didn’t have one til this afternoon. (Update: diagnosis: ear canal infection. I hope my prescription ear drops start working soon.)

2. Baptism and church lunch. It’s always neat to see someone take that step of obedience, showing outwardly what’s happened in their hearts as they surrendered to Christ and were raised to newness of life.

3. Library system. Our local library is very nice but a little small. But I can look up books through the city library system online, place a hold, and have the book sent to my library to be picked up. So convenient.

4. Peonies. I’ve always thought they were so pretty, but I’ve never had one. One night this week Jason and Timothy brought over some cut ones they had found in a store. I didn’t know they started out as tight rolls. It’s been fun to watch them slowly unfold this week.

5. Good news for friends at church, including a young baby and an older woman home from hospitalizations.

How’s your week going?

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week
with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

It’s the first full week of July, and summer has settled in. Here are some of the best parts of the last week.

1. A long weekend. Everyone had Monday off, but Jim took Thursday and Friday off as well. He worked on some things he had wanted to, but spent the better part of Saturday fishing, something he hadn’t done in a long time.

2. Donuts. There’s a new independent donut shop nearby we stopped at, but they were closed. We heard they usually sell out before noon. Jim went back Saturday morning and got some donuts and fritters. Those things were huge, but so good. They were too big to eat a whole donut in one sitting, so we cut pieces off the next few days.

3. Independence Day. Though our country has serious problems, I still believe it’s the best place in the world to live. I’m thankful for the freedoms we enjoy. We celebrated the 4th all together after church on Sunday. One nice thing about celebrating with adult children is divvying up the meal. Jim grilled burgers and sausage, I made French fries, Jesse made a cheesy hash brown casserole and shucked corn on the cob for me. Mittu made a wonderful cheesecake. Jason and Mittu found the festive paper products to make clean-up easier.

Favorite picture of the day:

4. Fireworks are illegal in our county—but the law doesn’t seem to be enforced unless something gets out of hand. From our yard, we saw several large displays of fireworks from at least six different places. Jason caught this photo of one, but we saw many fuller and higher than this one. It was fun to see fireworks without leaving the yard.

We didn’t have fireworks, but Jason and Mittu brought over glowsticks, pop-its (these little things that make a popping sound when you throw them on the ground), and these other devices that have strings you pull on, and they release confetti.

5. Family meal at a restaurant. Jason and Mittu invited us over Monday afternoon, and talk turned to going somewhere for dinner. We ended up going to one of my favorite restaurants on a river. And I didn’t even ask—Jim suggested it. 🙂 We called to see if Jesse wanted to meet us there. It was the first time we had eaten all together in a restaurant since before the pandemic.

All in all, a good week. I hope yours was as well!

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week
with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

The first FFF of July! Here are some highlights of the week:

1. Retirement home ministry. Our church does this once a month—the place we visit rotates groups who hold services on Sunday afternoons. The people seem very attentive, and we all hang around and visit with them for a good while afterward. The lady we spent time with the first week looks for us now each week and even gave me a hug.

2. Impromptu lunch get-together. There wasn’t enough time to go home after church and come back for the retirement home service, so we stopped for lunch at McAlister’s Deli. There we ran into our pastor and his family, who were doing the same thing. We sat at adjacent tables and enjoyed the fellowship while we ate.

3. More time off from cooking. I mentioned last week that I hadn’t done any real cooking while Jim was out of town. Then my son and daughter-in-law invited us over both Friday and Saturday night. Then we went out for the lunch mentioned above on Sunday. That’s the first time in my adult life I’ve had a whole week off from cooking! Even though I could get used to that pretty easily, I did miss the things I make and missed having leftovers to reheat for lunch. So I was more or less ready to get back at it Monday.

4. A remade desk. I wish I had thought to take a “before” picture. An old one which shows a bit of the desk is here:

More than anything else, I wanted to change out the old Colonial-style knobs and handles. But I wanted to lighten it up, too. I decided to keep the top stained–I figured that way we wouldn’t have to worry about paint chipping there. But Jim painted the rest of it white for me.

I was originally thinking about glass knobs, but when I saw these vintage-looking ones, I loved them.

5. An uneventful cardiologist visit. I almost could have just phoned it in except for his needing to listen to my heart and run a EKG. Even though I’d just had an episode of afib last week, we pretty much just discussed increasing medicine if it happened again.

How was your week?

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week
with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

It’s been quite the week. Jim was out of town from Monday through Thursday. The power was out twelve hours Monday night. I was in atrial fibrillation most of Tuesday, but thankfully that resolved overnight without my having to go to the ER. The rest of the week was better! Here are some of the best parts:

1. Father’s Day. We enjoyed the opportunity to honor Jim with cards, gifts, a spaghetti dinner, and chocolate cake. We had a lot of fun with this gift that Mittu got for Jason.

2. Power. There’s nothing like losing power for a while to truly appreciate it when it comes back on. Thankfully I had just heated up some soup for dinner when the power went off during a storm. Also, the temperature never got uncomfortably hot–mainly because the outage occurred from about 5:30 p.m. until 7:30 a.m. I could have called Jason and Mittu and gone to their house, and I would have if I had been uncomfortable. But it’s still light late enough that I could sit by a window and read for several hours. I finished off two books that night! And I understood why people used to go to bed and get up with the sun—there’s not much you can do in the evenings once it gets dark.

3. Lunch with a friend. The last time we saw each other, we talked about this new weird virus going around and wondered if it would turn out to be a big problem. It did! It was so good to catch up in person. This was my first time to eat inside a restaurant since the pandemic started. We ate at Cracker Barrel, and they had a delicious new entree that we both tried: Maple Bacon Grilled Chicken.

4. Not cooking. With Jim gone, I’ve just heated up leftovers or canned stuff. Jason and Mittu brought me dinner the night I was in afib. I got takeout I was craving from Red Lobster one night.

5. A bit of closet reorganization. I’m not doing a full scale closet clean-out or re-do. But every now and then I get an idea for a better way some things would work. So I’ve chipped away at that a little every morning this week and also pulled a few things out to donate or trash while I was at it.

As I write this Thursday afternoon, I’m looking forward to Jim coming home tonight (he did arrive safely!) How was your week?

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week
with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

It’s been a fairly quiet week. Sometimes those are the hardest in which to find something to share for FFF—not because they’re bad. In fact, I generally prefer quiet weeks! But because they’re fairly routine and ordinary, nothing stands out. But there are blessings in ordinariness.

1. Feeling good. We finally turned a corner with these colds last weekend. I’ve had worse cold symptoms, but this one seemed to last longer and the sore throat was harder to relieve than usual. We’re glad to be done with all of that, hopefully for a long time.

2. Self-serve nights. Ever since my kids were old enough to make a sandwich or run the microwave, Sunday nights have been “fend for yourself” meal nights. I make a big breakfast and lunch that day, then I am happy to be “off” the rest of the day. We often just heat up leftovers. Jason and Mittu will come over sometimes on Sunday nights and raid the freezer–I keep some gluten-free heat-and-eat meals for her and Timothy. We had such an evening last Sunday.

3. A cute new cartoon. Timothy wanted to show us a new cartoon he’s been enjoying called “Bluey.” It’s on Disney +, but there are a few episodes on YouTube. It’s about a little dog family in Australia. I thought the few episodes we saw were good. But what I enjoyed the most was that the daddy dog’s voice and personality were very much like our pastor’s. The accents are a little different–our pastor is from South Africa rather than Australia. But the whole time we watched, I kept “hearing” our pastor and chuckling over the similarities.

4. A trade. Just about the time we were going to shop for a bed for our new guest room, Jason and Mittu asked if we would like theirs, as they want to buy a larger size. We also asked them if they wanted the mini-fridge. It used to be in my mother-in-law’s room, then we kept it in Jesse’s room. But he didn’t want to take it with him when he moved. We figured they could use it downstairs for drinks and snacks or to store cold food when they were eating on the patio.

5. A storage closet. We figure most guests aren’t going to need much closet space, so our guest room closet is a place for some extra storage. I have shoeboxes of photos from pre-digital days that I need to do something with, off-season clothing, and a few other things–and still have some room. It’s been fun to get that set up and ease space in other areas.

Hope you have a great weekend celebrating your dads, husbands, or father figures!

It’s Friday, time to look back over the blessings of the week
with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story and other friends.

We’ve been a little low this week with head colds. Jim finally started feeling better mid-week, so I am hoping my turn comes soon. But there are always things to be thankful for:

1. Timothy’s end-of-first-grade party. His mom texted us that he wanted everyone to come over “for a dance party, kabobs, a Star Wars cartoon with popcorn and sugar cookies.” 😀 We didn’t have the dance party, but Mittu and Jason made kabobs that were really good. We ended up watching the first episode of The Mandalorian instead of a Star Wars cartoon. And we did have sugar cookies! We also played a couple of rounds of Earwax (Timothy’s favorite) and Facetimed with Jeremy. A fun evening!

2. Meals from my daughter-in-law. She made a couple of dishes I could just heat up for dinner this week–very helpful since I didn’t feel like cooking.

3. Meal delivery. Jim was out of town one night this week, and I had a craving for a nearby Mexican food place. But the closer it got to dinner time, the less I wanted to go out. Then I remembered this place had a meal delivery service–problem solved!

4. Cough drops and Tylenol have been my mainstay this week. I can’t take decongestants due to heart rhythm issues, so I have to make the best of it with these and rest. I also had a big pot of chicken soup made early in the week, with enough left over for several lunches.

5. Young people’s get-together. Our church is small–about 40 people. There are three young adults, with two more guys in college (one just starting this year). Someone had the idea of getting the young single adults of a few small churches together for a game night once a month or so, with the churches rotating hosting. They had the first one a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to mention it. Jesse really enjoys games and people, so he had a good time and is looking forward to the next one. He has a lot of online friends, but I’ve been hoping for some in-person friends for him, too, especially as he lives alone now.

How was your week?