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 wonderfully springy week! Here are some of the best parts of it:

1. A working toilet. The one in my bathroom had been having problems for a few days and finally stopped working altogether. Thankfully it wasn’t the only one in the house, but, still…it was a great relief to have it operational again, and I am thankful for a handy husband who can take care of things like that.

2. A new pillow. Mine had gotten hard and bunched up. Even washing and drying it, which usually fluffs it up a bit, wasn’t working any more. The new one has almost the opposite problem – I kind of sink into it. But I am getting used to it.

3. New flowers. I got some new flowers into the two planters out front and hanging baskets up outside. I always love how it looks to have them there. For some reason we don’t usually get to it til mid-May, but this year I looked up the date of the last expected frost and got them up the first weekend after! I’ve got a couple more planters in the back  and a place or two in the yard to fill, and I am looking forward to looking for plants for those soon. Someone had also given my mother-in-law an arrangement of several spring bulbs, and after they started to droop I dug out the bulbs and planted them outside. I’ve never planted bulbs before, and I hope they “take.”

Lowe’s had these already assembled, so all I had to to was just dig a hole and transfer it to the planter.

And our dogwood trees are starting to bloom!

4. My oldest son coming for a short visit this week for a couple pf family celebrations, which I’ll have more to say about next week. 🙂

5. Family walks. Jason, Mittu, and Timothy have been over a couple of evenings for Timothy to ride his little car, and as he got off and explored, that led to some of us taking a walk around the neighborhood. The weather was just right and it was a fun little outing. Plus Jason has an app for his phone that, when a dog is barking loudly, it plays a high-pitched frequency that they can hear but we can’t, which discourages them from barking. There are a couple of houses I hate to walk by because their dogs just follow and bark the whole time, so it was nice to be able to deter that some.

Finally, it’s a highlight of every week to remember our Savior’s death on the cross for our sin and to be thankful for the salvation He offers, but this week when we especially commemorate it, it’s a blessed reminder of His love and grace for us.

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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 April! It’s been a nice, springy week though a little colder today than normal. Here are some of the best parts of the last week.

1. A reprieve of sorts. I had a doctor’s appointment this week that I was dreading. I’m “pre-diabetic” and am supposed to be taking measures to try to avoid becoming fully diabetic. But between a broken toe, illness, and busyness precluding going to the gym much and extra goodies at Christmas and Valentine’s, I was afraid I had fallen from the progress I had made at the last visit, and I braced myself for a good scolding. But thankfully everything was “stable” – still needs work, but not any worse than last time – and I am getting myself back on track.

2. First grilled meal of the season. My husband ran some errands Saturday afternoon and unexpectedly came back with supplies to grill hamburgers for Sunday. Yum!

3. A weekend off from cooking. Jason and Mittu brought pizza over Friday, I asked for McAlister’s takeout on Saturday, and then Jim grilled on Sunday. Even though there was some other food prep involved with the grilled meal, it was nice to have the main course taken care of.

4. Another reprieve. We had some strong storms in the area Wednesday, but thankfully no hail or power outages or broken tree branches. “Til the Storm Passes By” is not a favorite song, per se, but it does come to mind at times like that.

5. A little boy’s affection. I’ve mentioned before that my little grandson is pretty busy and doesn’t always like to be scooped up for a hug or a snuggle like he did when he was a baby. So it’s special when he initiates something affectionate.

Some of these have appeared on previous FFFs, but it’s ok to be thankful for something more than once. 🙂

The sun is out and the birds are singing – looking forward to a great day! Happy Friday!

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

March can often be a mixture of winter’s end and spring’s beginning, even sometimes on same day. But this month has been fairly pleasant, especially the last week or so. Here are some highlights from it:

1. Putting out spring decorations. Love the fresh feel in the house with some springy items around.

2. A bunny sighting. We used to have a few wild bunnies visiting the back yard for the thistle plants and spilled bird seed, but since we had to cut down our long row of trees last year, I haven’t seen them…until one day this week. There was one right outside the window by my desk. Usually where there is one bunny there are more…so I hope we start seeing them come around again.

3. Mending is not a favorite, and I have to confess I neglect it for much longer than I care to admit. But I got a couple of items repaired last week, and it felt good to get that done. I hope to finish off a couple more soon.

4. A bridal shower is a fun event, to ooh and aah over the bride’s gifts, fellowship with other ladies, and enjoy goodies. The one I attended last weekend had all of that, plus the hostess is particularly good at that kind of thing: table settings, atmosphere, lovely presentations of foods, etc. The whole setting looked like a magazine spread. I loved enjoying her gifts while not feeling I needed to live up to them. 🙂

5. New dish towels. I’ve mentioned before that I have a hard time finding dish towels that I like. If I can find the thicker, fluffier ones that I prefer, I then can’t find colors and patterns that I like. But I found some that were pleasing on all counts on sale last week at Joann’s. I think the original price was ridiculously high, but they were 40% off and I had a gift card, so that helped.

Bonus: While outside at our house one evening, Timothy told his dad he saw a “flying race car in the sky.” Jason tried to see what he was talking about and sighted this:

As he posted on Facebook, “Sometimes when your toddler says he sees a ‘flying race car,’ he’s not making it up.” It made a couple of passes near us, and it was so much fun to see Timothy so excited over it.

Happy Friday!

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

This is a week when I have jotted down candidates for the FFF post all week, and when I do that, I usually end up with way more than five. But I’ll try to condense them. 🙂

1. SPRING! I love that it is not only officially spring now, but it has felt like it all week! I’ve enjoyed seeing blogging friends’ spring decorations posted this week and enjoyed working on some of my own (which I hope to show next week). I also enjoyed weeding out the winter things from my closet. It was still pretty cold when I did, but I just couldn’t stand those dark, heavy things any longer.

2. Rest and feeling better. I had a killer sore throat on Sunday and spent most of the day resting, napping, and reading. I was even planning on seeing the doctor Monday to be checked for strep throat, but by then I was immensely better. It’s still a little scratchy, especially if I go for a while without drinking anything, but that doesn’t happen often, and I think it’s mostly over.

3. Family ministrations. Jim washed my car for me on Saturday. Jason and Mittu not only came over and made dinner one night, but they washed the dishes as well and brought some tulips. Jesse brought boxes of spring decorations down from the attic for me and helped me clean up a bag of frozen vegetables that spilled all over the place when I opened it. We enjoyed Face-Timing with Jeremy one night this week. One friend said they missed hearing about Timothy last week. 🙂 He’s cute, smart, funny, and sweet every week. 🙂 While his mom was making dinner here one night, he was out with his dad and granddad riding what he calls his “mow.” Jim found this on some deal site last year, and Timothy thinks it looks like his granddad’s lawn mower. He’s been enjoying it again with the milder temperatures and later daylight recently.

Looks like he’s almost getting too big for it!

4. A couple of outings and spending gift cards. I was looking for a few items to round out my spring decorations, among other things, and enjoyed going to Hobby Lobby, Target, and Joann’s this week. Going to the craft places is like a kid going to the playground for me. 🙂 Joann’s is a little farther out, so I don’t get there as often, but I had three gift cards for there and a morning this week to go. And I found some great things in the Target dollar bins another morning! Most of the time I love and prefer days I don’t have to go anywhere, but sometimes it’s nice to go out and get refreshed and inspired.

5. A cancer-free boy. In some of the best news of the week, we found out that the 3-year-old grandson of our former pastor in Atlanta who has been battling leukemia and received several rounds of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, had a bone marrow biopsy this week and was pronounced cancer-free! He still can’t go home for a few weeks, but is out of the hospital. This has been so hard on the whole family – if you feel so led, I am sure they’d appreciate your praise to God for this blessing and prayers for continued endurance and for them to be able to be all reunited at home as soon as possible.

And that wraps up another week. Happy Friday!

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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 kind of a crazy week. I’m happy to pause here at the end of it and look for the blessings large and small along the way.

1. A clear calendar. The past few weeks have been full of good things (birthdays, outings) and a few not-so-fun things (dentist appointments), but it felt good to face this week with nothing “extra” on the calendar. Turned out to be a good thing in many ways, as some extra things did come up.

2. Dodging a bullet. My husband had a medical issue one day this week that I thought could possibly mean emergency surgery. Thankfully that was not the case. The doctor adjusted some medicine and he may have to have a much smaller procedure done in the office in a few weeks.

3. A son who helps out and runs errands cheerfully. Jesse was out picking up a prescription for his dad while I was making dinner. When I opened one of the essential ingredients for dinner, it was spoiled, so I called Jesse to see if he was close to the store or already near home. He was right at the light in front of the store, but the wrong lane, so he drove to where he could turn around and then got the needed item for me without complaint.

4. Matchstick carrots. I had to buy some a while back for a particular recipe and had quite a few left over. I discovered they work great in salads and soup and casseroles, so I keep them on hand now.

5. Veggie chips. I had some at Jason and Mittu’s house and enjoyed them, so they brought me a bag of them next time they came over. I know they’re not as healthy as eating actual vegetables, but they’re good! 🙂

I’m thankful we were spared the snow in the forecast. Here in the South, more than a dusting of snow causes traffic problems, which in turn means some of my mother-in-law’s helpers can’t come in, so I was very glad to be spared that. I am so ready for spring!

Happy Friday!

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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 nice, springy week, but there is talk of possible snow over the weekend! Here are some favorite parts of the last week:

1. Jim’s birthday! We had fun celebrating with the family. Timothy is a good assistant present unwrapper. 🙂

2. An outing with the ladies. The ladies of our Sunday School class got together last Saturday for a potluck lunch, a time of working together on projects for one’s daughter’s wedding, and watching a film about Lilias Trotter. Very enjoyable. I am usually home by 2, when Jim’s mom’s caregiver leaves, but Jim was able to be home this time, so I felt a little like a teenager with permission to stay out after curfew. 🙂

3. Kitchen puttering. Last week I cleaned out and organized the food side of the pantry, and this week the kitchen drawers. It’s always good to get those areas back in order and get reacquainted with what’s in there and where it is. I’m amazed at how dust and crumbs accumulate in drawers that are only open to put things in and out. Threw some things away, set aside a few things for donation, but mainly just reorganized.

4. Hospital bed fix. Jim was out of town one night this week, and as I was putting his mom to bed, the part of the hospital bed that raises and lowers the head of the bed stopped working. I called Jesse in to look underneath it, but he couldn’t figure out what was wrong and how to fix it. Thankfully it was in the down position. The next day we propped her up with pillows so she wasn’t lying flat, and her caregiver put her in the wheelchair for meals, so we were able to work around it. When Jim got home, thankfully he was able to fix it.

5. Toddler dancing. Jim got a video of Timothy dancing to music, and it’s so cute – so joyful, and with such total abandon.

Happy Friday!

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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’re at the first FFF of March, and one day closer to spring! Here are the best parts of the last week:

1. Lunch at Jason and Mittu’s house. Usually, due to my mother-in-law being in our home, not being able to be left alone, and not easily moveable, gatherings take place at our house. But we were invited to lunch on Saturday at my son and daughter-in-law’s on Saturday. We went over mid-morning so we’d have time to visit and have lunch and then leave in time for Great-grandma’s caregiver to leave. They had done a lot of painting and redecorating at their house – even building a table! So it was nice to see how everything looked, nice to visit, and nice to get out for an outing. Of course Timothy and I spent a lot of time playing in his room. 🙂 Jason caught this picture of our guitar duet. 🙂

2. A rug. I have been wanting to get a rug for this room for ages. It’s smaller than the average living room, so we call it by turns the reading room or the alcove or just the living room. I hadn’t seen anything I liked in the local chain stores and just hadn’t made it out yet to some other floor covering stores in town. I had seen things I liked in catalogs but was antsy about buying something that large that way and then having to deal with it if I didn’t like it. So we had this rug in Jim’s mom’s room. It used to be Jason and Mittu’s – I think we bought it for them not long after they were married – but they didn’t have space for it when they moved into an apartment, and it didn’t really go with their decorating in their rental house. It didn’t really “go” with the things in Jim’s mom’s room either, but it kept part of the concrete floor warm. I had been thinking for months now that it might work in the living room. I was thinking I needed to roll it up and bring it in and try it when it occurred to me that I could just take a pillow from the couch over there (duh!) I asked Jim what he thought, thinking that one Saturday when he had time we might transfer it over, but he got out the cleaning supplies that evening after dinner, and we got it set up. I like both the way it looks plus that the proportions fit so much better than the little mat we had there. Of course, if J&M ever want it back, we’ll be back to square one. 🙂 But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. And we did have another rug on hand for his mom’s room that Jim had bought at one point to put in the bottom of the tent when they have their big epic backyard camp-out this summer, so we put that in her room. It actually goes well with the futon and curtains there.

3. A visitor to the bird feeder. I mentioned last week a new clear bird feeder that attached to the kitchen window. We finally had our first visitor there! He was very skittish about movement or sounds in the kitchen, so he didn’t stay long. I think he was a tufted titmouse. Hopefully he’ll come around again and get more used to us, but next time I see him I’ll stay still for a bit. Plus the replacement one I bought for another window has regular visitors now.

4. Weather. We had some pretty severe and scary storms on Wednesday, but thankfully didn’t suffer any damage or lose power. Then Thursday and this morning, though it has been cold, we’ve had bright, beautiful, blue skies.

5. This video. God’s creation is such a marvel. If this world, marred by sin, contains so much wonder, what must heaven be?

Happy Friday!

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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’re at the last FFF of February already! It’s been a fairly comfortable week weather-wise. I haven’t gotten everything done that I wanted – I’ve discovered that sometimes after a very busy week, I’m not always up to par the following week. But other than that it has been a good week.  Here are the best parts of it:

1. Mittu’s birthday. Always a joy to celebrate my daughter-in-law.

2. New bird feeders. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago using Amazon gifts cards I had received for Christmas. This was part of what I spent them on. One was to replace a “squirrel resistant” kind I had gotten at W-Mart which the birds didn’t seem to like. I don’t mind if squirrels nibble a little, but they tend to drain the things every other day. So I got a bigger version of a little one I had that the birds have liked. I didn’t take a photo of it. I also got this clear one that attaches to the window with suction cups. We had a small globe-shaped one there, but it was so small that occasionally a bird would get caught in there and flap around trying to get out. This is more open, so that shouldn’t be a problem. They haven’t found it yet, but I trust they will. One sad side effect of having to cut down our backyard trees last summer is that we have fewer birds around. 😦

3. Getting out of jury duty – not me, but my mother-in-law’s caregiver. My husband wrote a letter about how much we needed her and what a problem it would be for us if she was out on jury duty, and she took it down to…wherever you go to take care of such things, and they removed her. Yay!

4. The Word Swag app. I normally only get free apps for my phone, but my son told me about this one. It costs a little bit, but I have used it so much it has more than paid for itself. You can search it for photos you want to use or upload your own, add your text, try out different fonts, filters, positions, etc. I use it often for graphics for blog posts, but earlier this week I used it for this excerpt from an Emily Dickinson poem:

5. Four years cancer free. It was four years ago this week that my husband had a cancerous kidney removed. After I realized that, memories returned of some of the Lord’s mercies at that time. We had gone in to get a CT scan and biopsy of something else the urologist was concerned about that turned out not to be a problem at all. But the CAT scan revealed a tumor in Jim’s kidney. I happened to be there because Jim had been told he wouldn’t be able to drive home. That turned out not to be the case, either, but it allowed me to be there to hear the doctor’s discovery on the CAT scan, diagnosis, prognosis, etc. This kind of cancer does not respond to chemo or radiation, so he was spared either of those treatments. The only down side of that is that if this same cancer should metastasize, chemo and radiation would not work on it, either. Thankfully this kind does not usually spread. It’s not impossible, and I don’t take for granted that it won’t (though I hope and expect it won’t), so I am thankful each year for freedom from cancer.

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

Another week is down for the count. Here are the best parts of mine:

1. Valentine’s Day, both the sweet expressions of love from my family and the opportunity to do some special things for them. I shared more detail about it here.

2. Temporary fixes. On Wednesday my washer stopped working right in the middle of doing laundry. It would fill and drain but wouldn’t agitate or spin. I always hate to break such news to my husband, knowing it will involve time and/or expense to fix. When he came home, he unplugged and looked at it and he and Jesse Googled the problem and the make and model, and it looks like just a less than $10 part is needed, so that’s been ordered. And somehow he got it to work enough in the meantime to do a few small loads, so I got some essentials washed, and everything else can wait til the part comes in.

And I thought of the contrast between hearts and flowers and cards and candy on Tuesday night and dealing with broken washers on Wednesday, yet they’re all expressions of love that I appreciate.

3. Timothy magnets. We had a preemie NICU photo of him on the refrigerator, and Jason and Mittu got these more recent photo magnets done through Photo Barn.

4. Chips and dip – just plain Lays chips and french onion dip. I probably need to find a healthier afternoon snack, but these have been hitting the spot recently.

5. Mammogram and bone density tests are not favorites in themselves, but it’s nice to get them done (one reason I am late posting today). And…I already got a phone call that the mammogram results are ok, an even bigger fave.

It’s been a busy few days, so I am ready to settle back with some coffee and a Valentine cupcake and visit with you! Happy Friday!

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

Wow, another week has flown by quickly. I’m thankful for an opportunity to sit down and reflect and appreciate the best parts of it.

1. Good news from Timothy’s cardiologist. When Timothy was born about ten weeks premature, he had a little hole in his heart that normally closes up before babies are born. It caused a heart murmur, and his parents have had to take him him to have it checked out occasionally. They just had an appointment this week, and the echocardiogram showed it had closed up completely. No more visits to the cardiologist or concerns about heart issues!

2. Comfort. When they tried to start the echocardiogram, Timothy got so upset that the technician went to tell the doctor that they weren’t going to be able to do it. His parents held and comforted him and gave him something to drink, and then asked him if he wanted to go to Grandma’s house later. They said that seemed to calm him down, and when the technician came back in, she was able to complete the test. Though probably all of the comfort measures contributed to calming him, it touched my heart to think that the thought of going to Grandma’s helped. I hope he will always regard Grandma’s house that way.

3. Spending gift cards. I had received a couple of gift cards to Amazon for Christmas and enjoyed spending them this week. A couple of items had been in the back of my mind for a while, and it suddenly clicked that I could use the cards for them.

4. Two nights off from cooking. Jason and Mittu brought take-out Mexican food over on Friday night. Then Saturday, Jim was over at their house and saw that while they were working on painting their kitchen cabinets, everything in the cabinets was out on the counters and table. It’s hard to cook while a project like that is going on, so he offered for them to come over and he went out to get take-out Chinese food.

5. Unexpected words of encouragement. A friend send me a sweet note this week that was a big encouragement to me.

6. Bonus: Acetaminophen. I’ve been having some muscle spasms in my back this week, and I am glad that helps.

Happy Friday! Hope you have a good weekend and stay warm!