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!

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

Here we are at the end of another week and several days into February already. Some highlights of the last week:

1. Going back to the gym is not so much a favorite in itself…I go because I know it’s good for me and I do feel better when I am going regularly. But I had been out for six weeks with a broken toe, and I was afraid I had lost all the conditioning I had built up and would have to start from scratch. But thankfully I was able to do all the things I normally do.

2. Talking to Timothy. My son told me that one day Timothy wanted to say Hi to me, so Jason texted, “Timothy says Hi.” Then Timothy asked him, “See her face?” So we FaceTimed after that. My grandmother’s heart melted. 🙂 I’m so glad we have the technology to talk to each other face to face whenever we want, and that he wants to talk to me. ♥

3. Snuggling and watching videos. I didn’t know until recently that there is a kid’s channel on YouTube and a way to set parental controls so that the child can’t go anywhere but the kid’s channels. My son and daughter-in-law kept an old phone when they upgraded so that Timothy could use it for his videos, and he likes to watch them snuggled up with somebody. I got to be the snugglee when they were here last, and it was fun to have him show me his favorite videos (anyone else know the Excavator song? 🙂 ) and see him get excited about red Play Doh and Blue Play Doh getting mixed together to make purple.

4. Answered prayer. I had something I needed to work on this week, and I’d had trouble getting time, quiet, solitude, and clear thinking all together at the same time. I prayed for that specifically Thursday morning, started my task, thinking it would take me most of the day – and I was pretty much done by noon. That was such a blessing to me. Then before I wrapped it up this morning, God sent me an idea that finished it off perfectly.

5. A pretty iPhone case. One of my Christmas presents was a new phone, and my old phone case wouldn’t fit it. I like the rubbery kind because they help me not to drop it. I was delighted to find this one inexpensively on Amazon and purchased it with a gift card, another present.

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, this week seems to have just flown. Well, they all seem to these days, but this one faster than most for some reason. I enjoy the time to stop and reflect over the good things God has allowed the last week or so.

1. Saying good-bye to the “boot” I had to wear after breaking my toe. I am grateful for its protection but glad to be done with it. It’s taken me a couple of days to regain my equilibrium since the boot made my gait uneven, but I am getting there.

2. Reading with Timothy.

Mr. Cool with his sunglasses on. 🙂

3. Plastic spoons in a variety of sizes. I’ve been adding to my non-stick cookware with some Christmas gift cards, and I’ve been determined to seek out some plastic or silicon utensils to use with it (just used metal before – which is probably why my previous non-stick cookware didn’t last…). I don’t like the thickness of wooden utensils. Always before I could only find small or really big plastic spoons, but last week I found an inexpensive pack of three in different and more manageable sizes.

4. Hairdresser house calls. The hairdresser of the helper we have for my mother-in-law in the mornings goes to some nursing homes and such to cut hair there, and she (our helper) asked her (the hairdresser friend) if she would mind coming to our house to cut my mother-in-law’s. She’s been doing that for some time now, most recently yesterday. It’s such a big help. My m-i-l’s hair grows fast and then keeps falling in her face. It would be hard to take her in somewhere to get it cut, then we wouldn’t be able to get her into one of their chairs, and she couldn’t sit up even if we could. I could snip at it, but it wouldn’t look very good. So, all told, it’s a big blessing that she can come and do that for us.

5. Yum.

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 has been a rather bleak week outside, but a good one inside. Here are some highlights:

1. One bright, sunshiny day with blue skies in the midst of a grey, overcast week.

2. Hambone and Potato Soup. This was actually from a week or so ago, and I forgot to mention it. The only thing I had ever done with a hambone from our Christmas ham was put it into a pot of beans, but my family doesn’t like beans, so I usually throw it away. My husband encouraged me to look for another dish or soup that I could use it in, and I found this one. It used items I had on hand and was delicious. This may become an after-Christmas tradition like Turkey Bone Soup is after Thanksgiving.

3. Closet reorganization. We’re blessed with four closets near the front entry. One holds coats and jackets, and another has games. I spent the better part of a day with the other two to carve out some space for Timothy’s toys, which had been in a corner of the family room, but his collection was growing. I was able to fill one box from the closet to give away, three more to put in the attic, and consolidate everything else into one so we could use the other for Timothy. Not only does the family room look neater, but I was glad to get reacquainted with what I had in there and pulled out a few items for use around the house.

4. Feeling better after both Jim and I had colds he last couple of weeks. We thought his mom might be catching it from us, which would have been a more serious problem in her condition, but thankfully she just had sniffles for a few days.

5. Library time with Timothy. His parents took him to the library for the first time, and I was glad to hear he loved it, as that had been a favorite activity when my kids were little. He called it the book house. 🙂 Then I had to stop at the library one day to pick up a book I placed on hold, and remembered on my way that they had been planning to take Timothy that day to a kid’s reading session there. So after checking out my book, I wandered over to the children’s section, and they were still there. It’s such a joy to my heart when he is delighted to see me. I got to sit with them for a few minutes and read a few books with him and see him point out and talk about the big rug with the bunnies on it. ♥

Happy Friday!

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