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 has been a week where it hasn’t been hard at all to find favorite highlights to share. Here are a few:

1. Pumpkin carving night with the family. Here’s the fruit of our labors:

Timothy painted his with bath soap paints. 🙂

2. Apple cider in the crockpot and my annual homemade caramel corn to go along with the above festivities.

3. Baked potatoes like Red Lobster’s using this recipe. Love those things and was happy to finally find a recipe for them.

4. A week of “finallys” – finally getting to some things that have been on my agenda for weeks, like getting a haircut, getting the rest of my fall decorations out, weeding some clothes out of my closet that I no longer wear, getting out and washing some winter clothes so they’re ready to wear, and cleaning out the inside of my car. Feels good to finally have those done.

5. This message on what the Bible calls our “flesh“ from a former pastor. I have heard him speak on this before in more detail, but it was nice to have the “condensed version” here. Very helpful.

http://livestream.com/accounts/1359895/events/4301805/videos/101930246/player?autoPlay=false&height=360&mute=false&width=640

How could I have forgotten to add getting back that hour of sleep last weekend? I don’t like the early evening darkness afterward, but I love that extra hour.

Happy Friday!

(For those looking for today’s 31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot post, it is just below this one.)

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 week had a share of frustrations, but those are the weeks when it’s especially helpful to stop and count the blessings. Here are some of the best parts:

1. Timothy walking. He’s been on the verge of it for some time, but suddenly this week he just took off.

2. A bridal shower. Always fun, and this one came at a time when I really needed to get out of the house for a bit and enjoy being with some other ladies.

3. Fall color has finally come more fully this week. I’m afraid the rain we’ve had this week has knocked leaves off a little earlier than usual, but there’s still a lot of autumn color around to enjoy.

4. Oven meals. I usually wait til it’s a little cooler to make meals that take an hour or so in the oven (I don’t dare in the summer – the AC would never catch up), but decided it was cool enough this week. It’s nice to pull some recipes out of the repertoire that we haven’t had in a while.

5. Impromptu potluck. Jason and Mittu needed something they had left over here, and offered to bring the dinner they had in a crockpot to share. I already had dinner in the oven, but we decided to pool our resources and enjoy each other’s food. 🙂

Have a great weekend! Don’t forget to turn your clocks back Saturday night!

(For those looking for today’s 31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot post, it is just below this one.)

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 one of those weeks that didn’t go quite like I had planned, but it wasn’t a bad week. Here are some of its best parts:

1. A good baby-sitting experience. Sometimes for our little grandson, only mommy or daddy will do, so I was hoping that when they asked us to watch him Friday night so they could go on a much-needed date that everything would go well. It did! He is at such a fun age.

2. A quick fix. I was just about over the edge with frustration with my mouse one day when my son came in and suggested the problem might be with the connection. It’s a wireless mouse with an adapter on a cable of a USB port. The cable was hanging off the back of the computer with the computer actually on top of the adapter somehow. He pulled it back up on top of the computer, and everything worked great. And now I know what to check for if it happens again. 🙂

3. An illness averted. One day I was feeling draggy and run-down, even after a nap, and the next day I had some pretty strong stomach issues, but now everything seems fine. I am glad that was all and not the start of some kind of worse bug.

4. Heat. When it was 66 degrees inside and 39 outside one day, I decided it was finally time to turn the furnace on. I think I might say this every winter, but I am so thankful for easily adaptable heat at the push of a button.

5. A husband at home. Jim has had to travel a little more than usual the last few weeks, and it was nice to have him home all this week.

I didn’t get much of my to-do list done this week, so this Saturday might be a catch-up day. Have a good weekend!

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 down into the 50s at night and downright nippy a few mornings, and the day time has been quite pleasant and sunny. Here are some fave moments of the last week:

1 A family outing. We hadn’t had one since August, and I was feeling a little cooped up with Jim having been away a little more than usual lately, so I suggested we go visit the Mast General Store downtown and then eat lunch at a little sandwich and gelato shop nearby on Saturday. I had never been to either before and I enjoyed reading some of the history of Mast on the way. It was a fun morning.

2. A new dish towel from the store we visited. I didn’t get it just for the birds, though I like them, but mainly because it is hard to find “fluffy” dish towels any more.

3. A zucchini cookie at the aforementioned shop. I’d had zucchini bread and zucchini cake before, but not a cookie. This was excellent.

4. A football game is not something I had thought I would ever have on any kind of favorite list, but we’ve watched a couple of UT Vols games lately. The first one was their game against Oklahoma, which is where Mittu is from, so she was rooting for the Sooners. 🙂 UT started out well ahead in that game and then lost. We ended up watching last Saturday’s game as well, which they won. I googled a couple of basic things during the game, like “What is a first down” and a “first and ten.” Such was my ignorance. 🙂 But it did help to know those things! Who knows, I may become a fan yet.

5. A few hours with no interruption has gotten to be almost a rarity these days, but I had one such glorious afternoon this week and was able to get several posts ahead on my 31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot series for Write31 Days.

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.

This has been…not a bad week but not the best. I’ve had a couple of days that I described to my husband as being busy all day but having nothing to show for it – though I guess clean clothes are something after all. 🙂 But still, there are always blessings to count, and if we sometimes have to think or look for them a little harder, the exercise is all the more beneficial. Here are some highlights since last week:

1. Jesse’s birthday. It was actually last week but we celebrated Saturday when everyone’s time off coordinated. Always fun to get the family together and celebrate someone’s special day.

2. Timothy is very interested in bags of tissue and packages now. 🙂

3. Lemon cake with lemon glaze. Normally I don’t feel it is really dessert if it is not chocolate. 🙂 But Jesse has asked for lemon cake the last few birthdays, and I have come to look forward to it. Every now and then something lemon with just the right degree of tartness hits the spot. It’s just a cake mix (Duncan Hines Lemon Supreme) and the glaze is made of 2 cups powdered sugar mixed with 3-4 tablespoons lemon juice.

4. My husband’s sous vide chicken, which I know I have mentioned before, but it is always good. 🙂 He made some for Sunday dinner with the equipment Jeremy had put together for him, and we had enough left over for Sunday evening snacking and then stir fry Monday night.

5. A few fall decorations. I need to send Jesse up into the attic tomorrow for the rest, but I got a couple of things set out. Funny how I wasn’t really ready for fall until I did that. 🙂 They do help set an atmosphere.

Bonus: cool mornings. It’s still warm in the afternoons but the mornings are not only lusciously cool, but also a portent of more coolness to come.

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.

This has not been a bad week, but the blessings haven’t been so overflowing and obvious as they have been the last two. But sometimes those kinds of weeks are when its best to go back and look for them lest we overlook them. So here are a few from this week:

1. Breakfast biscuits. I am up early, but not usually out and about til later morning. But I had to be one morning and rewarded myself with a breakfast biscuit on the way back home. Hadn’t had one in a while, and it was good!

2. Medical week is over! I have been thinking of this week that way because I had to go in early for fasting lab work one day (thus my early morning outing), had a visit with the heart doctor another day, and then my yearly physical another day. I chafed at having all that on the calendar in one week, but on the other hand, it was good to get it all done with.

3. Good visit with the heart doctor. Some of you have prayed for the situation with the heart rhythm problem and the attempted ablation from last month (thank you!). The visit this week was pretty anticlimactic. I was able to ask some questions and we talked about adjusting some medications a little. Other than that I don’t see him again for six months unless I am having problems. He advises not undergoing another procedure unless symptoms ratchet up significantly. We’ll hope that doesn’t happen. 🙂

4. A captivating new book, a true story based in my area. Will tell you more later!

5. FaceTime. I know I have mentioned it before, but I love being able to see my oldest son (who lives in another state) when we talk on the phone, and we even Face Time with little Timothy (and his parents 🙂 ) in-between visits sometimes even though we are in the same town. I love being able to do that.

Hope you’ve had a great week as well! Happy Friday!