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

And just like that we’re a week into October already! Our cool mornings are back but it’s still a little in the afternoons. A few more leaves have changed, but we still haven’t seen the blaze of color that’s coming. In the meantime, here are some high points of the last week:

1. Being prayed for. The chaplain from hospice that comes out to see my mother-in-law brought a “chaplain in training” this week. As they were winding down their visit, I almost asked the chaplain to pray for a specific concern of my own. But I didn’t – whether because it was a little harder to get a word in with two of them here, or perhaps I just didn’t feel as comfortable sharing with a new person there, I don’t know. But when she asked him to close in prayer, she said, “And pray for Barbara as well” – I can’t remember if she mentioned health issues in particular. I think she did mention health, because I was touched at the Lord’s working in that way and leading someone to pray for me in a specific way even without my asking.  Then I struggled over whether to share a prayer request on Facebook, but was blessed that so many people responded.

2. Safety. My husband was cutting up parts of some fallen tree branches at my son and daughter-in-law’s when the chainsaw slipped, and…

Thankfully the saw didn’t reach his toes!

3. Puttering is what I call getting some little jobs done that tend to pile up when life is busy – cleaning out some files, cleaning out my receipt drawer (where I stash receipts when I am wrapping presents), tidying my desk, straightening here and there, changing over from an old purse to a new one, etc.. Always a nice feeling to get that kind of thing done.

4. Getting my fall decorations out. Now it feels more officially like fall.

The last photo is from a couple of years ago – because my kitchen window currently has some gunk on it from some suction cups.:)  I wasn’t able to get it off with just washing the window so will need to go do some more intense scrubbing. Anyway – our tree is not to that stage of color yet, but should be in the next couple of weeks!

5. No major afib in a week! Even being off one medication! Praying that continues! I mentioned yesterday that I’d several occurrences in one week, and they wanted to put me on a new medicine, but first I’d have to get one of the old ones out of my system over five days. I was afraid this would be a really bad week in that regard, but so far it has been a great one!

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.

The first official week of fall has felt more like summer, but I’m trusting we’ll get back to those cool temperatures sooner or later. Here are some highlights of the last week.

1. A good visit with my daughter-in-law’s mother who was in town for a few days. We had them over for dinner one night and then all went to what we call “the little zoo” on Saturday and had a picnic lunch there.

2. Patient portals. Two of my doctors have these, where you can log in online and see lab results or notes from your last visit or send a message. I like being able to see the lab results, and I’d much rather write a message than say one over the phone.

3. A helpful nurse. One of my cardiologist’s nurses is just exceptionally easy to talk to, “gets” what I am saying, doesn’t brush me off like she’s in a hurry, listens and talks to me instead of sounding like she’s reading from a script, and explains things very well. I am always encouraged when I see her in the office or when she responds to a note in the Patient Portal.

4. Reese’s candy bars. My d-i-l brought me one this week. It is probably not a good thing for me that I know these are in the world now. 🙂 I found I like them much better than Reese’s cups, but for that very reason I need to avoid keeping them in the house. But it was good while it lasted!

5. The fall TV season. We don’t follow many TV shows, but I’ve enjoyed getting back into the ones we do watch with new episodes this week.

Bonus: My son and daughter-in-law came over and made dinner twice this 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.

September is going by so fast. Here are some highlights of the last week:

1. Youngest son Jesse’s birthday.

2. A successful gluten-free lemon bundt birthday cake. I had two different recipes but not all the ingredients for either one, couldn’t find what I needed at the store I was in, but had no time to go to another. I improvised and hoped for the best, and it turned out great! (Sigh of relief!)

3. Restful days. I don’t usually have the TV on in the daytime except for when Jesse and I watch something while eating lunch together. But I gave myself permission to catch a program I had missed one afternoon and then spent the rest of the afternoon doing relaxing things. Nice to do that every now and then!

4. Messages from my grandson Timothy. Every now and then his parents will help him send a voice text over the phone. I love having his little voice on record. One day he told his mom he wanted to text, but when she recorded it, he said, “I want to Face Time please” in such a sweet little voice. So we did! Another time he wanted to FaceTime, but I was in the store: I am not coordinated enough to shop and FaceTime at the same time, and there’s no good place to pull over in the grocery store to do that. Jason sent a voice text with Timothy repeating in a disappointed voice, “Want to say hi.” So we sent a few voice texts back and forth, saying Hi that way. 🙂

5. The first day of fall is today! We’ve slipped back into more of a summer feel the last few days, but here’s hoping those crisp, cool days will return soon. I’m hoping to get out my fall decorations in the next day or two!

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 has been an up and down week, but I still have more than five things to share, so I’ll have to choose! Here are a few favorite things:

1. Grandparent’s Day was last Sunday, and Jason and Mittu brought over dinner and dessert on Saturday night and shared a special video they had made with photos of Timothy with us and recordings of some of our voice messages. Sweet!

2. A good post-op visit with my cardiologist. I had gone into it discouraged because I had still been having some irregularities, including a five-hour afib episode last Friday. They had told me to expect some irregularities as things healed, and that the surgery itself could cause them, but I had thought that by six weeks, everything would be healed and settled. I guess that was not the case. The doctor said everything was “just the way he liked to see it,” and I see him again in 2 months. It took me a couple of days to actually feel encouraged by the visit, but at least we’re going in the right direction.

3. Fall goodies. I made caramel corn and Peanut Butter Rice Krispie treats last weekend, and Choco-Peanut Butter Dreams on Thursday. I need to lay off the baking for a while, but we’re enjoying having these in the house!

4. Little Caesar’s is not my favorite pizza of all, but every now and then that $6 Hot and Ready pizza just hits the spot. Sunday afternoon Jason and Mittu had other plans for lunch, so Jim, Jesse and I just grabbed a couple of pizzas and Crazy Bread on the way home from church for a quick lunch. I used to do big Sunday dinners, but we get home so late, I’m pretty much looking for quick Sunday meals – more time for rest that way! 🙂

5. Cool weather. I love this time of year, and the relief from the heat of summer but not facing the cold of winter for a while yet. And we still have turning leaves to look forward to!

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.

The first week in September has passed already! Here are some of my favorite parts of it.

1. A good visit with the doctor. I had my yearly physical this week and was all prepared for bad blood sugar results (and a scolding) due to all the family birthdays and stay-cation and lack of exercise after surgery. I am not diabetic, but my blood sugar has been higher than normal, so I was supposed to have been working on weight and diet since last time. I was bracing myself – but my blood sugar was lower than last year!

2. These donuts (ironic that I’d mention donuts right after blood sugar issues….). I’m not big into pumpkin-flavored everything this time of year, but these caught my eye in the store, so I thought I’d give them a try. They’re not going to be something I get regularly, but they were nice for a treat.

3. Safety driving. Jesse was in Atlanta with friends over Labor Day weekend and drove there and back safely.

4. Coolness. That crisp, cool fall air that I love about the season arrived this week. We’ll probably still have some hot days off and on, but it’s good to get a taste of fall. (And another aspect of fall is football, which I am generally not much into, but we’ve started watching some UT games since we moved to TN. Their first game last Monday was a nail-biter!)

5. Time with Timothy. First, last weekend I got a voice message from Jason’s phone with Timothy saying, “Grandma!!!! Can come over dere?” I wish I could play it here – it was so cute. Then, our dryer died this week, and I asked Jason and Mittu if I could use their dryer for a couple of loads this morning (Thursday). While there Timothy and I painted at the table and then he wanted me to “play toys” in his room. It was a fun and relaxing time.

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, what a crazy week, full of ups and downs. I appreciate the opportunity to pause for a moment and recount the blessings so they’re not forgotten.

1. Safety. I have family in the Houston area, so it was a tense time there for a couple of days watching for the latest updates. Flood waters inched up one sister’s driveway all through one day and ended up in her garage, but not the house, and receded the next day. My stepfather was told he would have to evacuate due to a nearby levee having broken, but as it turned out it was a levee near a different neighborhood. Though my sister lost power for several days, no one had to evacuate and all my family (another sister and nephew there as well) are safe as well as the friends I know of there. In addition, apart from the hurricane, two sons were traveling different directions by different means (one driving, one flying) this week, and both made it safely.

2. Family time. Our family stay-cation I mentioned last time ended Sunday. I think we were all pretty tired by then, but so enjoyed the time together, games, outings, etc. On Saturday we went to a park, just to get outside for a bit, and Jim decided to take his mom, too. I really figured she would just doze the whole time, but she seemed to enjoy it – she was awake and watching people almost the whole time.

Jesse shared his hat. 🙂 We also enjoyed watching Timothy feed the ducks and play on the playground. A frisbee golf tournament was also going on. I had vaguely heard of frisbee golf, but I didn’t know it was such a developed thing that there were tournaments, specialized backpacks for the equipment, carts to hold stuff and drinks and snacks and sit on, and caddies. We were by a pond where there was a scheduled spot for them to try to throw the frisbee across the water, which turned out not to be too difficult: the hard part was trying to get it between the trees on the other side without hitting one of them with a thwack and ending up in the water. Pretty interesting!

3. Little People. My mom supplied us with bunches of Little People sets and figures when my boys were little, and we kept most of them in the attic since then. My husband was up in the attic looking for a different toy he wanted to get down for my grandson, and couldn’t find it, but saw the Little People and brought them down and washed all the pieces. Timothy had such a blast with them and it was fun to reminiscence and rediscover them and show him the features.

That’s not the most flattering picture of me, but that’s the best of Timothy. 🙂 Jim also fixed a Little Tykes wagon with a trailer that we had gotten when Jesse was little and kept, and Timothy enjoyed that a lot, too!

4. An extended break from cooking. Due to not feeling well one night plus general circumstances, we ate out more than we had planned. In fact, during the 8 days Jeremy was here, I think I only cooked 2 dinners. Mittu made 2, and we ate out the other nights. Sunday dinner we ended up eating leftovers just to get them out of the fridge plus to make it an easy meal before Jeremy had to leave in the early afternoon. We were kind of feeling the effects of too much restaurant food by the end, but it was nice to have the break.

5. An excursion to Cracker Barrel. I found myself alone at lunch time today (Thursday), so I took a Cracker Barrel gift card I had gotten for my birthday and got take-out lunch (several days after the above-mentioned eating out. 🙂 ) Browsing around while waiting for my food, I came across this lamp on sale half-price. I walked around and thought about it some more and finally decided to get it. It’s still in the box while I decide where to put it and how to rearrange things to make a place for it.

Also found this cute heart!

Bonus: A couple of health scares came up, but resolved themselves (actually, God resolved them after prayer), and one turned out to be fairly minor after all. A relief!

That’s been my week, mostly. Hope yours was good!

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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.

I’m a little late with the FFF this week, but it has been a busy week. 🙂 Here are some of the best parts of it:

1. The eclipse. I wrote all about our experience here. In itself it was a thoroughly neat thing to experience, but all the details involved (some of which I was concerned about like bathroom facilities) worked together as well as they possibly could have, and it was an enjoyable family outing.

2. Vacation time, or “staycation,” since we’re spending it at home. My oldest son came down for the week and my husband took the week off. Jason was able to take Monday off and he, Mittu, and Timothy were able to go out to lunch a couple of times and spend a few evenings over here. Jeremy’s original flight was cancelled due to bad weather on his end and they weren’t able to get him on another flight until two days later, so we lost a couple of days. But it couldn’t be helped. He had an outing with friends in the interim and Jim got caught up on some yard work while I had a rest between all the cleaning and preparation and everyone’s arriving. The first few days were busy with the eclipse and observing two birthdays, but we’ve had some relaxing days at home as well, talking, playing games, reading, etc.

3. Jeremy’s birthday was last week, but he wanted to come down for the eclipse, so we waited to celebrate til this week.

4. My birthday. We went to a nice restaurant on a lake for lunch, then Mittu made a wonderful dinner and beautiful cake.

Pretty plates, too!

5. A computer problem fixed. I had not been able to save my blog posts like usual for a couple of weeks: I was having to copy and paste them in a Word document until I was done and then copy and paste them back into my blog – a little tedious! I looked on the WordPress forums to see if anyone else had encountered the problem, and Jeremy followed the steps there until it started working right again. Yay!

I have not been online much this week, spending time with family instead. 🙂 But I hope to catch up with you all in a few 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.

Here we are at another Friday already! And another busy week. Here are some of the best parts of it:

1. A working dryer. Our dryer just suddenly stopped heating one day last week – the “drum” would turn, but no heat was produced and clothes wouldn’t dry. My husband figured out it was the igniter (I think – I know not whereof I speak. It’s a gas dryer). Anyway, he ordered the part but it was a few days before it came in. Thankfully Jason and Mittu let us use theirs in the meantime. But it was wonderful to have it working again. One of those things you take for granted until it suddenly stops.

2. Our crepe myrtles blooming. We planted them last year, and one grew but didn’t bloom, and the other didn’t grow much at all. We thought we lost one of them over winter. But they’re both thriving now.

3. My oldest son’s birthday! He’s coming in a few days and we’ll celebrate together then.

4. Catching up. I was a little discouraged Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning because I was behind where I wanted to be in birthday preparations and housecleaning before Jeremy comes. I ran into a roadblock with one item, but I just didn’t have the energy to complete the other things, even though I set myself a pretty easy schedule stretched out over several days. Though I am healing well from the surgery a couple of weeks ago, I still tire easily. But Thursday afternoon I was able to catch up, and that felt good.

5. Lunch with Melanie at Cracker Barrel. I always enjoy the fellowship, and I always enjoy their food! Especially the Coca-Cola cake I brought home for dessert. 🙂 Plus it was nice to get out and do something fun.

And that’s it for another week! 🙂 Have a great 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.

I cannot fathom how we’re 1/3 into August already! And August is a busy month for us, so I imagine it will go pretty fast, too. Here are some favorite parts of the last week:

1. An unexpected gift from a blog friend. Dianna sent me a sweet card and this cross that her husband made as a recovery gift after my surgery. I was so touched by their thoughtfulness. (The flowers are from Jason and Mittu, favorites, too!)

2. A gel seat cushion in my computer chair has been a big help with sciatic nerve pain.

3. Peanut butter chocolate chip mug cake. I’ve made this a few times now (not all of them this week! 🙂 ) It’s an easy recipe, 1 minute in the microwave, and perfect when I want something sweet but not a whole panful of something.

4. My husband’s sous vide chicken and pork loin. He made them on Sunday, and usually I use the leftovers in a stir-fry, but this week we used them in salads a couple of times. Very good!

5. Healing. I am feeling much better than I was this time last week. I’m making my first excursion to the grocery store today since the surgery, taking Jesse with me for the heavy lifting and to take over if I tire out. 🙂

Bonus: Finding some time this week to work on a special project I’ve been wanting to get to for ages. I hope to share more when I have more done with it. 🙂

Bonus 2: Timothy’s reaction when he noticed 3-D cows on a Chick-Fil-A billboard: “Cows up there! They’re drawing!”

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 has been a pretty eventful week, and I am so blessed to have seen God’s grace in it. Here are a few favorite things:

1. Sharing. This was actually a couple of weeks ago, I think. A lady in our church with Parkinson’s has been having trouble swallowing and needed to go to a pureed diet. Jim offered to go over and share with her husband what we do in preparing pureed food for his mom, and I think it was a big help, especially this temperature gun so you don’t have to keep sticking your finger in the food or tasting it.

2. Rediscovering unused gift cards. I was looking at the Galkin Evangelistic Team‘s new CDs, and since they’re on iTunes, I dug around in my desk for an iTunes gift card tucked back in there. I found two, and thought I had already used one, but I put it in just in case, and it hadn’t been used. So I found $75 worth of iTunes credit that I didn’t know I had! We occasionally rent movies through iTunes, so it’s nice to have some credit in place for that.

3. Hummingbirds. It seemed to take them longer than usual to find us this year, but now we see them regularly.

4. Surgery OVER. The surgery itself went well, and though we had a problem with bleeding afterward, everything seems to be ok and on the mend now. I got home yesterday afternoon. I’m still on anti-arrhythmia meds for a few weeks while everything heals and settles down, but I’m hoping that when I see the dr. next month, I can get off those.

5. Family and friends. My husband is an excellent caregiver and doesn’t mind anything from changing dressings to making breakfast and washing dishes. Jesse made Great-Grandma’s breakfast one morning we were gone and Mittu made it the next day. Jason and Mittu stayed overnight Wed., and Jason turned Great-Grandma over during the night. Mittu made three meals ahead of time for us. GG’s regular caregiver lives close by, so she popped in to feed her dinner and get her ready for bed in the evening. Jesse even fixed his shower handle that broke while we were away. I didn’t know he knew how to do that. 🙂 I so appreciate everyone pitching in. ♥ I also was blessed by cards, text messages, emails, Facebook comments, and phone calls from loved ones and friends, and especially everyone’s prayers.

I’m spending the weekend relaxing and recuperating. 🙂 Hope you have a great weekend as well!