Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on October 10, 2014 by Barbara Harper

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 are my favorite parts of the last week:

1. A surprise for our assistant pastor. Our assistant pastor has been with our church for 10 years now, and last Sunday the church was able to surprise him and his wife with a celebration during the Sunday School hour. We saw a video of some of his testimony (he has been in a wheelchair for some years now due to a car accident when he was on college), then our music pastor “interviewed” him and his wife about how they met, how God miraculously provided a handicap-accessible van with hand controls, etc. Then we presented a check that had been collected toward an upcoming Disney trip they were planning. Someone made signs with their faces on them like those used in campaigns – some of the kids held and waved those. Someone else put together a photo of their family in a frame with a wide white mat and asked everyone to jot a note to them on the mat. It was a lot of fun, and it was a treat to surprise and hopefully bless them in this way.

2. A camping trip – not for me, but for Jesse. He and some friends had been planning to go camping Friday night, but the weather turned wet and drizzly. They decided it was dry enough to go, and the rain started coming down again just as they were finishing eating. They were able to spend the night and then went into town the next morning to eat breakfast and shop a little. I was so glad it worked out for them to go – it takes a lot of preparation to go camping, and it’s sad to go through all that then not be able to go.

3. An in-house dinner date. Since Jesse was gone, I texted Jim about the possibility of bringing home something from Red Lobster for a “date.” 🙂

4. A scheduling snafu untangled. It’s a long story and would be pretty boring to read, but suffice it to say that somehow I ended up with two appointments at the same time on the same day. The one I’d rather have put off was one where the office staff had been a little….rude, let’s say, when I had tried to reschedule once before, so I wasn’t looking forward to having to reschedule again. But this time they were kind and friendly and it wasn’t a problem at all. Must have been a different person on the phone this time. At any rate, I was thinking and dealing with this over 2 or 3 days, and it was a relief when it was all worked out.

5. An incident with a spider. Such incidents are usually far from favorites. But last night after we got Great-Grandma ready for bed, I opened the door from her room into the garage, and a spider was coming straight my direction. I said, “Oh! Spider! Spider! Spider!” (I’m so articulate at such times.) Just then he jumped straight up and then started running around like crazy, almost as if thinking, “Oh! Human! Human! Human!” Thankfully the one who promised to love, cherish, and defend me from bugs took care of it for me.

Happy Friday!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Barbara Harper

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 are my favorite parts of the last week:

1. ♫♪ It’s beginning to look a lot like autumn…♪♫ Leaves are starting to turn, temperatures are starting to lower a bit sometimes. I agree with Anne of Green Gables: I am glad to live in a world where there are Octobers! I changed my floral arrangement out front to an autumnal one, but hope to get the rest of the fall decorations out soon.

2. Ladies’ Luncheon at church. It was originally going to be an overnight retreat, which I could not have gone to, then with all that has gone on in our church this summer, it was decided to make it a one-day seminar, and then finally changed to just a 3 hour event with our speaker sharing before and after a meal. The messages, food, and fellowship were all really good and the fall decorations were just right.

3. Home-made bread. One lady at our church makes scrumptious home-made bread and made about four different types for the luncheon. There was a lot left over, and she urged us to take some home. That was a rare treat. I haven’t tried to bake bread since early marriage when my attempts did not turn out so well.

4. Our hibiscus bush. I’ve never tried one of these before, but we needed something for a couple of places around the house and got a couple of these last spring. They’ve done wonderfully with really very little care. We thought one of them was damaged due to an early frost, but it came back. I should have taken a photo a couple of days ago when it had several open blooms on it, but here is one:

It looks a little red there, I guess because it is in my shadow, but it’s pink. We’ve enjoyed watching how the flowers unfold as they bloom.

5. A visit, a meal, and rocking a grandchild to sleep. I had an appointment one afternoon, and Jason and Mittu came over, brought me flowers and made dinner for us. I got to rock little Timothy while the dinner preparations were going on and even made him laugh a few times. We also made the flight arrangements for our oldest to come home for Thanksgiving. I’m so looking forward to it!

It’s been a busy week – now I need to regroup and figure out what’s next. 🙂 Have a great weekend!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on September 26, 2014 by Barbara Harper

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 are my favorite parts of the last week:

1. The first week of autumn! Sometimes I am reluctant to give up summer – even though our calendar doesn’t ebb and flow with a school any more, there is a more relaxed feel to summer and those longer evenings of daylight. But the first leaves are changing and we’ve had a few cool mornings, so I am more than ready now!

2. A near perfect Saturday. Often Saturdays are catch-up days, but last Saturday I didn’t have any errands to run and had finished laundry the day before. I had been feeling the need for some alone time – some days there isn’t much uninterrupted time in which to hear myself think, as the saying goes – and had made it a matter of prayer. Saturday morning Jim was out running errands, Jesse slept later than usual, and I didn’t hear anything from my mother-in-law’s caregiver all morning. It was bliss to compose an entire blog post for the next week in one setting rather than in pieces. Then I got to spend some time organizing in my sewing/craft room, and we got take-out barbecue for dinner. A lovely day all around.

3. More baby smiles, giggles, and “talking.”

4. Safe travels and peaceful evenings. I was sorry my husband had to travel a couple of days this week, but I am glad God kept him safe coming and going and that his mom seemed to take it in stride. Some times when he is gone she gets unsettled and gets into what I call a jag of asking to “go home” over and over or to see her daughter or whatever. I think the last time he was gone she kept asking me through the night if she was behind on her mail. I don’t know where that came from. Earlier this week before he had even left she was asking about her cat, which she left behind when she moved to be near us six years ago, so I was afraid we might be in for a rough patch. But she slept well and everything was calm, for which I am very thankful.

5. A procedure gone well. Timothy had to have a little procedure done yesterday which required him to be sedated, which was worry enough, but his history of breathing problems and heart rate drops when he was in the hospital added to the concern. He weathered everything well and is laughing today.

Bonus: Thinking over some of my “Ebenezers” this week – those times of especially sensing, knowing, seeing evidence of God’s direct care and provision in our lives.

Happy first Friday of autumn!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Barbara Harper

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 another week I was away from the computer more than anticipated. It seems my life is in a state of never knowing what a day will bring forth just now. 🙂 Here are some favorite aspects of the past week:

1. Jesse’s birthday. My youngest turned 21 this week! So hard to believe!

2. A refund. I had ordered something for Jesse’s birthday via eBay, and the item arrived damaged. When I contacted the seller, at first he only wanted to give me a partial refund, but after a second e-mail with some photos he gave me a full refund and did not require me to send the item back (I wouldn’t have minded, but it was bulky and I didn’t want to pay for return postage).

3. Sleep. I mentioned that last week, I know. 🙂 A couple of nights this week I conked out about 10 p.m. – earlier than usual, but it helped with the sleep deficit. And a couple of 10-15 power naps a couple of afternoons helped get me through the day. I don’t mind naps but I don’t want to take a chunk out of my day to sleep – I’d rather sleep at night!

4. Chicken Chimichangas. I had been craving Mexican food, and the restaurant we used to frequent went out of business. I finally made these on Thursday. I use this recipe – it’s supposed to be a little healthier because it is baked rather than fried, but since I top it with queso sauce, that probably cancels out the healthy advantages. 🙂

5. Jan Karon’s newest book, Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good. I’m almost halfway through and loving it. She is always such a cozy read.

That’s about it for my week – hope yours was a good one!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Barbara Harper

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. I hadn’t planned to leave my blog unattended for a whole week! I haven’t been around to many of your sites as well. It just turned out to be a busy week – a couple of medical appointments, some shopping for my youngest son’s birthday next week that was more involved than usual, some early morning wakefulness translating into grogginess during the day and naps in the afternoon. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up with everyone today. Here are some favorite parts of the week:

1. A funeral is never a favorite thing, but our pastor’s memorial service last week (after his passing due to pancreatic cancer just a few short months after being diagnosed) and the testimonies and music and the fellowship afterward were deeply meaningful and comforting.

2. Grandparents Day. Did you know there was such a day, and that it was last Sunday? I had seen it on the calendar for years and sent cards for it to my mom when she was alive, but I hadn’t heard of anyone really celebrating it. Thankfully my son and daughter-in-law did! They came over after church and fixed both lunch and dinner, and of course I got to spend time with the sweet one who made me a grandparent. 🙂

3. Good progress. A few days ago marked the day that Timothy had been out of the NICU as many days as he had been in. Somehow the days have gone faster since he has been out! My son has been taking a picture of him with a little stuffed sheep every week, and posted this picture on that day:

4. Sleep. I mentioned wakefulness – several times this week I’ve awakened at 4, and then prayed, thought, or listened to music trying to go back to sleep til 6:30 or so, sometimes not drifting off again until almost time to get up. That does often negatively affect some of the day. This morning was different – I did wake up at some point (apparently it’s part of being middle-aged…) but was able to go right back to sleep.

5. Showers. I was unable to take a shower a couple of days this week due to wearing a heart monitor – nothing major, but I’ve been having some palpitations, and my doctor thinks it’s just another part of being a certain age (sigh!), but wanted to check on it, especially as I also have a history of SVTs. Of course while I had it on I had fewer and they were very mild, whereas the days before and after I had more of them and longer-lasting ones. Haven’t heard anything yet about the readings. Anyway, I couldn’t take a shower while I had it on, and though I was able to touch up here and there, it just wasn’t the same! I take it so for granted, I forget there are places that don’t have such things.

That about wraps up my week. Hope yours was good!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Barbara Harper

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 was hesitant about doing an FFF today since my pastor passed away this week, but since we can find blessings and evidence of God’s goodness even at such times, and he wouldn’t want us to be morose, I decided to go ahead with five favorites of the week.

1. A 3-day weekend due to Labor Day. Always fun to have an extra day off during the week and get together with family.

2. Timothy going to church. They’re starting to be able to take him out amongst other people now, though they still can’t put him in the nursery and still have to be cautious about being around sick people.

3. Winning an Amazon gift card from Lost Generation Reader in connection with the Austen in August reading challenge! That’s probably where I shop most often, so it’s a delight to have more means to do so!

4. Comforting and encouraging each other. I described our Wednesday night service in more detail in a previous post, but we found out our pastor had passed away shortly before, and it was such a help to be there and encourage each other from the Bible. Then on Facebook ever since, various people have been sharing anecdotes, Scripture, thoughts, and photos (even funny ones).

5. The hope we can have of heaven when we’ve believed on the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord. The loss of loved ones just would not be bearable without that. I urge you to be ready to meet Him, because the end of life will come to all of us, and we truly don’t know how much time we have. Besides being prepared for death, accepting Christ also means His forgiveness, help, and grace for this life. If you’d like to know more please read this, and let me know if I can be of help in any way.

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on August 29, 2014 by Barbara Harper

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 actually started out as a frustrating week, with a medical appointment where they couldn’t do what was scheduled (which they could have forewarned me about with a simple phone call! Argh!), so I felt like that whole morning was wasted. Then the rest of the week I’ve just been kind of tired and not as productive as I wanted to be. But – hopefully next week will be better! Here are some good parts of the week:

1. Baby smiles, giggles, and vocalizing. I meant to mention a couple of weeks ago that I received my first full-fledged, on-purpose smile from Timothy. ♥ He’s also started laughing a bit, and Jason sent a video of him “talking,” making sounds in response to what Jason was saying to him. So cute!

2. These little dealies:

Silicon plugs for the iPhone. Some of you may remember I had to get a new phone recently (thankfully it was a week or two before its warranty ran out) because it was so full of dust it wouldn’t recharge, even after trying to clean it out. I must have especially linty pockets – sometimes my phone is just covered in white dust when I take it from my pocket. These were only a couple of dollars but took a long while to arrive. But they work well and hopefully will prevent future dust problems with my phone.

3. Find my Friends app on the iPhone. It allows you to see where your friends are – with their approval, of course. We just use it with immediate family, but it’s useful in seeing when Jim is heading home from work without having to text him to ask or when the kids have left home when we’re planning to have them over or meet somewhere. My husband doesn’t have the kind of job where he can clock out on the dot the same time every evening, so it helps with dinner preparations to have some idea when to expect him.

4. Chick-Fil-A day for our pastor. The Chick-Fil-A in the town where our church is held a day in our pastor’s name where portions of proceeds from collected receipts for the day went toward our pastor, who is battling pancreatic cancer. He’s such a regular customer there, our assistant pastor said they joke that it is his second office, and all of his daughters have worked there. I thought it was so neat of them to do that. We didn’t go because the distance was a little much for lunch, and we gave through another venue, but I enjoyed seeing tweets and Facebook statuses and photos of our church folks there through the day. Can’t wait to hear what the results were!

5. Coca-cola cake from Cracker Barrel. I passed by there while out the other day and indulged in a piece to take home. So good.

Bonus: An excellent book that impacts and stays with me for days. Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity was that book for me, just finished this week.

Happy Friday!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Barbara Harper

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 was so sorry to miss last week. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my oldest son was visiting all week from out of town and my husband took the week off as well. Mittu’s mother was also visiting and Jesse’s girlfriend came on a couple of excursions. We did a lot of visiting, went on a few outings, and celebrated Jeremy’s birthday, and there just wasn’t time to get to the computer much last week. Even this week I seem to be in recuperate/catch-up mode and haven’t been online as much as I usually am. I have a bunch of posts in me Feedly to catch up on!

With all of that, the past couple of weeks have been full of many faves: this is one of those weeks that will be hard to narrow down to five! But here goes:

1. Time with family. I had thought that with our being tied down to a certain extent with Great-Grandma and Jason and Mittu being limited with how much they could take Timothy out (as a preemie he has still had more of a vulnerability to infections even though he’s older and bigger now. They’re just now starting to be able to take him out to places that aren’t too crowded) that this might be something of a boring visit for Jeremy, but we managed to get a number of activities in. Besides talking and visiting a lot (the best part!) we rented a movie (The Lego Movie), had lunch at Jason and Mittu’s one day, had a picnic at a nature center, some went kayaking one afternoon, and we visited the farmer’s market and unwittingly stepped into a history fair complete with people dressed up in Civil War era regalia, then ate at a downtown pizza place. We enjoyed celebrating Jeremy’s birthday and seeing him meet Timothy for the first time.

Thankfully we were able to manage caregivers for Great-grandma for the couple of times we wanted to do something after the usual times we have someone in for her. There were a lot of firsts for Timothy but he did well even with two doctors visits and his four month shots in the mix.

2. My birthday was yesterday. My family always makes it a special day. We went out to eat at one of my favorite restaurants (which my husband doesn’t like, but agreed to go to for my sake. I only ask to go on my birthday. 🙂 ), Jim and Jason and Mittu gave me flowers, we got to Face Time with Jeremy, and everyone was thoughtful and generous with gifts.

And triple chocolate cake was a bonus, too! 🙂

3. Frozen yogurt. We stopped at a frozen yogurt place after the picnic. I’m lactose intolerant, and the only one I had been to before had a couple of dairy free options. This one didn’t, but I decided to try it anyway with a few Lactaid tablets. I had chocolate and peanut butter, and it was so good, with no negative effects.

4. A finished project – a new sewing machine cover.

5. Lots of time doing this with this sweetie.

There – I think I more or less covered everything! 🙂

Happy Friday!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Barbara Harper

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 are some highlights of my week:

1. Timothy’s first visit to our house. He did pretty well! And I always love a chance to hold him. It was nice to have Jason and Mittu over again, too. 🙂

2. Timothy’s meeting Great-Grandma for the first time. She was delighted. 🙂

Four generations:

3. Family pack barbecue. For dinner while they were here we got a “family pack” of barbecued chicken, potato salad, and baked beans from Buddy’s Bar-B-Q. The family pack was made for five, and we had five adults, so I was a little afraid it might not be quite enough, but the portions were generous. It was very good!

4. More stitching and project progress. The first part of my crewel stitching project seemed to take forever, but now it is going pretty quickly. I didn’t have time today to take picture updates – maybe next week.

5. This:

I’ve mentioned it before, but using it again today made me appreciate it all over again. Makes cleaning ceiling fans blades and getting spiderwebs from the ceiling a breeze, and I found a new use for it today: getting the dust between the dryer and the wall.

Two other blessings this week: today is Jason and Mittu’s fifth wedding anniversary, and my oldest son Jeremy comes in this weekend to visit for a week!

Happy Friday!

Friday’s Fave Five

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Barbara Harper

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 didn’t think I’d get to a FFF today – it has been a busy day, plus at first I just couldn’t think of anything to mention that I haven’t mentioned before. But it is ok to be thankful for things again/still. 🙂 This is where the value of an exercise like this manifests itself: after just a few concentrated minutes of thinking it over, I found that there were more than five, as usually happens. So here they are:

1. Another ladies’ newsletter completed. Some months I pretty much know what I am going to include in it, so it is just a matter of getting it down and formatted. Some months I have no idea, and this was one of those. But after praying for the Lord to direct me in what to put in, it’s so neat to have different things come to mind and then see it all come together.

2. Cake pops. I was craving something caky, but I don’t dare make a whole cake for just three of us. I was in Wal-Mart and remembered these (that’s the only place I have ever seen them):

Fit the bill perfectly!

3. Face Time with Jason, Mittu, and Timothy. We don’t see Jason and Mittu as much as we used to since they have a new baby in the house and their own washer and dryer now. 🙂 And we got so used to seeing Timothy several days a week while he was in the hospital, that to go a couple of weeks without seeing him seems like half of forever. I was craving a visit and texted to ask if they wanted to Face Time, and we did. It was nice to catch up and fun to see him almost in person, though I enjoy pictures, too. It was nice, too, to talk to him a bit – don’t want him to forget Grandma and Grandpa’s voice! 🙂

4. An appointment deferred, or actually not deferred, but I thought I had an appointment for my physical Thursday but was relieved to find it was actually scheduled for next Monday. It was just a busy week, and though I could’ve worked around it, it was nice to discover I didn’t have to after all.

5. Take-out a couple of times this week. My husband brought home Chinese food Saturday night, and then one night when he had to be out of town Jesse and I got take-out from Ruby Tuesday’s.

Other little blessings: I’ve enjoyed our hummingbird visitor coming more frequently, bringing his mate, and getting a little less skittish about seeing us through the window, plus seeing a baby rabbit in the back yard (we’ve seen adults plenty of times but this is the first baby we’ve seen). I’ve also made some more progress on my stitching during the evenings and my new project last weekend. Here is a sneak peek: