"It is Good......"

Didn't Mitch do a FABULOUS job on his creation? I LOVE it and I sit on the swing, enjoying the shade each morning.......Reading my Bible and watching the robins and the starlings hunt for worms. The shade is heavenly and what is even better.........this morning we had a thunderstorm and I sat out there and stayed safe and dry! It was so nice sitting there listening to the rain fall and the thunder roll.

GOOD JOB hon! Thank you for ALL of your hard work......each time I am out there enjoying the shade, I FEEL your love for me. What a blessed woman I am, I couldn't ask for more. Well.......maybe a fire pit, and an outdoor kitchen, some patio furniture would be nice......oh and a snuggle with my honey on a new porch swing (I know that you can build one......I only have to look up and see your talent for building things!!)

Life Abundant

As I was returning home from Spokane last week, I saw a doe and her fawn dead on the side of the road. Not a pretty picture to have on my mind and yet it keeps on returning........I love how the Lord uses even sad things to get my attention about some issue of life........The sight of the doe with her fawn lying on the roadside brought a thought to mind....a little one will follow its mother, even if it means following her to death.....I know that we humans are different than animals, we have a reasoning mind and can make choices, whereas an animal has instincts, and must follow them. As a mom I have the power to greatly influence my children, and their children, and their children.......They WILL FOLLOW me. I want my children to follow me to LIFE and not to DEATH, and I am not talking about a literal death (like the poor little fawn). Jesus said that He came to give us life, and that more abundantly..........He wasn't just speaking of eternal life, but of this LIFE that I live here on the earth. My life, our lives, affect others. What I do or don't do here in this life will follow me into eternity. I am not perfect, no human is.......but I want my life to reflect what I believe, what I KNOW. Each and every moment of everyday I will affect the lives of those around me, for good or for bad. And so, I choose today to FOLLOW my Jesus....to go where He has gone....to do as He does....to love and serve with compassion and caring. And as I follow Jesus, I pray that my life will be an example worth following.........

Under Construction

I am so proud of my honey.....the Patio Cover is taking shape and it looks great, doesn't it? He has been working long hours and I am so thankful for his willingness to do so! All I know is that I am going to "owe" him BIG TIME!!

Raising the Roof

Finally. At Last. The time has come to begin our patio cover! We have wanted to have some shade in our backyard for 4 years now, and our little trees just 'aint cuttin' it........give them a few more decades and then we shall see.......they are trying though.......I go out and encourage them every day.

Mitch has been hard at it, and if I do say so myself, doing a mighty fine job of it. No really, I am very impressed. It isn't that I thought that he couldn't do it, I knew that he could.......it's just.......why would he want to do it?!! I sure wouldn't want to work out in the heat and use power tools all day long, and I know for a fact that I would never be able to decipher a set of building plans, trust me I've tried! I have to give credit to my son-in-law for his hard work on the plans.......thanks Davie, you're awesome!! I am loved, for you see that is the reason for the patio cover.......Mitch knows that I would love to have one. He knows that I love to be outside. But......The LOVE doesn't end with covering the patio.......he is also building a small BBQ island, complete with a gas burner, and a counter top, and a fireplace too! We will be able to enjoy the out of doors in any season! He did inform me the other day that the fireplace might be a project for next year.........ah well......I will try to be patient. I am planning to promise him a "cuddling session" by the fire........you never know, it might speed things up a bit!

A Bit of Boasting.....

Please excuse me while I brag.......I can't help myself, for this is something to be boasting about! My daughter Stephenie called me earlier this week to let me know that my sweet grand children aced their final exams! All three of them received A's!! My granddaughters Bethanne and Rachel made "Eagle of the Year" and Adam finished well too. I am so proud of them and of their hard work........But most of all, I am so proud of my daughter Steph. For those of you who may not know, Steph home schooled her children up until this past year. She is the one who taught them their ABCs, how to read, and how to do math, but I am most proud of the way that she and her man, David, have raised them to love and fear the Lord. Adam is becoming a man of God and he showed this as he went through a very difficult time with another student. He showed that he could overcome adversity by following the Word of God and I am so thankful for that. Bethanne and Rachel have recently been struggling with some pretty scary health issues......they are in the process of wearing heart monitors to determine exactly what is going on......and yet, they continue to find humor in the situation (see my Steph's blog for a post about this), and both of them continue to grow in the graces of God.

The photo that is included in this post says it all......It was taken at the girls' baptism........

I am remembering today to thank the Lord for answered prayer.....I have prayed fervently for all of my sweet grand babies, and He has once again been faithful to answer me. A long time ago God made a promise to me about having many grand children to enjoy. At the time of the promise, there was only 2 year old Adam and we were moving to Colorado, and I was very heart broken to be leaving my family behind in Washington. In the passage of scripture that He impressed on my heart at that time, is a line that caused me to hope that I would again live close to my family. The verse tells of it only being a moment that we would be separated......And here I am experiencing the joy of this word from the Father being fulfilled!

So, here's to you Adam, Bethanne, and Rachel.........Grammie says, "Well Done.......I am so PROUD of you.....and I love you so very much!!"

"Lucky in Love"

For the last few years I have been going through that wonderful......as I type this word, my tongue is in my cheek and I am rolling my eyes!.....time of life called, Menopause.

Here recently, I had had a particularly bad couple of weeks, and one day my sweet Mitch surprised me with flowers.

As you can see from the photo, they look very pretty in their vase, and the colors were some of my favorite, deep pinks and oranges. It did my heart good to look at them, until..........Mitch came home, so excited to see my reaction, and when he saw the flowers, his face literally fell! I asked him what was wrong, but he didn't say anything for a while. He finally let on that he had ordered the bouquet on-line from Lucky Flowers, a new florist shop in town. He had even taken the time to call the florist and asked for an upgrade......he said that he had wanted it to be a big WOW!! Well, it was a WOW, just not in the way that he thought. I won't tell you what the cost of the arrangement was, lets just say that the 4"x4" vase had maybe 10 flowers, 5 of which had brown petals and stuffed in it were a few fern-ny things, and it looked like it was put together by a 5th grader, was worth maybe $20, but he paid a bunch more.....no pun intended!

And if that wasn't enough the card was full of errors and when read was quite humorous......it read like I had sent myself the flowers!!

We tried to take the arrangement back, since the receipt said that they offered 100% satisfaction, but we quickly learned that the guarantee didn't mean getting your money back, just a new arrangement, with the same flowers, put together by the same person!

Needless to say, we came home with that same little 4"x4" vase of flowers and I proudly displayed it on my coffee table, because each time I looked at it I was reminded of my husbands love for me and of how lucky I am to be his wife!

Welcome to Our Yard

I love to be out of doors, and I love working in our yard.....I don't care for the heat of summer, so spring time is my favorite time of year to work outside.

Mitch took a day off last week and I got him out in the yard to help me move some Barberry bushes from near our driveway, and place them against our fence. And in case you think that it was not very nice of me to ask Mitch to work on his day off, I re-payed him by making his favorite cookies. He was pleased with our trade-off.....now I know how to get him to help me!

Along the fence is a much better place for them.......I don't think that it was very inviting to have bushes with thorns on them so close to the driveway!! I am sure that my girls will be pleased.....they invariably were poked each time they visited (Sorry girls...I really do like for you to visit!)

We had planted some trees last fall, one was an evergreen and the other a Mimosa (Silk) tree. They seemed to be fine........stayed green until the fall, but the deciduous one didn't break dormancy and the evergreen, well.......it didn't stay evergreen...more like an ugly shade of yellow-brown. We called the nursery where we had purchased them and they were very sweet and replaced them. We actually traded the evergreen for a beautiful Laurel bush and I love it, and we replaced the Mimosa tree with another maple tree.

Mitch and I seem to be drawn to maples, we had two beautiful ones in our front yard when we lived in Colorado.

As I looked at our new tree, I was reminded of something that I read in the Psalms.......

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf shall not wither; And whatever he does shall prosper. Psalm 1:1-3

I love how even nature, the world around me, speaks of my God and in turn, speaks to my heart........May I always stay planted by the Living Water that flows from the throne of God.