Category Archives: Count Your Blessings

All Good Things

What fun it was to open up these gifts to me from our kids. It will be fun to add our family favorite in this new recipe journal.

It’s hard to see but there is a line to write down the speaker, the date, the message title and then lines at the bottom to add scripture verses that were referenced in the sermon. I’m looking forward to using this. Our DIL bought it from Target online.

I love the theme of these next gifts and am excited to hear England is totally open to international travelers without any restrictions!

I’ve been enjoying my morning cuppa in this beauty!

The snow has mostly disappeared with our warming temperatures this week. We have even been able to get out and do some clean-up in most of our planters. It feels good to look out the windows and see that job accomplished. Speaking of windows our window cleaner guy called and we are booked for clean windows on this coming Tuesday.  We have a quiet weekend coming up before we move into busy weekends in April.

Thankful to God for the love shown to me and for the ability to do yardwork.

It’s been so good to be in a study of the book of Isaiah as we approach Easter.

Hope all is well in your corner!

Rain, Glorious Rain!

We woke up to lightning flashes and thunder and the sound of rain in the wee hours of the morning.

A very welcomed event with hopes that the lightning doesn’t spark more fires in our area.

Love seeing the raindrops! No manual watering today!

The blue skies showing through the clouds have me smiling. Smoke is so oppressive.

Thank you for all who have visited here and commented. I’m off my game with visits but hope to see what’s going on with you all soon.

 

Mortgage Burning Sunday!

Today we had the privilege to gather together as a church family and celebrate the fact that our mortgage is paid in full. We had two large re-modeling projects the last 5 years and the loans are paid in full as of a few weeks ago. At the end of our service our two pastors enjoyed the task of burning the mortgage.

Backyard BBQ from Kettle Falls provided a delicious lunch for our church after the service to continue the celebration. Brisket, beans and rolls…delicious. It was a great day for our church.

1 Chronicles 29: 9 & 10-13:

Then the people rejoiced because they had given willingly, for with a whole heart they had offered freely to the Lord.

Blessed are you, O LORD, the God of Israel our father, forever and ever. Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name.

For a historical picture of what this day was like outside I’ll add this photo of our skies on the way to church. We usually can see mountains, hills and blue skies around here but the smoke has poured in from the south to us from many major fires burning in Washington, Oregon and California.

Praying for rain and fire containment!

Shop Roof Progress

Happy to show the progress of the shop with the roof now being half done. Not an easy job.

Here’s the hard worker who is happy with the progress and happy to get help from our son Dan in getting those 50# steel panels positioned on the purlins to fasten. Fifty Six screws per panel and 13 panels on each half (26 total). Thankful for my hard working husband.

I’m so happy to confirm that British Airways has given us a full refund yesterday. When I dialed my call went straight through and I was helped quickly and efficiently. Thank you Lord for answering our prayer.

Superhero Husband Hodgepodge

This photo of our daughter Katie was taken at a rest stop somewhere between Seattle and Jacksonville, North Carolina on a cross country trip to get Katie situated in an apartment before our Marine Son-in-law returned from his tour of duty in Afghanistan. It was an epic trip for the two of us and we both could have been awarded a superhero title!
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1. Expect the unexpected on From This Side of the Pond. Here’s my x-ray question…when was the last time you felt like Superman? What’s your superpower? Explain.
There are a few things that make me feel super satisfied. One of the things is to be able to recreate something special that our dear mom would make. One of her specialties is this nut roll we call Roolyet. My sister and I went about perfecting a recipe for it and we were very happy that it came out looking and tasting like our mom’s. We took it over to my sister’s house to share with her family and our dear old pop a few years back and he raved about it tasting like Mom’s.
Getting things checked off of my to-do list makes me feel like superwoman, too. It’s the little things…
2. Are you a fan of the ‘superhero’ type movies? If so what’s your favorite?
Not a fan generally of superhero movies. If I had to pick a favorite superhero of the fiction variety it would be Superman. I am a fan of these three in the photo above! Our grands with their uncle Joshie!
3. Have you postponed or cancelled a trip to the dentist in recent weeks, and if so when do you think you’ll feel comfortable going back? How about other routine medical procedures?
No, because I haven’t made an appointment to see a dentist. Oops. I have gotten an alert this week that I can make an appointment for my yearly medical.
4. What’s something that makes you feel youthful? Something that makes you feel ‘not so youthful’? Tell us why.
Singing and dancing makes me feel youthful and not looking in a mirror. Trying to get up off the floor when I play with the grands lets me know I’m not a youth anymore. There’s no hopping up anymore.
5. I feel compelled to include some sort of corona related question in the HP these days. What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen in relation to the virus? Something that really struck you as odd, made you stop and think, ‘Dorothy we’re not in Kansas anymore?’
This photo of a few of us adults watching Jaymison Joshua from a distance while he opened birthday gifts and ate his first birthday cupcake. Definitely not in Kansas anymore!
6. Insert your own random thought here.
This man, my Dear, is my real life superhero. He has been by my side for over 45 years. He was our main provider for most of our married life and our very efficient handy man. There have only been a handful of home improvement jobs that we hired someone for. He’s painted, replaced siding, built fences, installed back splash, remodeled a bathroom, added on a room, replaced windows, put in walkways, installed flooring, just to name a few. He also has helped all our kids with home projects, too. He’s my personal bartender. Did I mention that he’s a good cook, too? We love him for his smarts, too. He’s not a fool, he loves God and believes in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and that’s the main reason why I married him. Everything else has been a bonus. We’ve had bumps along the road because we are two human beings living life together and that is bound to have it’s challenges. Nevertheless, I’m thankful for this man and for how God is working in our lives individually and together.
The latest greatest is that he located the hot water leak and repaired it having to crawl under the house and do the repairs in a crouched position. We have hot water again and we didn’t have to call a plumber! We used walkie talkies to communicate while he was under the house. There was less accumulated water than we had expected. We didn’t have to pump out any water. Now we will have to assess how much of the insulation got soggy and needs to be replaced. It was great to take a nice long hot shower after our work today. Thank you, Dear!!
Thank you to Joyce for asking the questions and for any of you who take the time to read my post. Click here to see more.

Off With Your Heads!

On the letter O today and I’m using an old saying to show our tree service chopping or felling two trees we were concerned about on our property. Two Douglas Fir trees came down in a jiffy with the right equipment. The grinding of the stumps took a bit longer.

We didn’t like how this tree was leaning towards our bungalow.

Timber!

Our experienced tree service guy said it was a really good choice to take this tree out as the base of the tree was rotting on the side of the trunk towards our house. We were thankful for that decision. We were only going to have the one in the back taken down until the tree people offered to do this one for half the price since they were on our property with all of their equipment already. They got in a full day of work with good pay and we got two down for the price of one and a half! We are counting our blessings!

There are more photos I’d like to share from the grinding and the chipping but my country broadband is acting up again. I’ll have to also show the wide open spaces we now have with these two trees gone. Dear and our son chain sawed the logs into manageable rounds that have been hauled up to our sons place to be stacked to dry. Our son will have enough wood to keep his place warm next winter from these two trees and then some. We haven’t had to burn wood to keep warm at our country bungalow.

Today is Friday y’all. I know some of us need to remind ourselves each day about what day of the week it is!

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24 (ESV)

 

Now and Then

Our daughter in law posted this great selfie of her and our little grand. Mommy and daughter, love it.

Our other daughter in law posted this photo to facebook on Mother’s day with a lovely tribute. This was taken before Addy was born. Our girls with me.

These are two of our rhododendrons that are in their glory. I took this photo on Mother’s day. They are generally in their fullness for Mother’s day each year.

Hope you had a good weekend. We enjoyed a meal downtown with our western Washington kids on Saturday evening. On Mother’s day we worked hard with temps reaching 85 in Seattle. Mowed the lawn and finished an addition to our landscape with one more section of privacy fence and a new arborvitae.

Here’s the sad long story of my arborvitae purchase at the Home Depot. While Dear was finishing the staining of our new fence section, I took the truck to the HD to purchase the Arborvitae. It was close to noon and the HD was hopping with people buying plants with or without their mothers in tow. With difficulty I pushed and shoved the heavy potted plant onto one of those rolling carts to take it into the store for purchase. The line to the cash registers was circling around the indoor plant section and it was a nice breather after my muscle man effort getting the plant on the cart. When I reached the register the employee said she’d call for someone to help me load the plant into the bed of the truck. With high expectations of help I walked quickly to the truck which was a fair distance in the parking lot and drove without running over the groups of humanity walking down the center of the parking lot and reached the designated loading area. A young man was waiting by my cart to “help” me. He was 25ish, I’m 67ish. I had to help him get that heavy plant into the truck. Poor young man was weaker than me. I still said thank you but truth be told he should have thanked me.

Katie and Andrew arrived shortly after me getting the plant home to borrow the truck to move some of their stuff to their new apartment which is a lot closer to us. Andrew single handed picked up that Arborvitae and set it on the ground. That was the kind of help I was expecting at the Home Depot. Sigh…

How was your weekend?

Off the Grid

blessings-003 These new areas in our stairwell that head up to our Master Suite warm my mom heart and I can focus on them as I walk up or down the stairs.

blessings-001I’ll be counting my blessings throughout the weekend and into next week.

We are going to be spending lots of time with all our kids and our extended family over the next several days so I’ll be far off my normal grid.

Hope you all have a good Friday and weekend. Here in the U.S.A. we have an extended weekend since Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Our banks, post offices and schools will have Monday off. I hope to catch up with you all next week.