Category Archives: Meme

Winter Note Cards

It’s time for Vee’s January Note Card Party.

I’m going back to 2009 and our walks on the beach at Emma Wood in Ventura. While Dear and I were living in Camarillo, California we would get up very early on Saturday mornings to head north to Ventura for a walk at the beach. These shots are all from January 10, 2009. I’m adding a poem by Ralph Spaulding Cushman from his Hilltop Verses and Prayers.

The Secret

I met God in the morning
When my day was at its best,
And His Presence came like sunrise,
Like a glory in my breast.

 

All day long the Presence lingered,
All day long He stayed with me,
And we sailed in perfect calmness
O’er a very troubled sea.

 

Other ships were blown and battered,
Other ships were sore distressed,
But the winds that seemed to drive them
Brought to us a peace and rest.

 

Then I thought of other mornings,
With a keen remorse of mind,
When I too had loosed the moorings,
With the Presence left behind.

 

So I think I know the secret,
Learned from many a troubled way:
You must seek Him in the morning
If you want Him through the day!

A prayer of the fisher folk:

Help me, O God, for my boat is so small and Thy ocean is so wide! Amen

We are so happy to be back in Washington State but I do miss our early Saturday beach walks. Thank you Vee for hosting the monthly Note Card Party.

Photobucket replaced many of my photos with blurred out versions and photobucket stamped versions. They are holding my photos hostage until I pay them lots of money. I’m slowly going through all my posts and trying to clean them up and replacing some photos. Such a bother.

Sunlit Sunday

P1040723Sunset over Lake Washington from Daniel’s Broiler in Bellevue

Sunlit Sunday is a meme hosted by My Little Home and Garden. I’m joining in and if you click over you will see some other sunlit themed photos.

Seattle was all abuzz this weekend because of the Seattle Seahawks and their run for the Super Bowl. They won their game on Saturday which I was happy about because a loss would have put our city into a sports depression. I’m more of a Soccer fan but I support my football enjoying friends. My husband’s office building won an award for their display of 12th man support for the Seahawks.

1496599_10202975424054851_2001776599_nYep he works in one of the offices behind that huge 12!

To join in the Seattle fan fun we had a big pot of chili and cornbread ready when my sister and her hubby came over to enjoy the game with us on Saturday. Tomorrow I’ll share about the celebration we had on Friday night. How was your weekend?

August Notecards

For Vee’s August Notecard Party

I’m sharing some shots in the Seattle area from summers past…

August 2011 ~ Josh and Laura at a Sounders Soccer game with Seattle in the background.

2010 Kayaking in Anacortes, Washington with Dear, Josh, Laura, Andrew and Katie.

July 2009 on Lake Washington with Seattle across the lake. Laura and Katie with my niece Debbee between them.

Summer 2008 ~ Canoeing on Lake Washington with Katie. You can rent canoes and rowboats at the University of Washington Waterfront to mess around the lake. “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing-absolutely nothing- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats” ~ Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

The State of Washington is filled with Lakes and Sounds and other water ways to enjoy. It’s no wonder people invest in boats in this area. We live within 2 miles of Lake Washington and one of my favorite walks is along the Sammamish River/Burke Gilman Trails a short drive away. When I’m on the water, I prefer to be able to see the shore. I’m not fond of being out in the middle of the ocean surrounded by water with no land in sight.

Hope you are still enjoying some lazy summer days. I’m hoping to get some lazy days in before summer is over! To see what we’ve been doing this summer that has been anything but lazy, you can scroll down to the post before this one to see our floor project with before and after shots (or just click here).

Father & Daughter Notecards

It’s almost time for Vee’s Notecard Party and I picked a theme so my choices would be easier. All of these photos are from North Carolina on Emerald Isle in early December of 2011.

Emerald Isle N.C 014

Emerald Isle N.C 023

Emerald Isle N.C 070

Emerald Isle N.C 043This trip came about because Katie was moving into Base housing a month before Andrew would be returning from Afghanistan on his first deployment there.

Emerald Isle N.C 108

Katie and I traveled together with 11 suitcases right after Thanksgiving of that year and Dear joined us the Saturday after and stayed a week. We got the house all moved in and organized and then had time for some little adventures. Andrew arrived home that year on Christmas Day. A wonderful Christmas gift for Katie and Andrew.

We will have Katie and Andrew visiting most likely the end of August or early September and then Katie will stay on with us as Andrew is deployed again sometime in the Fall. They are moving out of their Base housing before his deployment.

Oops! After visiting many of the Notecard participants I noticed I blew it and posted 5 instead of 4. I’m blaming it on hormonies…

Notecard Party

It’s time for Vee’s Notecard Party. Click on over to see the rules. All of these illustrated Bible Verses are from 2009.

The Bible has words of life and truth that are always so comforting in times of sorrow like many are experiencing in our country this week.

Hope you all are experiencing God’s peace in the midst of any suffering in your life.

I took a quick trip to the Tulip fields on Tuesday morning since there was promise of some good weather and some sunshine. I met people from all over the U.S.A. and from Canada trekking about the beautiful tulip fields.  I’ll share soon…

Sunlit Sunday?

The fog has blocked out the sun in our part of the world for several days now so I decided to go to my photos from a year ago to show some sunlit offerings! We have also had a good stretch of days that start in the 20’s and just inch their way up, trying to reach the 40’s.

It’s hard to believe that just a year ago our daughter Katie and I were at a wedding show at the Seattle Center. Her and Andrew’s wedding ceremony was in March of last year. I decided to pick this photo for Sunlit Sunday because she just called yesterday letting us know she will be arriving in Seattle for a month long stay while our son-in-law Andrew has some cold weather training in Northern California. They currently live at Camp Lejeune Marine Base in North Carolina. There is always a bedroom ready for visits from our kids!

To cheer myself up and to remind myself that the sun is shining but I just can’t see it’s glory right now I searched for more January shots of sunshine from last year…

Not real bright but the sun is breaking through. These are floating houses on North Lake Union in Seattle. If you look closely you can see the Space Needle in the background.

A lovely shaft of sunshine lighting up my bouquet of tulips from January of last year, too.

Hope the sun is lighting up your part of the world today!

I’m joining My Little Home and Garden for her Sunlit Sunday Meme.

Yesterday was our firstborn’s birthday so we’ll be enjoying a meal together for him and our dear daughter in love this evening. We love to celebrate our family. Speaking of celebrating, it  looks like my blog will be having a big celebration real soon as my total blog visits are inching to 1,000,000 viewers!! I never imagined when I started blogging in March of 2007 that my blog would be visited by so many. I’m working on a giveaway for this landmark event to be announced this week!

Encouraging Words…

For Vee’s January Notecard Party I decided to go with a theme and find illustrated verses that I’ve posted in the past.

It’s been a while since I’ve put together photos with verses from the Bible. I hope to do some new ones soon.

Thank you Vee, for hosting this meme!

I’m adding this photo of our 2 sons to say Happy Birthday to them. Today is Dan’s birthday and Saturday is Joshua’s birthday. They are sons that make us proud to be their parents. May God continue to bless their lives on this earth!

Your dad and I love the two of you and we are so grateful for your love and care for each other, too!

Sunlit Sunday~

I’m trying something new today. I’m joining in with My Little Home and Garden for her Sunlit Sunday Meme. Here are my offerings from a very cold walk about the yard on Saturday morning when our temps tried to make it out of the 20’s.

I love the sparkly effect the sun has on the snow.

Brrr…

We had a wonderful frost effect on anything that had moisture on it overnight.

There’s nothing like a dry sunny day after a snowfall!

Psalm 18:28 (ESV) ~

For it is you who light my lamp;
the Lord my God lightens my darkness.

Hope you all have a good productive week and that you enjoy God’s light in your part of the world.

Yard Art ~ For the Birds!

Mary at Work of the Poet has started a new Thursday meme called Yard Art. I’m playing along this week…

 

I always get a kick out of yard art. Some is pretty ridiculous. These were just fun. These are from a walk with my friend Willow in her neighborhood. I keep threatening my kids and Dear with bringing home some yard art. They just roll their eyes!

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

Personality Meme ~ I’ve been Tagged!

Arti at Ripple Effects has tagged me for a little meme all about my strange personality…

Arti is a very thoughtful blogger who posts great reviews of the arts in film and literature…

Thank you Arti.

Now to try to identify some personality traits of mine…

1. I tend to be compliant and a people pleaser generally. Over the years I have learned to set boundaries and I’ve become quite good at saying no. I do not compromise on my firm beliefs, though. If you want me to identify a couple of my firm beliefs I can be bold enough to do that.

#1 Accepting Jesus and His sacrifice on our behalf on the cross is the only way to peace with God and an eternal place in Heaven with Him.

#2 Abortion is the wrong choice.

2. I enjoy celebrating life with new experiences which seem to always revolve around good food and good sights and good conversation. I wonder why I’m not losing weight. :0)

3. I tend to smile a lot and am a positive person most of the time.

4. I’m a communicator. I do not like to be uninformed especially about personal things with family and friends. I’m generally the link in the family to news. I also get really pissed upset if I’m left out of the loop or I find out someone died after the funeral or was in the hospital after the fact. Come on people communicate, ask for prayer, let us serve you.

5. Worship and learning something new from God’s Word (The Bible) is very important to me and I feel disconnected without some good input every week or every day. Learning new things in general keeps me happy.

6. I love to be generous. I love to buy gifts for people. I love to feed people extravagantly.

7. I enjoy good books. Most of the books I really love are by authors who are dead. I’ve been known to cry at the end of a book because it is written so well! (like LOTR or Chronicles of Narnia or Anne of Green Gables)

So that’s it and you’ve gotten a taste of what ellen b. is like even if some of these aren’t about personality. Oh and to set the record straight I’m a whole lot more interesting on the page then in person…