Prepare

I was thinking about the idea of choosing a word for the new year instead of making resolutions. My friend Willow at Willow’s Cottage chose Simple. Jerrelea at Jerrelea’s Journey chose Rest. I decided on the word Prepare.

: to make (someone or something) ready for some activity, purpose, use, etc.

: to make yourself ready for something that you will be doing, something that you expect to happen, etc.

: to make or create (something) so that it is ready for use

One challenge we heard at the first worship service of this year was not to focus on ourselves but to ask the question, How can I make the world a better place? Now I wonder what will help to prepare my heart for this challenge? Time will tell.

This year there are new things that I need to prepare for, too.

Medicare, banking online, a home office space for Dear, to name a few.

Some other things I’d like to continue to prepare for through the year are hospitality, good meals, organized spaces.

Way back in elementary school I memorized the following verses that have been favorites and a comfort through the years.

John 14: 1-3 (ESV)

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. ²In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

I memorized these verses in the King James Version below.

^{“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. ²In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. ³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.}

It’s amazing to think that the God of the universe is preparing a place for me!

Do you make New Year Resolutions or do you pick a word or verse for the year? Let me know if you do/did.

The photos that I included in this post are from a week ago when we got a little dusting of snow that came and went during the course of one day.

Waiting to Land…

…instead of circling around and around.

My life right now seems a bit irregular. I’m getting things done but in a random fashion, moving from one thing to another. I’m still waiting to find a rhythm to my life in this waiting time. In the meantime I’m not fretting just observing my randomness.

Although I feel disjointed, I’m still finding contentment in beautiful things around me. I’m grateful for encouragement that comes my way daily and for the peace in the midst of randomness.

I’ve continued my walking from Monday through Friday. This week I found an old 3×5 index card spiral pack that I have several Bible verses printed in to take along with me on my walks. Something good and encouraging to read while I walk by myself. So not 21st century, though, as I don’t have those buds in my ears listening off a device. It’s still my hand held device in the written form.

I’ve been managing to get something on the table or the counter most every night for dinner and yesterday I was inspired by Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S.A. to make some Italian Cookies that I’ll share sometime soon on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog.

Dear and I joined a group at our church for the next 8 weeks called, Who Needs Theology?

Here’s one of the introductory thoughts shared: “Your theology -your thoughts on God-are your most important thoughts because they determine everything else in your life. If this is true, then we ought to dig deeper into what we believe and why we believe it.”

Forever, O Lord, your word
    is firmly fixed in the heavens.
Your faithfulness endures to all generations;
    you have established the earth, and it stands fast.
By your appointment they stand this day,
    for all things are your servants.

Psalm 119:89-91 ESV

Hope you have a weekend filled with contentment in your small and big accomplishments. I’m off to scrub my shower before I finally jump in it today! RANDOM!

Reliable…

…is what this good old address book is to me. It’s come to the rescue of many a family member who has needed an address but failed to come up with it in their new modern devices. If I had $10 for every address I’ve supplied for weddings, baby showers, Christmas cards etc., I’d be able to take a little trip somewhere.

Do you still have a good old address book, tattered and worn?

In other news…

We’ve had more wind this weekend so the patio covers came off again and we decided to go ahead and put most of the patio furniture back in the loft area of our garage.

I’ll be busy this week again dealing with the fallen leaves.

We enjoyed the breezes with the door open until things got too wild. Lots of wind but very mild temps!

How was your weekend?

Banana Coffee Cake

Click on over to Mennonite Girls Can Cook to get my recipe for this Banana Coffee Cake! My family says it’s moist and delicious. It’s also a great recipe for using up that one ripe banana that is left from the bunch!

Here’s what losing fifteen pounds looks like on my face. The photo on the left is from April 18th and the photo on the right is from June 3rd. I’ve kind of hit a wall at this point but am happy with what I have been able to de-fluff before the wedding coming up in just seventeen days!

Today Dear and I are working outside again. He has a small section of the siding to finish painting and then we are going to clean up the planter on that side of the house and level out an area to store our trash cans out of sight. I have lots of before and afters to share in the future!

It’s cooling off a little today in the Seattle area. How goes it in your neck of the woods?

Hello June!

Can you see the sweet little bird peeking out from one of the bird houses on our son’s property? Katie took this photo during our recent trip to Chewelah.

June will bring some change-up projects around this old house. A little bit of this and a little bit of that. Now that Dear is not going into work each day I’m going to make a list of things that will be easier for us to do together when it’s raining outside. When it’s not raining he’ll be working on outdoor projects. I had the revelation that our bedroom furniture in our two guest rooms on the main floor need to be switched. The structure of the beds make better sense in the opposite rooms. The beds are both queens so we just need to move the bed frames. I have things to switch around in the living room, too. Nothing major but it just makes better visual sense. Do you get those revelations after living with something for a long time, that “aha” moment when you see the more logical arrangement?

June is the beginning of getting used to things being different daily while Dear is in between jobs. Good thing I’m in a de-fluffing time right now or I’d be tempted to suggest we go out for breakfast or for lunch or to the donut shop. The motivation to de-fluff is still with me and I plan to continue till the wedding. I’m happy to report that I’m down thirteen pounds. It feels good to have more room to breathe. June starts out with our new daily routine and ends with our son’s wedding.

What does June hold for you?

Hope I didn’t totally bore you with my little bit of this and that post. Here’s another photo before I go.

My peonies are opening up. I have one bush that has given us several blooms and the other only managed two!

No Mind has Imagined!

Being in the country with acres between my son’s home and other homes I am enjoying the sights and sounds that I do not experience living close to a big city. While enjoying what I’m seeing with my own eyes right now out the window then reading this verse from the Bible it makes me wonder about what we have yet to experience from God.

So much beauty for us to enjoy in the here and now and yet there is more that God has prepared for those who love him.

Since it’s now time for Good Fences #62 hosted by TexWisGirl and because each of my photos has a fence in it I’m linking up!

Some Painless Therapy…

Dear and I have decided to “cut our losses” and give up on the bathroom renovation being made right by the company we hired. It is better for our peace of mind to give it up and let Dear fix things that need to be done better. After several tries to get them to do things right we’ve decided no more. When you see the photos of the bathroom you will wonder what we are complaining about because you will see the beautiful cosmetic fixes. Unfortunately we had to live with the process and it will take some time for me to bond with the beauty of it all. When Dear finishes the painting and the rest of the window parts come in I promise to show you the before and after. Until then here is a sneaky photo of some wall art that is going to go up that I bought at Hobby Lobby today.

Yes, a little shopping therapy was in order for today so I made stops at Hobby Lobby, Goodwill, and Trader Joe’s. Hobby Lobby had a 50% off sale going for all their wall art so I bought that metal piece to mount on one of the walls of the bathroom. A tree branch with birds.

Their fall decor was on sale for 40% off so I bought these Place Cards that I’ll enjoy using at Thanksgiving.

These Le Creuset ramekins were in the collector section of Goodwill marked at $14.95 for all 6. Because Wednesday is Senior discount day I got 20% off and paid $12.50 for all 6. I saw them at Williams Sonoma for $13.00 each. Now I’ll need to come up with a fun recipe to use them for. If you click on these smaller photos you can see them in their larger format. Speaking of Senior Discount day the employee at Goodwill who came on the sound system to remind us what discounts were available on Wednesday said “If you are 62 or Better you get 20% off” I love that and when I went to the register I told them I was better!!

We had a very nice evening on Tuesday celebrating Dear at a restaurant in Bellevue called Lot #3. They had the most interesting names for their drinks. I had a Left Turn at Albuquerque.

After dinner we took a couple family shots outside the restaurant.

Our son Dan is off hunting in the wilderness so he couldn’t join us.

Tomorrow is the 13th anniversary of 9/11, I’m praying that God protects us against evil…but that prayer is nothing new at this old house!

E is for Ellen…

ABC Wednesday is already on the letter E. Thank you to Denise Nesbitt the proud founder and to the whole ABC team!

E is for ellen b. and a few of her favorite things…

This is a theater on Main Street in Bozeman, Montana spotted by daughter Katie on our cross country road trip back in April.

Ellen loves and enjoys spending time with her family.

Ellen loves her brothers and sisters and her dear old pop. This photo was taken last September at my dear old mom’s funeral.

Ellen loves her nieces and nephews. These cousins have so much fun together!

Ellen b. with her sisters and mom enjoying each other 6 months before her mom died.

Ellen loves Dear’s brother’s family to the left of the groom and below.

Ellen loves her whole big family including her brother in laws and sister in laws.

Ellen loves the girls from the Mennonite Girls Can Cook and is so thankful to have them as her true blue friends.

Ellen loves to travel to England and all of the United Kingdom.

Ellen loves Soccer/Futbol and has been to games in Manchester and Milan. Her favorite team is the home team, the Seattle Sounders.

Ellen is a Seattle Sounders season ticket holder along with her son and daughter in law.

Ellen loves Dear. Their 40th wedding anniversary celebrations have begun already.

Ellen B. and Dear started celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary with a trip to England in July where they spent one of their days in Oxford.

Ellen likes to read Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers and a little Chesterton so it was a treat to eat in the Pub where these authors were known to meet.

Ellen loves God and His son Jesus who has given her eternal life through his death and resurrection.

Congratulations if you made it to the end of this very long post!

Hither and Yon…

hither and yon, from here to over there, especially to a farther place; in or to a great many places:

That pretty much sums up the state of affairs with our family right now.

Our oldest, Josh, and our DIL Laura are in Cabo right now with my nephew David and his wife Kristin.

Our middle son, Dan, is working 2500 miles away from his home and his girlfriend is counting the days until he’s back where he belongs.

Our youngest, Katie, and our Son in law, Andrew have started their journey this morning from Jacksonville, North Carolina, to the state of Washington. Andrew has started his terminal leave from the Marine Corps after serving over 4 years with 2 deployments to Afghanistan. They will settle close to us so Andrew can finish his schooling.

I still feel like a fish out of water while the bathroom construction continues into the third week. Thankfully the end is near.

My brother and his wife are making their second trip today to the Ukraine to finish the legal work to bring their new young son home to his forever family.

We had some interesting sky views this past weekend. The Blue Angels were in Seattle for our SeaFair and to put on a air show during the hydroplane races. Along with the Blue Angels we had Fleet Week and the Marines put on some great demonstrations. I was able to capture some of the Osprey as they flew over our house on the way to the air show. Besides the great loud noise from the Blue Angels and the Osprey we had thunder and lightning from these amazing skies.

Couldn’t help but quote part of Psalm 19:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.

So this is some of what is happening in my world. What’s happening in yours?

Laughing at Myself…

…and this random post.

I have this sweet little hanging sentiment in my ~~powder room~~ master bathroom that is the size of a powder room. I am all for laughing and laughing often. We are busy campers at this old house these days. Today I mowed the lawn and did some weed wacking and some weed pulling. I love the way the yard looks after it gets it’s weekly cut. So neat when the weeds are mowed down. I especially enjoyed all the rich greenery around the yard at this time of year. My lavender is blooming already and I’ll have to take a photo soon.

On Thursday we have our end of small group barbecue. Of course we are suppose to get some good rain on Thursday. The first real rain in many days. We’ll be eating inside instead of on the deck. After that event the rest of our main floor bathroom will be torn out. The tub and shower surround are gone already. I’ll post some updates soon…maybe.

On Thursday World Cup begins. I’ll be watching a lot of soccer. Since the opening game Brazil v. Croatia is on at 1:00 Pacific Time I’ll be able to watch and still get organized for our barbecue. On Saturday my niece and her new hubby arrive for 4 days and good thing my sister isn’t doing a bathroom renovation and has a room and bathroom all ready for them. My sister lives across the big road from us. Very close as the crow flies a little farther if you are walking the meandering roads. We’ll be busy showing my new nephew by marriage Seattle since he’s never visited here before. I could go on and on but I’m probably boring you already so I’ll just stop.

Do any of you use Cloud Feedly to organize your blog visits? I haven’t been able to log in to my feedly to see if anyone has posted something new. I checked on the internet and they have been attacked overnight. I hope they are back on line soon!

Here’s what I read online: Not only has Evernote been struck by a DoS attack overnight, but now RSS news aggregator Feedly reports that its cloud-based service is suffering from a distributed denial-of-service attack that could impact users’ ability to catch up with the latest updates from their favourite websites.

Very inconvenient when I’m in the midst of busyness already, Oye! If I haven’t visited you in the last few days blame this feedly attack!!

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Category Archives: personal