Heart to Heart

Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life. (Proverbs 4:23)

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)

Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. (1Peter 3: 3-4)

As in water face reflects face,
so the heart of man reflects the man. (Proverbs 27:19)

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

Thinking about my heart condition while preparing my Valentine decor post.

We had light snow throughout Wednesday. We expected an inch and a half and it looks like we got about 4 inches instead. Just when the driveway was clear.

Dear is shifting from the kitchen painting project to our laundry room instead for a few days. He’s been painting non stop for over a week and needs a bit of a break from painting before he starts up again. He will be moving the door into the laundry room 6 inches. This project will involve some dry walling and framing of a new doorway.

With 6 more inches on the washer/dryer side of the room we’ll be able to move the over sized refrigerator to that side of the room and get it plugged into the appropriate type of outlet. The refrigerator is so deep we needed the extra 6 inches so we could open and close the door. We are looking forward to better use of our laundry room space.

Have a good Thursday and remember to guard your heart!

Sunshine in February

Our grands have a mommy that lets them enjoy the great outdoors in all the seasons. I am grateful for that. These babes are hardy with lots of thanks to their mommy! Yesterday we got some sunshine instead of fog and we enjoyed these photos from text messages to us of the fun in the sun. It was sunny but very cold for this walk down the driveway.

Addy walking back up the driveway.

Time for swinging while the sun was still shining. What a sweet older sister to give her brother some pushes on the swing.

He had a smiley good time. So cute to see his toothy smile!

We got a dusting of snow on Tuesday and we’ll see if we get more overnight.

Happy Wednesday to all of you.

Tuesdays With Moisi

September 13th, 2003 was our mom and pop’s 60th Wedding Anniversary. My parents had recently returned from their last trip to Russia and moved in with our youngest brother in Downey, California. The dinner celebration was enjoyed in Leonard’s backyard. I am in the process of copying photos from this wonderful celebration to share soon. This is most of the family at the time of this event which even includes our brother Fred’s family. Our son Dan is missing from this photo. No great grandchildren yet.

 

February 1st Walk About…

…our snowy backyard.

On Saturday the temperatures were in the upper 40’s and the sun was shining so we decided to walk about the yard and see some of the winter damage. The winds were coming in gusts so we did not walk too close to the trees. The wind was strong enough to down a lot of branches and trees around our area and to cause power outages. Our power stayed on.

Although we have not seen the deer we know by these tracks that they have definitely been in the yard. Their deposits and hoof prints are a lot more visible against the snow.

This tree suffered a lot of damage from the weight of the snow and winds. We have decided that it needs to come down soon. We will miss it. We will have quite a pile of branches from the front and rear trees for our burn pile.

Dear spotted more deer tracks down in the emptied pond.

One or more of the trees on the mountain behind us have fallen. We have a lot of work cut out for us come late Spring and Summer. If you look on the upper photo of the collage above you can see the fallen tree. I zoomed in on the other photos to get a close up.

The photo above shows how the tree split close to the base of the tree.

That blue sky was a welcomed treat!

Our Weeping Pussy Willow is leaning over from the weight of the snow. We hope we can save it. The only color in our yard right now besides the evergreens are these red berries.

It took several tries for me to be able to upload my photos today. The joy of country satellite connections. Oh and speaking of country we have Dish provider for TV. They cut the Fox channel that was televising the Superbowl game so we weren’t able to watch. There were a lot of angry Dish customers. Thank goodness the Seahawks weren’t playing. I was happy to hear that Kansas City ended up winning. Sorry San Francisco fans.

Happy Groundhog Day! I hear we are suppose to have an early Spring. Time will tell.

We had a good morning at church with Communion and a sermon from the book of Hebrews. We enjoyed the grandkids sitting with us and thankfully they were not disruptive. Quiet cuteness! Jaymison was entertained by the singing and watching all those people. Addy hopped from lap to lap. She had her parents, Gramps, Baba and Granny to keep her occupied. She did wonder why she couldn’t have the “crackers” when the gluten free matzah came around for the Communion service. During our benevolent offering which we always have after Communion one of our elementary kids played the offertory on the piano. So sweet that our young people can share their talents in our services.

Has your church gone to gluten free for your Communion services?

Wonderful Words of Life ~ Hymn

Wonderful Words of Life

Sing them over again to me, wonderful words of life,
Let me more of their beauty see, wonderful words of life;
Words of life and beauty teach me faith and duty.

Refrain

Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life,
Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life.

Christ, the blessèd One, gives to all wonderful words of life;
Sinner, list to the loving call, wonderful words of life;
All so freely given, wooing us to Heaven.

Refrain

Sweetly echo the Gospel call, wonderful words of life;
Offer pardon and peace to all, wonderful words of life;
Jesus, only Savior, sanctify us forever.

Refrain

Words and Music: Philip P. Bliss, 1874.

Some history of this hymn from George C. Stebbins:

I car­ried that song through two sea­sons of evan­gel­is­tic work, ne­ver think­ing it pos­sessed much mer­it, or that it had the el­e­ment of spe­cial use­ful­ness, par­ti­cu­lar­ly for so­lo pur­pos­es.

It oc­curred to me to try it one day dur­ing the cam­paign in New Ha­ven, [Con­nec­ti­cut,] 1878 and, with the help of Mrs. Steb­bins, we sang it as a du­et. To our sur­prise the song was re­ceived with the great­est en­thu­si­asm and from that time on to the close of the meet­ings was the fa­vor­ite of all the hymns used.

As an il­lus­tra­tion of the hold it got up­on the peo­ple all about that se­ction of the coun­try, I re­ceived a let­ter from the Sec­re­tary of the Con­nec­ti­cut State Sun­day School As­so­ci­a­tion of­fer­ing me what seemed an ab­surd­ly large sum of mo­ney, if I would, with Mrs. Steb­bins, come to the State Con­ven­tion and sing that one song.

George C. Steb­bins
Mem­oirs and Rem­inis­cenc­es

Ht: Cyberhymnal

Relationship Building

It is so sweet to see the bond forming between sister and brother. Praying they can always be good friends and watch out for each other.

Addy kept her brother company until mommy was free. Sweet snuggles.

Today I found this book on our bookshelf and thought it would be fun to read it with Addy some time. The book is called First Steps For Little Feet in Gospel Paths.

I could not find that the book was copyrighted so I’m sharing some pages from the book.

Did you get the answers right? Smile. I have seen the moon sometimes during the day, have you?

Today is the last day of January 2020. Our yards are still snow covered at our house. Our streets are bare and clear.

Will you be watching the Superbowl game at your house with good eats? We don’t have plans yet.

Enjoy your weekend.

Master Bath Before and After

Oops, look away, I forgot to close the lid and pretty up this space before I took a photo. But in my defense I took this photo with my phone to get an idea of the space above the toilet for reference in choosing a piece that would fill the space better, decorator wise.

And the reveal. The walls are a light grey color called Quartzite. Do It Center paint manufactured by Sherwin Williams. We both have commented that Quartizite has a hint of lavender.

We are pleased with the new look. Hats off to my professional in house painter, Dear.

Yikes…he’s started in on the upper kitchen cabinets as I prepare this post so we’ll have some more before and afters in the future.

Tuesdays With Moisi

“Stay together, love each other.” This was one of our dear Pop’s encouragements to us all before he died. Our dear parents stayed together through thick and thin for 70 year before our mom died. Moisi practiced what he preached. This photo of Moisi and Nadia was taken at Julienne in San Marino.

A fun thing about Moisi was the fact that his checkbook always lived in the front pocket of his shirt with a pen ready.

I’m behind on my Tuesdays with Moisi posts and I still need to carry on with his history but I won’t beat myself up because Tuesdays come every week and sometime, Lord willing, I’ll carry on.

Moisi in the 50’s (lower left) at 4635 Oak Street, Pico Rivera. Moisi in the 60’s (upper left and lower right) 305 Los Angeles Ave, Montebello. Lower right is my graduation from Junior high. Upper left is crazy hat day for my high school cheer squad dinner at our house.  Moisi in the early 70’s (upper right) Arroyo Drive, La Mirada.

Our Master Bath renovation is just about done and I’ll share the before and afters soon. Have a great Tuesday y’all.

From our Pop’s (Moisi’s) favorite Psalm:

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

Psalm 103:13

Sunday Snaphots

Our “Coast Kids” sent this photo on Sunday prompting the rest of us to share our photos.

Dear and I obliged with a selfie taken on our way home from an impromptu lunch out after church with friends.

Dan and Jamie sent this photo of Addy and Jaymison. Cracking up at Jaymison’s new obsession with his tongue as witnessed in this next photo of him we received this week, too.

It was nice to go out to lunch with new friends after church today. When you re-locate later in life and leave long time friends behind it’s a comfort to know you can establish new friendships. There were 7 of us at lunch today.

Our meal at the Chinese restaurant yesterday was decent but not noteworthy. The owners and staff were very pleasant. Thankfully the Thai to Go in town is really good to our palates!

Quote for the week from Spurgeon:

“A house without prayer is a house without a roof.”