Tag Archives: Leap Year

29th of February

Since this day comes but once every four years I’m adding C.H. Spurgeon’s thoughts on this day from my Chequebook of the Bank of Faith, daily readings by Spurgeon.

February 29

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. Psalm 23:6

A devout poet sings~

Lord, when thou
Puttest in my time a day, as thou dost now,
Unknown in other years, grant, I entreat,
Such grace illume it, that whate’er its phase
It add to holiness, and lengthen praise!

This day comes but once in four years. Oh, that we could win a fourfold blessing upon it! Up till now goodness and mercy, like two guards, have followed us from day to day, bringing up the rear, even as grace leads the van; and as this out-of-the-way day is one of the days of our life, the two guardian angels will be with us today also. Goodness to supply our needs, and mercy to blot out our sins – these twain shall attend our every step this day, and every day till days shall be no more. Wherefore, let us serve the Lord on this peculiar day with special consecration of heart, and sing his praises with more zest and sweetness than ever. Could we not today make an unusual offering to the cause of God, or to the poor? By inventiveness of love let us make this twenty-ninth of February a day to be remembered for ever.

My California family will make this day special as we celebrate our sister Vera with a breakfast out and then a dinner party this evening.

I finally made it to Orange County at 10:15 last night after flight delays that caused flight changes because of heavy fog at Seatac airport in Seattle. Happy to finally land at my destination. Onward and upward! It’s a new day that only comes once every four years.

Happy Birthday dear Vera! Goodness and mercy have followed you in your life and God will continue to take care of you!

Last Five in Feb

Happy last Friday of February to all of you! I’m sharing 5 flashbacks today from February past. These are memories that I like to remember. I will start with February of 2012. My sister Vera is a Leap Year baby so she only gets an official birthday every 4 years. In 2012 her kids threw her a Sweet Sixteen Party since it was her 16th actual birthday. It was such a fun party!

Since this Monday is another actual birthday for her I wanted to share this flashback.

Everyone who came to the party was encouraged to write their response to the I Love Vera because prompt on a white board and take a photo at the photo booth.

In February of 2013 my cousin and his wife came for a visit and I set a table for a meal together.

We gathered around the table to enjoy our visitors from California. My cousin and I are Russian and our moms would make Goluptsi for us so I thought it would be a special treat for our evening. Goluptsi are stuffed cabbages. You can see the recipe here. We had a wonderful salad with lots of goodies chopped in it and dressed with our favorite Persian Dressing.

Since I’ve seen that many of you enjoy knitting and working with your hands I thought I’d share some yarn bombing with you. We saw these yarn bombed trees in the Pioneer square area of Seattle in February of 2014.

P1040853

“It’s a statement by artist Suzanne Tidwell. She uses a knitting machine, which sounds like a saw and looks like a giant harmonica, to make evenly-stitched striped panels. It takes two or three of these large panels to wrap one tree trunk. She climbs a ladder or sometimes rents a lift to wrap the tree, then hand sews the final seam up the trunk.”

P1040855In February of 2015 I set a Valentine’s Day Table for a meal with the family.

2015-02-15 V-Day projects

And last but not least is February of 2016.

daniels broiler etc1Our beautiful and fun views on the way home from an early Valentine’s Day lunch on Friday the 12th.  The upper photo is Lake Washington from downtown Kirkland and the bottom is from Kirkland, too. They decorate this cow and dog sculpture according to the times and what is happening. In March they’ll be decorated for St. Patrick’s Day and then for Easter.

I’m linking up to Five on Friday with Amy at Love Made My Home and with Friday’s Fave Five with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story.

Hope your last weekend in February will be good. We’ve had some glorious sunny days and are now expecting some rain for the weekend. I’ve been able to walk without a rain jacket. Dear has a cold with a nagging cough that we suspect he got on his plane ride to or from Austin. I’m hoping he doesn’t share it with me!

Sweet Sixteen

Our second celebration in Southern California on Saturday was a Sweet Sixteen party for my older sister Vera. Are you wondering why we had a Sweet Sixteen Party for a 64 year old? Our sister Vera was born on Leap Year so she’s only had a birthday that landed on her actual birth day 16 times now.

Happy Birthday Vera!

Vera’s kids decided to throw this party for their mom and the creative wheels started turning. They did a wonderful job.

My nieces on the right put together the decorations. Melissa is my sister Kathy’s daughter. Kristin is my sister Vera’s DIL and Debbee is her daughter. Kristin is married to my nephew David and they hosted the party at their beautiful home. There were about 50 guests.

They had each guests name written on the cups which was a great idea. Everyone was able to keep track of their cup throughout the evening.

As each guest arrived they were guided into the photo room with this prompt…I Love Vera because…

There were blank white boards for us to write our reason for loving Vera. Such an affirming act to encourage her with!

My parents lasted a long time at the party. It was great to see them. There were lots of friends from our former churches at the party and we were able to get caught up a bit on our lives.

We took advantage of the photo room for a cousin photo.

Katie and I had a quick sleep at my nieces house and headed back to the Bob Hope Airport at 6:00 A.M. Sunday morning. We were pretty useless the rest of Sunday but after a good nights rest on Sunday night we were good to go and got back to finalizing all the wedding details.

11 days to go!