Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Little Is Much

We had our Ladies Thanksgiving Fellowship last night.  I usually bake a turkey for that and this year was no exception.  My house smelled so good and I had Christmas music playing.  It was great.  I love this time of year!

I directed a wedding this past weekend that had thirty people in it.  Yes.  Thirty.  It was a huge wedding party!  But it actually went very smoothly.  Even the rehearsal was no problem.  The wedding was for a couple in our church, both previously married with adult children.  Both lost their spouses and God brought them together and it was a truly, beautiful ceremony.  I cried more than once.  Just sweet, sweet.  So Congratulations, Mrs. Linda and Brother Dennis!

We also attended the birthday party for a young lady in our youth group.  Pizza, chips and salsa, peanut butter ice cream sandwich cake, and roasted marshmallows around a bond fire.  It was a nice time.

Sunday was a great day.  Pastor Goodman preached on The Lion and The Lamb.  Oh, my, my!  What a great sermon, with two precious souls saved.  Had a great play practice Sunday afternoon!  Sunday night, Pastor gave all the preachers in our church a few minutes to give a mini sermon.  I love it when that happens.  Some of the BEST sermons come from that.  We also baptized.  Praise God!  Thankful for a church where souls are saved and the baptism waters are stirred. 
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The ladies fellowship was special because we had a really wonderful speaker, whom we ALL love very much.  Mrs. B O'Malley.  I love that sweet lady!  She had some wonderful things to say and I think we all gleaned from her wisdom.

Our theme was "Little Is Much When God Is In It."  It doesn't matter if we feel we're not talented or gifted in certain areas, God has something for each of us and it doesn't matter how small it may seem, if God is in it, it's BIG!

We had a delicious meal prepared by all of our ladies.

Heard songs from our ladies quartet and also my dear friend, Brenda.
And it was a real treat to sit a table with my friend, Meghan, and all the other crazy girls.  They sure kept Meghan and me laughing.
Love those girls!

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Just For My Canadian Friend

I received a text from Canada the other night telling me I had been neglecting my blog.  So for the sake of my sweet Canadian friend, Melissa, who, by the way, has the most adorable little kids IN Canada, here is my update and all that I have neglected to post.
 
I'm sure that these pictures will be out of order.  I can't help it.  I can't remember the order in which they were taken.

So grab a cup of coffee, a doughnut...or two...and get comfortable.  You'll be here a while.

First things first.  I'm home.  I've been home a few weeks now.  Mom is doing great!  She still has several months of rehabilitation, I think.  But right now she's beginning to use a cane.  She's still using her walker when she gets up in the mornings and later in the nights when she's most unstable.  Hannah stays with her a lot through the weekends and brings her to church on Sundays.  She cooks her meals and is able to do a few things for herself.  I go to her house on Thursdays to clean, do her laundry, and get her groceries. 

Today is Thursday and so I went for our normal routine day, but also took her for our hair appointment.  I was thinking about it and this was the very first time she has been anywhere besides church and her doctor's visits.
While we were at the beauticians she talked me into a new do.  So here it is.  I love it.  It's going to take a little getting used to, especially since it's so much shorter than what I'm used to.  But I do like it.

I recently joined a photography club.  My first assignment for this next meeting is Night Sky.  I am not good at night sky, that's for sure.  I've learned some things, though, and I'm working on getting better. 
Here's a picture of a few night shots.  I wish I had been in a better spot for the last one, but I had a lot of trees blocking my view.  I liked the coloring of the sky so I went ahead and shot it.


Our holiday season begins when we watch "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."  We have a Charlie Brown movie for every holiday, I think.  Anyway, we had a Pumpkin party and watched the movie and it was fun.  Always fun.  I make orange punch (One orange Hawaiian punch, one two liter ginger ale, and one can of Dole pineapple juice), pumpkin cookies, and we had tacos for dessert.  Not exactly pumpkin themed, but yum.  Harrison carved a pumpkin so we roasted the pumpkin seeds.  That was my first time doing that and they were really good.
Looks like a kiddie party, really.  But you know what?  My husband and adult children love this tradition.  We do one for the Grinch too.  :)

I recently had a photo shoot with my "son" Josh and his fiance' Taylor.  These two are a wonderful couple.  What the Lord has done for their lives is truly amazing.  I love them and we had a good time on our shoot.

We had a homeschool field trip this week to the Schiele Museum in Gastonia.  We did some school pictures there, went to the park for lunch, back to the museum to tour the Mammal Safari, which was totally awesome.  If you're in the area, take your child.  Live animals! It was great. 
This Lynx was enjoying a meal of a rat.  ick!
 Lemurs.  Cute.
 Monkeys.  The ones in the cage.  Not outside.  Ok, well the ones outside too.  But anyway...
 Honey bears.  I loved them.  They were babies all snuggled together keeping warm.
 Uhhh, yeah.  Bats.  Ewwww
 Kangaroos!
 Timber Rattlesnake.  This is what I was bitten by when I was sixteen.  These are one mean snake! 
 
We had our Fall Festival this month.  As usual, we had a great time.  There were a few mini me's of Brother Mark's running around.  haha
There were games, face paintings, hot dogs, cotton candy, pop corn, sodas, sand art, and lots of candy!
Bruce played a little putting.
 And this little jewel won the candy corn jug for guessing the closest number of how many was in the jug.  She was a very happy little girl, but I think her mom wasn't so much.  haha
 
I shot a wedding last month also.  That was a lot of fun.  The couple was so young and in love.  Their parents were WONDERFUL!  And I had a great time.
 
Had a shoot last weekend with this amazing little guy.  Oh my goodness!  He is just the sweetest little boy!
 
I could just squeeze him! 

Harrison and I went to the Grover Pumpkin Festival last month.  That was fun...and very interesting.  Harrison played a little Pumpkin bowling.  As a matter of fact, you picked out your pumpkin and bowled with it and were able to keep the pumpkin.  That's the one he carved for our pumpkin party. 
 We saw a really sad looking dog.  Why do people do this to your doggies?  lol 
 We ran into a mean lookin' dude.  Actually, he's from our church and one of the nicest men you'll meet.  He just looked mean here.  haha
 Harrison had his first cake pop.  I have no idea where he's been that he's never had a cake pop before now.  But he thoroughly enjoyed it.
 Posing with the Grover Fire Department truck.
 Found a friend and rode a ride.  I have no idea what "D" has in his mouth.  But that's funny.
 Ran into some friends from church.
 Saw some interesting and creative costumes.  lol
 
 Played a sling shot game where you had to try and hit the chicken in the field.  Not a real chicken.  More of a man with a chicken head on, pretending to be a chicken. 
 And saw loads of pumpkins painted by preschoolers.  There were some really funny ones there. 

It's been a busy month and a half since I last blogged.
Happy now, Melissa?  hehe