Our Visit to Jenny in Alabama

The Colemans took us to a beautiful state park and Talladega National Forest about 2 hours from their home. The drive was beautiful and even though it was raining off and on all day, we were able to go on this hike to a water fall. They hope to go camping there later.

The Colemans

Our Sweet Jenny

The waterfall

Jenny's house

Jenny wanted to put some of her dad's photography on her walls, and she choose some scenes from the Texas hill country. We helped her get them framed while we were there.

Jenny and her favorite photographer

She made a beautiful quilt that has all the members of her family represented in it and hung it over the piano in the living room. She is very talented at designing and quilting. Did I mention she won the homemaking award in high school?

The kids playing basketball in the backyard. I should have taken a picture of grandson #2 on his computer. You can always find him there.

On Sunday, we went to church. Mike is on the worship team and grandson #2 does the soundboard. My granddaughter is making these beautiful spring flowers in front look even better.

Granny and the Birthday Boy

Our youngest grandchild is going to be one this week. Here we are yesterday at his birthday party.

Our Trip to Florida

We had a very nice trip the last two weeks to Sebring, Florida. We had a lot of different adventures, (and photos, of course) but I'm going to start with the purpose of the trip which was to go to Sebring, Florida and assist with the ordination to the gospel ministry of our friend, Ken Lambert, at the Faith Missionary Baptist Church.



Bonnie, Ken's wife is in the center here, with her sister, Debi, on the left and her mother, Peggy, on the right. They sang a lovely special song at the service.


Ken and Bonnie's sons, from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan drove 1500 miles to surprise them this weekend and be with them for the ordination. Their daughter, Angel, lives with them.


Basil also had a three night seminar at their church: " Freedom and Healing Weekend". The diagram will look very familiar, I'm sure!

We had a lovely place to stay on the campus of the Sudan Interior Mission Retirement Village. What an awesome thing to look out the window and know that everyone who lives around us had been missionaries in Africa!

The day before we left, I recieved news that my dear friend, and roommate in nursing school, Jeri, has ovarian cancer. She has had surgery, now and will be having chemotherapy in the next few weeks. Please continue to pray with me for her.

The flowers are springing up!

Look, the winter is past, and the rains are over and gone. The flowers are springing up, the season of singing birds has come, and the cooing of turtledoves fills the air. The fig trees are forming young fruit, and the fragrant grapevines are blossoming. Song of Solomon 2:11-13

I was so excited and grateful to get up and look out my back door and see this today! I love spring and I immediately started thinking about where I can go to find more reminders and gifts of beauty from our God who loves us so much. Z and C, you may be in for a trip to find some flowers tomorrow with Granny and her camera!

Valentine Gift

The peas (from my favorite scrapbooking message board) have been posting their homemade "clip it up" scrapbooking storage product this week and I was envying them so I e-mailed the thread to Basil and he made his version for me for $0. It was made with a heavy duty clothes hanger, some cup hooks and some little clips that I had laying around in the junk drawer.
Here is the original version, which costs $60 and takes up a lot of room on the table. I think this is much better and gets some of my embellishments out of drawers and baskets out where I can see them and use them.
So here I sit on Valentines Day listening to Best Hits of the Sixties (think "The Lion Sleeps Tonight) and scrapbooking with my new Cosmo Cricket 9,000 piece kit from QVC.
Thanks, Honey!

My Valentine

I found this forty year old picture in a drawer a couple of weeks ago and put it on the table in the den to replace a lost picture of a Florida sunset. (That picture got lost when I decorated for Christmas. I also lost my forty year old bible from my wedding but I found that this morning.) We had been married about 3 weeks. I think my sister in law, Freda, took it. There has been a lot of water under a lot of bridges since that day. We have been through a lot. We have had a lot of joys and some sorrows. We have had three little girls and and we love them so much. They have made our lives worth living and have made us proud as well as humble. We are very much aware nothing we have done has made them the amazing women, wives and mothers they are. I would like to tell you, if you are in the time of your life when you are caring for your children, that your life will change when they get older. You will never stop caring for them or loving them or wanting to be with them, but it will come back to you and your husband...and it will be wonderful. If you are like us, and had children soon after you were married, you may be surprised. I was....I found out what good friends we really were and why we were attracted to each other in the first place. The first time we went on a trip together, alone, I actually told him..."Hey, we have fun together...I really like you!" And it's just getting better every day. So, hang on girls, raise those precious babies and have fun with them. Hang on through all the sanding and rubbing up against the rough parts of each other...great days are ahead when you are a mature,wise old lady.

Our Weekend Trip to Lubbock

Wendy and her boys and I went to Lubbock to visit Courtney and her family this weekend. Here are some of the things we did:

Digital scrapbooking lessons






We ate too much. Courtney is a wonderful cook and if I were her neighbor, I would be crazy with the smells coming from her backyard!





We had too much coffee.




















It was a beautiful Texas weekend and we played outside.












We talked over old times and checked our favorite blogs on our laptops.














We to Science Spectrum. The older kids and I went to an Omni movie: The Living Sea...it was wonderful! The younger kids played in the interactive exhibits.








We had bedtime stories.








Parting is such sweet sorrow! And we are very thankful for the safe trip!