Kelly's Birthday at the Beach

I just got back from a lovely four-day weekend at the beach with some friends. Here are some pictures- I'll probably post more of them on Facebook at some point. The weekend was all about this girl (at least in her own mind it was):

Here's the house (Margaritaville) and the view from the front porch (if you look closely at the first one, you can see Tracy on the porch):Me and Misty (this was our room):

The whole house was beautiful- this is one of the bathrooms:
This is all of us (me, Tracy, Kelly, Misty, Abby and Stacy) on the front porch. It was cold, stormy and rainy for the first two days.

Me and Kelly: The sun finally came out on the third day after lunch (it still wasn't warm):This man plopped himself in front of our sunset and started doing situps and pushups. Show off. God at his very best (so maybe it wasn't all about Kelly? :-):

Fabulous Favors From the Father

F l o w e r s !

*Photos courtesy of Tim (used without permission! :-))

First day of..... Jacob and Spring

Our sweet little boy was born on the first day of Spring 8 years ago today! Here he is through the years:

Sarah adored her baby brother (she still does, but she wouldn't admit it). In almost every picture we have of the three of them together, Sarah is holding Jacob- he was like her own baby. Libby never wanted much to do with the little mommy-stealer. Ha.

Kindergarten graduation:
First grade school picture:
Jacob and his best friend Alec in one of our beautiful, blossoming ornamental cherry trees today:
The tree from the road... I love this time of year!!!! (As long as I have my Zyrtec handy).
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACOB!!!

Happy Spring (a day early)

I stopped at Dollar General yesterday morning to get some Tide and I saw these cute (cheap) Spring tumblers. Do I need any cute Spring tumblers? Well, not really. (Although, I have broken THREE glasses in the time I have been doing dishes by hand). But it wasn't a matter of needing them- it was a matter of them making me happy and me buying them so I could take the happiness home- I need some. They look really cute with my scarlet Fiesta dinnerware.

And below is a picture of the lily my mother-in-law brought for us to plant (it came in a kit) because I wanted her to see how big it is getting. I hope to be posting a picture of it blooming in the near future.

The Passion

Five years ago, the movie "The Passion of the Christ" came out and everyone in America, except me and Tim, saw it. At the time, I had heard enough about it to decide I did not want to watch my best friend be crucified in a movie theater along with 100 other people, many of whom I envisioned would be eating popcorn and eating Juji Fruits. No offense to anyone who did choose to see it in a movie theater... for me, it just seemed too personal for that. So I waited for the DVD so I could watch it in private.

By the time it came out on DVD, I had heard enough about it to be reluctant to rent it at all. I'm not even sure now all the reasons. We would say often "We should rent it", but we never did. A year or so later, my mother-in-law gave the movie to us for Christmas and it has sat, unopened, for three or four years, on our shelf all this time for reasons I cannot explain.

Well, last night I decided it was time. And so, five years after it came out, we finally watched "The Passion of the Christ".

It was extremely hard to watch... and had its desired affect on me and brought out lots of emotions, such as sorrow, love, and gratitude. I hope that I will remember it and hold it close for a long time to come and let it help me make decisions and find my way.

My favorite scene was Jesus with his mother when he was showing her the table that he had just made... and he splashed the water on her that she gave him to wash his hands. The most emotional parts to me were watching his mother watch her son suffer.

Thank you, Jesus, for the depth of your love that you would willingly go through the unthinkable for ME. I don't understand it, but I accept it with all the gratitude I have.

Puzzled

When my wonderful mom is here, we like to do puzzles together. :-) This is our first... we have already moved onto the second one.

Before and After

My skin was feeling very restless, stressed and uptight today. It just couldn't relax, even with a massage. See?

Then I got out my new lotion from Jergens and rubbed it in.......

My skin calmed down immediately and was at peace. Amazing!

I know you will want to run out and get some so your skin can be calm, too! Hurry while supplies last.

Everything tastes better when you eat it outside....

The weather here the past few days has been perfect. Around 70, a nice breeze, not alot of bugs out, yet, and the pollen hasn't become unbearable. It's hard to believe we had SNOW a week ago!

These perfect days are few and far between, so we have to make the most of them. My favorite part is having windows open in the house, especially at night when I am sleeping! And then last night Libby wanted to have our dinner outside on a blanket on the lawn, but I talked her into the (covered) back porch instead. Our back porch isn't really big enough for alot of patio furniture (although I wish it was), but we drug an old table and some chairs out there and ate outside. I even cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill, so it was the perfect picnic food. And, we also had CORN (I like corn, just not the word) and fresh pineapple. And we used a bright, "Springy" table cloth I got recently for $1.00 at Old Time Pottery. It was really nice.

I am sharing this picture just to embarrass Sarah (my favorite past time)...... :-)And then the kids played on the swing set a while, but I couldn't figure out how to adjust my camera to take pictures from the porch, with the movement and the darkening sky... this is all I came up with (ha ha):