Celebrating fourteen years of marriage!

Jeff and I travelled to Nisswa, MN to Grand View Lodge for our 14th Anniversary. I LOVE spending time with my husband and love seeing new places with him.

Grand View Lodge has been around for a very long time and I believe is more well know for being a meeting place for families. There are multitudes of lakeside cabins, with all kinds of planned lake activities. We enjoyed playing shuffleboard, tennis and going for bike rides.

We ate outside by the lake one evening and enjoyed some foo-fooey pizza along with live music.

The Lodge was gorgeous, especially at night. You can see the chairs in this picture as they had just finished a wedding.

They upgraded us for free to a three bedroom cabin, which actually downgraded us from a King-size bed to a double and just made us wish our kids were with us since we had all those extra beds. We had a great kitchen to have our own private, lazy breakfasts.

This was Jeff's secret, deep inner frustration showing when his wife took a non-droswy Dramamine for the flight and then was pretty much unconscious for the first afternoon and evening. Actually he was so understanding but I sure felt like a pathetic bum. I mean, really! Who get's knocked out on non-droswy Dramamine for 12 hours??

Sadly, the closest thing Jeff got to golfing was taking a picture with me near one of the fairways. He's a sport!

Thanks Jeff, for a wonderful weekend away and for walking with me on this Journey for fourteen years. I feel treasured by you!

Sunday's Coming

My lovely New Zealand friend sent me this link and it is made me laugh and it made me cry as I have attended several churches just like this one in the past year. I laughed because it magnifies just how ridiculous many have made church services and call them worship and I cry because it must incredibly grieve our Lord.

Click on this link below and see what you think.

Sunday Morning Church

Special Moments

After chasing this little guy through the nursing home, stopping him from opening oxygen tanks, running away with the wheelchair then the walker, then the wheelchair again, pushing someone's IV stand over and pushing all the buttons at the door, we finally got to have a nice little chat with mom the day before she was discharged from the nursing home.

She is walking now, in less pain and moving like I have not seen her move in a long time! She is still very weak and has no appetite, so my feeling is that the cancer continues to steal her energy and health. But for now, she can go out and smell the flowers and feel the sun on her back and enjoy the coming of fall....

...these are special moments...

School Days!

Can it be that school has started for another year? The kids were both sad, excited, nervous and happy. They all popped out of bed this morning and were ready to go at about 7:30.

I stand AMAZED at my kids, at how they are growing and changing before my very eyes. I treasure the summer I had with them and all that we were able to experience together and I am excited to see what the Lord is going to do in their lives this school year.

I pray that they will encounter their Lord Jesus in new ways and continue to grow in their understanding of His Word, His Love, His Mercy and Grace and Life in Him!

Mom's last art sale

Saturday was my mom's last entry into an art show. We sold pictures and prints and even the tent and display boards on her behalf. There are still 5 framed pictures left (you can see them a little in this picture) as well as some prints of the town square in Washington.

If you were not able to make the sale and would be interested in seeing the remaining water colors, let me know and we can provide you a private showing :).

Well done, mom. The sale went well and many came by to share wonderful memories of their time with you!

Mom should come home from the rehab nursing home this week!

Enjoying the weather!

We were trying to take advantage of the warm weather for a cookout - dinner on the patio, some games and ice cream and peaches.

Here is a very brief clip of our evening.

Meet my Jeff

I think this is okay to post on the web since it is all around the hospital and it say Methodist all over it so that they get the credit.

I just love this picture of Jeff as it captures so well who he is - one who truly cares for his patients and has a real passion promote health and meet their needs physically, emotionally and spiritually if possible.

And....he just looks like hottie too :-0

Worship

C.H. Spurgeon: "My dear friend, when grief presses you to the dust, worship there." (Via the Huie Family)

I found this on Josh Harris's blog. What a interesting and wonderful thought. For one day we will all be pressed into the dust by grief in one way or another and we must be prepared to worship there. Are prepared to worship in the good and the bad?? For the Lord has appointed all these things for our good and for His Glory.

A Mess

Does anyone else feel like a complete failure in the most simplest tasks? I find that the harder I try, the more I seem to fail...I keep telling myself it seems like I am failing more but I am just more conscious of the failures and somehow that is actually progress, but I am still not convinced.

These failures seem even too pathetic to bring to the Lord. It isn't like I need to pray for strength to get through some life-threatening disease, or wisdom to get my child away from drugs or patience while being laid-off. These are failures of just making my day go without quite so much chaos...of not yelling my children, or not knocking over the left-over cup of milk in or the fridge or on the counter or the table or wherever my child may choose to put it. It is not remembering something on my grocery list and having to go back; forgetting a previously scheduled event when I make a hair cut appointment....

These are no-big-deal kind of things, but in the long run they weary me because I seem to be ALWAYS doing them. Lord can I pray that I would be less of an idiot?? Can I pray for neater, better aligned brain cells that are just so scattered around up there in that cavern of a head? Is there a verse in Proverbs about using more post-it notes in order not to forget things?

I guess it all comes to learning more patience - not just me learning more patience when I screw up, but praying that others will have more patience around me and toward me. I know the Lord has made me who I am...I know that I am to be striving for more in my spiritual walk with him. But it seems that I could get a whole lot more done spiritually if I could get this earthly mess a little more cleaned up.

So Lord, I am sorry I forget, that I mess up, that I am not on the ball like I would like. BUT I am thanking you for how you made me and help me to always be humbled by my failures, but not humiliated, so that in the end I can still give you Glory.

The Next Step

My mom has been discharged from the hospital and is now on the rehab unit in a nursing home. It is so strange for me to go to a nursing home to visit her and it is in fact the one I worked in for almost 5 years after high school. I know what can happen in those nursing homes....

But my mom looks so good and is starting to walk around with a walker with less pain. Oh what a wonderful thing to see her smiling again and have color in her cheeks and a desire to sit up and get around! I have such high hopes that she can be free of much of this pain for awhile.

Thank you, Lord for this home that is caring for her and helping her walk again. Thank you for seeing her through this far and for being her ever present help in time of trouble. Thanks for giving her to me!