The 7th of July

It seemed odd this year when July 4th fell on a Wednesday. I worked Monday and Tuesday, came home and thought it was Friday. (My mind is a funny thing.)

We were off from work on Wednesday, yet it was so steamy-hot that we stayed home and watched some fireworks off in the distance from our front door. (I love air conditioning.)

Back to work for Thursday and Friday, and here is a secret that Wonderful Husband told me....he thought Thursday night was Friday night. (Maybe the confused-mind-syndrome is contagious in this house? Ha!)

Although today is Saturday July 7th, we went to my sister-in-law's for a pig roast. It's an annual 4th of July tradition. The high temperature forecast for today was 100 degrees, and the weather forecasters were correct this time. (Boo!)

The pig was 108 lbs. this year.
Big pig.

Hamburgers and hotdogs were available
for those who didn't want pig for dinner.

This was where the lemonade, sodas, water, and
toy trucks were located.

Two tables of side dishes....

Desserts were covered so the little kids
(and adults) wouldn't break them out before dinner.

Although we had thunder and lightening move through our area, the day ended beautifully.

Wonderful Husband, our son, daughter, and son-in-law had tickets to a Phillies night game so they left the festivities early.

That's what happens when July 4th falls on a Wednesday and it isn't celebrated until the 7th.

Did the Wednesday holiday confuse you as much as it confused me?

One Thousand Gifts (818-833)

Continuing on my journey toward one thousand gifts....

We're back from Murrells Inlet, South Carolina where we had a lovely week of vacation.

The two things I miss since I work full time are my Thursday morning Bible Study group and the Adult Vacation Bible School at my church. Yet I am very fortunate that my friend Paula sent me handouts from Adult VBS that took place this past week.

This year's Adult Vacation Bible School had a local pastor teaching a series on "Faith: How It Works," and part of his teaching included the following quote(s) from Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude:

"There is no neutrality between gratitude and ingratitude. Those who are not grateful soon begin to complain of everything.

Gratitude, though, is more than a mental exercise, more than a formula of words. We cannot be satisfied to make a mental note of things which God has done for us and then perfunctorily thank Him for favors received.

To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with immense graces from Him.

Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and praise to the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference..."

My heart is filled with gratitude and I praise God for his goodness!

818 - 833 on my list of One Thousand Gifts. I'm thankful for:

818. Paula sending me handouts and including encouraging handwritten notes

819. buttery-soft sand, ocean water in the 70s, and cool ocean breezes

820. a nearby swimming pool

821. dragonflies

822. beautiful days at Garden City Beach (love this person's beach towel too)

823. drippy sandcastles. Someone worked hard on this sand masterpiece.

824. reading the book Not a Fan. Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus by Kyle Idleman.

825. wind rattling the palm tree fronds

826. hearing that the larger alligator population is farther inland. ;)

827. frogs croaking loudly one night

828. goats at Murrells Inlet Marshwalk

829. reading the post, "Choosing Life, When Cancer Fears are Everywhere"

830. my job and two weeks of vacation each year

831. my sister-in-law finding employment. Hooray!

832. my granddaughter and seeing her joy while crawling to me

833. God and His love and grace during our vacation

This post is linked to A Holy Experience: Multitudes on Mondays, One Thousand Gifts.


It's good to be home.

Vacation Recap 2012

Deep Thought: Does having a water feature in a pond encourage cooling thoughts?

New Vocabulary: "The Grand Strand." It was on billboards, mentioned in the news, etc. and I had to look it up on Wikipedia to learn that the term Grand Strand "was coined by The Myrtle Beach Sun columnist Claude Dunnagan in 1949 and 'Strand' itself derives from the German, meaning beach." The primary city in The Grand Strand is Myrtle Beach. South Carolina has approximately 60 miles of beaches.

I Wish I Could Forget: Riding past an accident scene where someone inside the car hit the windshield. Seat belts people! Prayer for the injured person already taken away by ambulance.

At The Beach: Seeing a girl (12ish) running to retrieve her younger sibling. She ran with confidence, and no self-conscious movement. May she always feel secure in her body!

What I Forgot to Pack: Chip clips, my visor, and the power cord for transferring digital pictures from camera to computer. Darn.

Does Anyone Remember?: The show "Room by Room" with Shari Hiller and Matt Fox on HGTV? I caught an episode of their new (to me) show "Around the House" on a South Carolina channel. Love those two!

A Bit Disappointing: A broken dishwasher. The frustrating part was the owner knew it and didn't have it repaired before we arrived for vacation.

Better News: Dishwasher was fixed on Thursday.

Too Much TV thought: We stayed in a lovely gated community. I'm assuming the gates keep bad people out (probably also people who shouldn't use the swimming pool). Does that mean there are no bad people inside the gates? I've watched too many TV shows that start with the line, "It was a quiet, crime-free community....until one day...crime made a visit..." Da, da, dummmmm.....

Longest Running Joke: On our way south and also every time we were looking for a restaurant to eat dinner while on vacation, "Hey Mom/Cindy, there's a Cracker Barrel!" (You see....I don't like Cracker Barrel and they are everywhere!!)

Best Book I Read: Not a Fan. Becoming a Completely Committed Follower of Jesus by Kyle Idleman.

Weird Questions: If you live in South Carolina do you go on vacation? If so, where?

Awesome Idea: In North Carolina we stopped for lunch at Chick-fil-a. There was a purple sign by the drive-thru that I made sure to read on my way out. It said, "Mom's Valet." Instead of me explaining it, I thought I'd give you a link that's kind of cute and is 4+ minutes long: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tav4q6A56l0  AWESOME idea for anyone with small kids and no energy or patience to stand in line to order and keep the kids occupied/out of trouble. Way to go Chick-fil-a! I wish Mom's Valet was around when my kids were young!

Have you been to South Carolina?


If not, where do you go for vacation?

Lack of Words

It strikes me as funny that after we return from a wonderful week of vacation in South Carolina, I have one simple thing I must do on Sunday, and I can't do it.

I find a nice card from my stationery collection and I have no grateful words to weave together in a note while returning the key to the condo owner.

My thoughts ramble around in my head while I think, "Is there a nice way to suggest that in the future they send two keys?" Because really there were only three adults there but if Wonderful Husband and The Teacher went to play golf what if I wanted to go to the pool or something? I would need the key to lock the place up.

And if you advertise that it rents to up to 8.....one key would be a disaster.

No.

What kind of thank you note would that be to include "constructive criticism?"

And by the way, they still have our deposit.

Do not criticize.

OK.

The dishwasher didn't work until the repairman came to fix it on Thursday. We rented the place from Saturday to Saturday. Once again, there were only three of us. We ate simple breakfasts and lunches and usually went out for dinner. No big deal, yet I have to admit that around Tuesday I thought that if someone else was in charge of washing dishes, they would have "felt my pain." (Or should I say adopted my bad-ish attitude.)

Stop me now!

So instead of writing the note and inserting the key on Sunday and mailing it off on Monday: I went to work for eight hours, visited my hairdresser and got my hair colored and cut (it had been 10 weeks since my last appointment!), and came home to write the note on Monday night.

I write the note telling them I'm glad we rented their condo for our vacation. The fellas played golf to their hearts' content. We swam in the pool, went to Garden City Beach (a mere 10 minute drive, and can I begin to tell you that Wonderful Husband found FREE parking and was in his element), and had the best pizza we've had in years at Milardo's Pizzeria and Sports Pub.

View of the pool from the condo

Garden City Beach
The woman is on a surfboard with a oar or a long paddle?
This reminded me of Hawaii. They have great skills there!

Awesome pizza!

I enclosed the key....and now wait for our deposit to be returned.

I didn't really have a lack of words.


I just had to readjust my thinking and writing toward kind and thankful words because we really did have a delightful vacation. 


I guess I just have "a bit of a problem" with transitioning from vacation back to reality.


Do you struggle with transitioning back from vacation?

One Thousand Gifts (812-817)

Continuing on my journey toward one thousand gifts....

Wonderful Husband and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary last week.

Our son (The Teacher) was born on our 5 year wedding anniversary.

We called The Teacher before we left for work to sing happy birthday, and to wake him up during his summer vacation.

We are awesome parents. Hee hee!

812 - 817 on my list of One Thousand Gifts. I'm thankful for:

812. my in laws celebrating their 63rd wedding anniversary

813. our 30th wedding anniversary

814. The Teacher and his 25th birthday

815. watching "Dallas" and still loving the theme song. Nostalgia is a lovely and funny thing.

816. training Brynne to do my job while I'm on vacation

817. South Carolina. So far sunny skies, 80s, and a cool ocean breeze

This post is linked to A Holy Experience: One Thousand Gifts, Multitudes on Mondays.

One Thousand Gifts (797-811)

Continuing on my journey toward one thousand gifts....

Friday was the last day of school for the students in our school district. My neighbor's garage door was open (meaning her sons had left to walk to the bus stop) and moments later I saw the big yellow bus drive past my house, for the last time until September.

I pray for the school bus kids on their way to school. I wish I would have had the discipline or determination or wisdom to do that when my own kids were on the bus. But life was busier back then with me starting household chores or in later years trying to get out the door to go to work.

I'm more aware that sometimes kids struggle with school, some don't have fun-filled summers with sleeping in and vacations and ice cream for dinner. Oh yes, years ago I read a magazine article with the idea of instead of preparing dinner, to serve ice cream for dinner (occasionally). I made a "sundae bar" with lots of choices to add to ice cream. I did it once and received a call from my neighbor asking if it was true. When I said yes, she said, "Thanks a lot. Your kids told my kids." (So I was dished up some sarcasm for being the best mom ever!)

Enough of my reminiscing. Back to the present.

The three high schools in our school district had their graduation ceremonies. I always think of our Superintendent who travels to all three schools to be present during each ceremony. This year the graduations were at 2:15, 4:30 and 6:30. I bet he's exhausted when all is said and done.

Lord, I pray for the high school graduates and for your guidance toward their future. I pray for the safety of all the students over the summer and for rest for the teachers and administrators. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

797 - 811 on my list of One Thousand Gifts. I'm thankful for:

797. all high school and college graduates

798. our son (The Teacher) finishing his second year of teaching

799. Rita's water ice: cherry flavor with little chunks of cherry

800. our niece having her third child...Jonah. Welcome to the world!

801. a Fios service technician who said two or three hours and finished the job in 1.5 hours

802. the interesting weather pattern in our area: sun, clouds, rain, repeat.

803. meeting Maria for coffee on Saturday

804. preparing for vacation

805. clean laundry

806. paid bills

807. catching up on correspondence: cards, RSVP for a wedding, etc.

808. listening to two sermons online

809. a new employee at work this week

810. dental and orthodontist appointments, both in one week (makes my mouth tired just thinking about it)

811. daylilies, always daylilies!

This post is linked to A Holy Experience: Multitudes on Monday, One Thousand Gifts.

Do you pray for students and teachers?
Did you have someone graduate this year?

One Thousand Gifts (781-796)

Continuing on my journey toward one thousand gifts....

Wonderful Husband and I took a road trip to Maryland this past weekend for a wedding. We left Friday night after work and encountered storms along the way. Some of the rains were heavy and the windshield wipers couldn't keep up with the rain. That was when Wonderful Husband was driving and I was praying. We made it safely to the hotel, still tense but were able to relax once we checked in, brought our luggage to our room, and had a drink in the hotel bar.

Wonder of all wonders, when we woke up on Saturday (the day of the wedding) the sky was blue, the sun was bright, humidity low, windy yet sunny and in the 70s.

I saw my friend Terri (mother of the groom) minutes before the wedding and just have to say, her dress was magical. I thought it was a beautiful purple and minutes later as she was escorted down the aisle....it was a lovely blue. She was glamorous!

Of course the bride and groom were beautiful and handsome and the ceremony just perfect.

Our beautiful table at the reception:

Funny moments:
Stepping on the hotel elevator to leave for the reception with two people and their dog Poopsie. (Name not changed to protect the innocent guilty.) After Poopsie licks my toes and leg, her owner tells me that she is friendly and that's her way of getting to know people. (Two thoughts: I wish Poopsie didn't want to make my acquaintance and Poopsie was not my favorite animal at that moment.) The upside: I'm glad Poopsie wasn't a biter!

A couple floors down, the elevator opens and the parents of the bride enter. I said, "You must be the parents of the bride." The mom says, "How did you know?" I thought about saying I was psychic but instead was truthful, "I was at the wedding." Too funny.

#781 - 796 on my list of One Thousand Gifts. I'm thankful for:

781. safe travel through torrential Maryland rain

782. Wonderful Husband's calm driving skills

783. God's protection

784. celebrating Pat and Megan's wedding

785. Terri and her magical dress

786. sitting with Denise and her family at the reception

787. a room filled with happy people celebrating a new marriage

788. sweet wedding favors: chocolate dipped pretzels! Really creative and yummy.

789. watching Orioles flying around the hotel

790. never seeing Poopsie again

791. Wonderful Husband playing his guitar. Our granddaughter watches him like he's a rock star!

792. a gift card to Berean Christian Bookstore...$30 never sailed through my fingers so quickly

793. hard eucharisteo: our local Genuardi's grocery store closing down, to be replaced with a Weis'? Change from the familiar yet I'm hoping to see familiar faces when the store re-opens

794. bi-planes flying side-by-side overhead

795. our son getting his Virginia driver's license. Yippee!

796. finding Wordle and still trying to figure it out

This post is linked to A Holy Experience: Multitudes on Mondays, One Thousand Gifts.

Have you been to a wedding lately or pray while your husband drives through storms?