Friday, August 29, 2014

August Wrap-Up

August is quite a month in my extended family.

Thirty-three years ago it was the month of the race.  Who was going to be my parents' first grandchild?  All bets were on my oldest brother's baby, who was due in early August.  We were fairly certain that my oldest sister's child would not win the race; her due date was the end of August and you know how first babies like to be late!

Guess what?

If you know my oldest nephew, it probably does not surprise you that he was in a rush and got here on the third.  You might think that my oldest niece's late arrival meant that she was destined to be one of those always-fashionably-late types.  Nope.  She's just gracious enough to let her cousin get here ahead of her.

Then I met my dear friend Susan and guess what?  Her younger daughter beat both of them!

So we have Miss Priss' birthday on the 1st, then Matt on the 3rd.  Matt's little sister (Mr. Marvelous Jr.'s twin cousin) is on the 6th.  My oldest brother's wife has a birthday on the 10th (and you had better believe we are thankful for this one!!).  On the 17th her daughter, my oldest niece, celebrates her wedding anniversary and on the 22nd her birthday.  On the 30th, my oldest sister ~ the oldest nephew's mother ~ gets to celebrate her birthday.  My friend Tammy wraps up the month with her birthday on the 31st.  Whew!

So to all of you family, and the friends I haven't mentioned who also celebrate their birthdays this month:


Happy Birthday by bobby520 - Happy Birthday
Courtesy Openclipart.org
I am thankful for each and every one of you!

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Contest

I bet you thought I forgot!

We only had a few suggestions.

There was Milton.  I am not re-reading Paradise Lost this year.

Romeo.  I like it, but it just didn't fit him.  He has too many "wives".

Big Daddy.  We've already had one.  I'm trying to forget him but the scars make it hard.

Fluffy/Poofy/Hamburger were all vetoed by Mr. Marvelous (sorry, Gentlemen!).

Roosty was cute, but again, it just did not fit his personality.

We tend to be rather quirky and rather picky with the animals we name.  Remember Barrabas?!

There was only one thing left to do.  I sent out a distress signal to my friend Rixie

Something about how much I appreciate her family's sense of humor and creativity, especially that of her youngest (she is raising her children well and teaching them to appreciate the finer things in life, like Dr. Who and Buckaroo Banzai).

Within an hour I had the following suggestions:

Sriracha - they have a rooster on the bottle
Peter Pan or Rufio - they liked to crow like roosters
Hannigan - from Rooster Hannigan in Annie
Rory- we've had a Doctor Who sick day marathon
Either Bob or Fred in honor of The Egg and I
And my son's unexplainable answer Cluckie McCluckerson

While Mr. Marvelous Jr. would have preferred Sriracha, something that hard to pronounce (and spell!) was not going to make it.  I had already vetoed my own idea of Mike Wazowski.

I read the list to Mr. Marvelous and we both burst out laughing at Cluckie McCluckerson.  So without further ado, and with many heartfelt thanks to Rixie's son (one of my favorite suspender-wearing-Dr.-Who-loving people), meet our rooster.

Cluckie McCluckerson.



English Muffins and Strawberry jam...and a Timmy the Geek sticker....are on the way to them with my thanks.

I warned you it was subjective!

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Company Is Coming!

Do you remember our company that we had back in the fall?

Or the company that came calling earlier this summer?

Guess what?  They're baaaaack.  They seem to love the cool, wet days as much as I do.






I think they like the peas as much as I do, too!



Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Kitchen Window August 22, 2014

Summer came this past week, with high temperatures and afternoon and evening thunderstorms.  It was a reminder that while I may be seeing some color here and there, the angle of the sunlight may be shifting, and the days are getting shorter, summer is not over yet. 

There is still a lot of green around.







Monday, August 25, 2014

Monday Memories

I grew up in a rather large manse in Greenville, South Carolina.  There were five children (one year six) in the family and we needed the space.  It was not the largest house in town by any stretch of the imagination, but it was very large.  It was a two-story with a full basement and an unfinished attic. 

The attic was accessible only through a ladder built into the wall of the linen closet ~ well, if you wanted to you could climb the shelves of the linen closet instead of the ladder, but if Mom caught foot prints on her clean towels and sheets there was big trouble!  Once you got up there you had to walk carefully along the rafters and be sure not to step on the insulation in between, because if you did you were sure to fall through into the room below.  You could, however, peek down through the slats of the attic fan into the hallway below.  That attic fan was "fantastic".  It made a great place to put the candles during our Secret Club meetings.  You could only join the Secret Club if you dripped hot candle wax on your hand without crying.  It took me a couple of times to make that happen.  Once you had achieved that, you were allowed to write your name on the ceiling or the wall.  Did I mention that there was exposed insulation up there?  And that we had candles?  Okay then.

The upstairs was where the four bedrooms and one of the bathrooms were.  The street side of the house had Mom and Dad's room (which was also Mom's sewing room), the bathroom, and the bedroom that my middle sister and I shared for years.  Oh the drama of the shared bedroom!  The screeching and fussing.  The tape down the middle of the room.  The fight over who got more of the closet.  The fussing over whose mess was worse.  Well; you get the picture.  My brothers shared a room on the back side of the house and my oldest sister relished her position as Eldest and the benefit of a bedroom ALL. BY. HERSELF.  Except for that one year when her best friend lived with us while her family lived in North Carolina.  Which added an "interesting" element and is another story entirely.

The stairway itself was wonderful.  There was a long bannister that could be slid down (and was) (frequently).  Sheets could be dropped down for laundry, making a lovely hiding place in the downstairs hallway.  Dining room chairs could be turned upside down on the stairs and would magically become sailing ships or sometimes space rockets.  There was an incident once where one of my brothers (I won't tell you which one but he does have a PhD in Geology....) dropped a thermometer to "see if it really was unbreakable".  It wasn't.

The downstairs was perfect.  There was a dining room in the front that was big enough for a table that could ~ and often did ~ seat ten people (piano benches and small children are a great space-expander).  Adjacent to that was the "Breakfast Room" which was really Mama's office and the dog whelping room.  Well it just worked that way, that's why!  That led into the ginormous kitchen and pantry, which also led to the back porch and the steps down into the backyard.  The other side of the house had a bathroom, a den (in the back) which is where we watched our one hour of television (unless your name was Daddy and it was football season) (or unless you were sick).  There was a small fireplace in that room with a beautiful oil painting hanging over it that was painted by one of mother's grandparents.  The other side of that fireplace was the living room fireplace.  Oh, that living room!  It was huge and lovely and airy and gracious.  Over top of that fireplace was another oil painting by the same family member.  I was convinced that the artist had painted the picture in the den and then turned around and painted the scene behind him and that was the picture hanging in the living room.  Because that was how they were hung. 

Anyway, the living room was very, very large with two sets of double windows.  That was where we went right after breakfast and before school every morning to sit while we read the Bible together and had morning prayers.  Any of the neighborhood kids who rode with us to school KNEW that if they got there early they were going to listen to the Bible and were expected to pray.  Out loud.  We had a piano and it got a lot of use.  Sometimes after church on Sunday evenings, Dad gave an open invitation to anyone who wanted to come over to the house so we could have a hymn-sing.  The living room was always full with the overflow into the dining room and even onto the stairs in the hallway and we would sing for what felt like hours.  Those were little glimpses of glory.

There was also a screened porch on the side of the house off from the den and the living room.  We kept a porch swing going out there, and stored our bikes when we weren't out racing them. 

The hallway was perfect on rainy days or in the cold of winter.  We would strap on our roller skates and skate from the front door to the hall closet at the end of the hall, back and forth until Mom heard us and chased us down to the basement.  We certainly kept her busy refinishing those hardwood floors.

The basement was an amazing area.  When my oldest brother got to the age of needing his own space, he moved down there but it was an open area with a concrete floor and large support pillars.  You could skate down there, grab hold of one of the support pillars, and whip around until you got dizzy.  The area under the living room was the ping-pong table nook (and sometimes the electric train station).  There was a small area under the front porch where we stored canned goods.  For some reason I was convinced that this had once upon a time been an entrance to a tunnel for the underground railroad.  Even though the house was built in the 1920s.  Go figure.  The laundry room was under the kitchen and was even bigger than the kitchen was.  It was fun on linen laundry day because with six beds' worth of linens, there were PILES of sheets to hide in.

We moved when I was twelve and the two oldest were in college.  We would go back occasionally to visit friends and even when we were all in our 20s we would talk about the fact that while most childhood homes shrink over the years, this one had not.

Last month my oldest brother and his wife went back to Greenville for their high school reunion.  I don't know why in the world they want to tell people it was their fortieth; there is no way they are old enough to have graduated from high school forty years ago  (especially since that means Mr. Marvelous' fortieth reunion is looming).  While they were there, they drove down our old street and stopped to take a picture of the old house.  We were all flabbergasted.  Apparently the family of the lady who lived next door bought about half of our old front yard!  And when they did, they remodeled the house, making it smaller on the side.  The living room went from two sets of double windows to only one.  I could have been mistaken about the dining room; there may have only been one set of double windows to begin with, (although my parent's room above the dining room definitely had two sets), but I am sure that the living room was bigger.  Think about all those people who sat there during our hymn sings!  Oh well.  It's still a beautiful house.

From the left side; porch, living room, dining room.  The sidewalk wasn't that fancy when we lived there

And the memories are precious!

Friday, August 22, 2014

Friday!

I shared a walk down Memory Lane with my dear Aunt this morning.  This is one of my favorite pictures of my Grandpa (my Mom's Dad).  When he lived in Geneva, Switzerland, he and a friend went in together and bought this boat so that they could sail the lake.  Grandpa is the modest one in the back at the tiller.

I hope you get to go outside and feel the breeze this weekend!



Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Proverbs and Names

I wrote the other day about going back to my old habit of reading Proverbs each day.  On Monday of this week I came to one of my favorite verses.  It fits in with my Names Project.

The name of the Lord is a strong tower; 
The righteous runs into it and is safe.
Proverbs 18:10                        

Isn't that a wonderful verse?  Just His name is a strong tower.  A safe refuge.  A hiding place for the righteous.  An unconquerable fortress.




His peace to your home.


Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Yard Sale Memories

Mr. Marvelous and I had a marvelous time on our annual trek to the World's Longest Yard Sale.  We did not find as many items this year as we have in the past, but we weren't looking for as many this year.  It's a good thing, too!  This year's sale was a little less hopping than usual due to the weather.  We set off Friday morning with our envelope and our list. 

Usually Mr. Marvelous prefers to bypass Gadsden.  It can get a little crazy from the Gadsden exit up to Dogtown, so our normal route is to stay on I-59 to Ft. Payne and cut up the mountain coming to the highway at Dogtown and missing the traffic.  This year Mr. Marvelous surprised me by getting off at Noccalula Falls and heading over to the very start of the sale.  We were a little surprised by the lack of traffic and the lack of vendors.  We had not known about the strong storms that whipped through that area Thursday evening.  We stopped at one place with a large number of vendors and started wandering through.  I had realized half-way to Gadsden that I had forgotten to bring a hat (I'm a red-head; I burn) and Mr. Marvelous wanted to find me something to shade my delicate nose.  We found some hats and started looking through them, visiting with the vendor as we did.  Turns out he had a tree fall slap down on his house the evening before.  He wasn't fussing; he was expressing praise and thanksgiving to God for preserving his family!  After talking with him a bit I could not resist this


I wore it all day!

We wandered through another area where we usually find lots of great items and I found this, which I snatched up pretty quickly

Of course I know that you know what this is, but in case your children don't know, it is what you use to remove the peas from the boiling water after you have blanched them and before you put them in the freezer.  Right?  Right!

This book is in lousy shape, but I couldn't pass it by.  I'm a sucker for old readers!


As we were making the turn from DeSoto Falls State Park (one of my favorite places in Alabama) I caught sight of one of the items I most wanted to find.  Mr. Marvelous, being marvelous, did not fuss, he just turned the van around (not easy in that area!), went back, talked to the man and loaded me up.

Isn't it beautiful??!!







No, not the feet, the step-stool!








And it is the right height.













Mr. Marvelous Jr. was particularly relieved that I found this.  He HATES coming home from work to find me perched on this to clean the top cabinets in the kitchen.


"Mother, that is a shower chair.  It is NOT a step-stool!"
Bless his heart.

This vendor also had this, which I had been wanting for several years, so I was glad to find it and he gave me a good deal on the two items together.


It had started pouring by this time, and it was getting a little late, so the vendors were giving up, packing up, and going home for the evening by this point.  We drove on to Tennessee, found our hotel, had supper and visited one of our all-time favorite places in the world.

McKay's Used Book Store.  Oh, McKay's, you make me so happy!  I begged the lady to let me just spend the night.  I promised her that I would not make a mess, and tried to convince her that having me there would beef up security.  She didn't fall for that.  She was nice enough, but she would not let me spend the night.  Sigh.  However, in our time there I did manage to find the following (Mr. Marvelous also found several gardening books).  




When we got up the next morning the weather was a little iffy, so we decided to go up the mountain first and see what we could find.  It was a mess!  The traffic was backed up on the main road for miles and there were not nearly as many sales as we remembered from when we lived there.  We did stop at one place and I found these


We got off the main road after that to get out of traffic and I found some familiar and pretty places that I shared with you last week.  After that we drove back down the mountain and decided to browse around the Flea Market we used to enjoy.  Good thing we did; I found more items on my list there!

What might this be? 








A hat rack, of course!








 




I discovered that using a safety pin to attach a piece of ribbon helps keep hats on the rack.

We did swing through Mentone on the way home.  We saw a few items but again, the vendors seemed a little discouraged by the weather.  We did see this amazing creation


That is one talented craftsman!

After that we headed down the mountain and drove back home.  

And now it is only 43 days until the 411 sale!

Monday, August 18, 2014

Monday

I have promised that I would post pictures of what Mr. Marvelous and I found at THE Yardsale last weekend.  I will get to that tomorrow.  I was impressed today that the following is so important that it needs to come first.  Pictures tomorrow, I promise!

If you follow my blog you know that my cousin Danny Carlton died last week.  Thursday evening I posted the following statement:    

I got a call this afternoon that my cousin Dan Carlton died this afternoon.  Danny is finally, completely and eternally healed.  He is in the presence of our Glorious God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ.  He is reunited with his parents, our grandparents, and many other family members and close friends.  Most importantly, God who began a good work in him was faithful to bring it to completion.  This afternoon Danny got to feel the arms of our God wrap around him, and heard His voice telling him, "Well done, my son!"

I want to be sure that you understand why I said what I said.  There are a lot of misconceptions in the world today about death and about heaven.  There are a lot of people who believe ~ and sadly who teach ~ that heaven is someplace for the "nice" or "good" or "deserving" people after death.  That is a lie and it is a dangerous lie that keeps people from the Truth.  NO ONE is nice enough, or good enough, or deserving of heaven.  NO ONE.  My cousin Danny was a good man.  He was kind, he was loving, he was giving.  We have all known people like him.  Our grandparents were exceptional people.  Granny would do anything for anyone.  My parents are amazing people who would sacrifice anything to help others out.  Again, we have all known people about whom it might be said, "If anyone deserved heaven, it was that person; they were a good person!".  Let me make this as clear as I can:  That is a lie.

There is only one way in which any person has the hope of heaven and that is through the sacrifice of Jesus the Messiah.  Please don't roll your eyes, sigh and say to yourself, "Oh.  She's one of those people".  Yes, I am but please read on through to the end.  Other than Jesus, no one has ever been born perfect.  Other than Jesus, no one has ever lived a sinless life.  Mother Theresa freely admitted that she was not perfect.  So did Billy Graham, Charles Spurgeon, John Wesley, John Calvin, Martin Luther, St. Augustine, The Apostles, King David, Moses.....are you getting the picture here?  All these "spiritual giants" were very clear about the fact that they were sinners.

Here is more bad news.

God is so perfectly holy that He absolutely can not tolerate sin in His presence.

Heaven is the place where God lives.

Uh-oh.  Now what?  If that is really true (and it is), then that would mean there is no hope for us??!!  Is there any good news?

As a matter of fact, there is!

Jesus Christ ~ who is Himself God ~ became a man and lived a perfect life.  No sin ever.  When you look at the fact that He himself said that sins of the mind and heart are just as bad as sins of the flesh, that is even more amazing.  Not only did he not do sin, he did not even think sinful thoughts.  Let that sink in for a minute.

After thirty-three years of being perfect and sinless and living with sinful people (can you imagine how hard that must have been?!), He allowed Himself to be further robbed of His glory by going through a mock trial.  He was beaten, shamed, despised, lied about, and then murdered in an incredibly painful and unpleasant way.  He did not deserve any of that punishment.  Why in the world would anyone do that?  He did it for me.  He did it for you.  And ultimately He did it for the glory of God.

After He was murdered, He was buried.  He was dead.  His dead body laid in a tomb that was sealed.  Creation held it's collective breath.  And then came Sunday morning when He rose again.  Get that?  He conquered sin through His death, and then He conquered death.  If the history of Jesus Christ is True ~ and it is! ~ then that turns everything upside down and inside out.  He lived, worked, died and then beat death and came back to life to pay the price of sin.

"Wait a minute" you might ask, "wasn't He sinless?"

YES!

"So why did He pay the price of sin?"

He was paying the price of our sin.

What are you going to do with this Truth?  A cognitive acknowledgement of this Truth is not sufficient.  This Truth is acknowledged by the demons and they are still condemned to hell.  This Truth is so profound that it requires a profound response.  It requires surrender to Jesus as the ultimate authority.  When you consider ~ really consider in the core of your being ~ just exactly what He did, you either toss it aside as absurd, or you realize that because of what Jesus has done He has the right to be the boss of every facet of your life.  Total and complete surrender to Him.  That changes everything about your life.  Your life is suddenly a lot less about you and a lot more about HIM.  My pastor refers to it as a life that is "making much of Jesus".

This was the life that Danny lived.  Danny was surrendered completely to Jesus.  His life was all about giving glory to God.  Danny was not trusting in his own goodness, niceness or worthiness to get him into heaven.  Danny's trust was ONLY in Jesus and the work that Jesus accomplished for him.  That is why I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Danny is in heaven.

Being surrendered to Jesus does not mean that we are owed anything.  It does not mean that God gives us riches or health or "good things".  It is not about what we have.  It is about us giving glory to God in every part of our lives.  Danny understood that.

Toward the end of his life, speech was very challenging for Danny.  One night at dinner his dear Jody heard him say the following:  "Dear Lord, thank You for the process that tests me in every way to remember You.  Amen"  

Please think about this today.  Please, if there are things I have written that are hard for you to understand, ask me questions.  Read what God has to say about Himself in His word, the Bible.  Ask someone you know who professes to be a Christian.  Please know that I am praying that God will use these words I have written to help you see Him more clearly.

May His grace, mercy and peace fill your heart and your home.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Cousins.

I got a call this afternoon that my cousin Dan Carlton died this afternoon.  Danny is finally, completely and eternally healed.  He is in the presence of our Glorious God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ.  He is reunited with his parents, our grandparents, and many other family members and close friends.  Most importantly, God who began a good work in him was faithful to bring it to completion.  This afternoon Danny got to feel the arms of our God wrap around him, and heard his voice telling him, "Well done, my son!"

In honor of Danny.

Not everyone is blessed with cousins.  Some folks don't even have any cousins.  My son's generation in our family has an abundance of cousins, and in general they are pretty close both physically and emotionally.  My son is an only child, so for him to have "big brother" cousins has been a huge blessing in his life.

In my generation of my family we have four cousins on my Mom's side, and twelve on my Dad's side.  My Mom's sister and her children lived in New England, so we spent very little time with them.  My Dad's family on the other hand, mostly lived close and extended family get-togethers were frequent.  We would usually all meet in Weaverville, NC (a wonderful Mayberry-like town when we were growing up).  Grandaddy and Granny lived just down the street and around the corner from Uncle Glen and Aunt Janet and their amazing Victorian house with a REAL stained-glass window ~ and later a REAL swimming pool (!), so we would take over the houses and porches and streets and sidewalks and spend time with each other.  One of my cousin Scott's favorite past-times was scaring the girls with his pet boa constrictor.  Sometimes we would go to Dillingham and converge on Uncle Dan and Aunt Virginia's beautiful stone house.  They lived next door to Uncle Dan's church and there was lots of room to play. 

We stayed in contact through our college years.  My sister Nancy shared a dorm suite with our cousin Janet Lee when they were at Furman together.  I'll never forget my cousin Danny's adventure.  He and a friend decided to ride their bikes from North Carolina to Key West, Florida!  Quite the adventure, and they had some interesting tales to tell about it.  Since we were living in Miami at that time, they came and stayed with us for a night or two.  We did all learn that the police down there did not really appreciate having bikes on the old 7-mile bridge!

We've tried to be there for each other during the hard times.  Car wrecks, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer have all taken their toll on our extended family in both my Dad's generation and in mine.

Right now there is a cancer battle going on, and that brings me to the point of this post.  My cousin Danny has been battling brain cancer for some time now.  He had a resurgence of it in June of this year.  Danny is a man of God.  His faith is solid.  I'll never forget his conversation with my Dad right after his father's unexpected death of a heart attack on Christmas Eve.  His words as he and Dad talked on the phone that night before we all left to drive to North Carolina were, "Uncle Gordon, isn't it great that Dad gets to spend Christmas in Heaven this year?!"

Danny is celebrating today.  Please remember his dear wife Jody and his sisters Elizabeth, Janet and Gigi as they gather to celebrate his life. 

Thank you.

Rural Beauty (mystuart) Tags: building church rock stone architecture nc 1930s bell churches iglesia kirche eglise presbyterian 2012 kirke dillingham latedaylight mystuart ncpedia
Photo by Mystuart Flickr

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Proverbial Gleanings

I have gotten back to the habit of reading a chapter of Proverbs each day.  It's fun how it works out to go through and match the chapter to the day of the month; chapter 31 gets saved as a special treat for long months.

I was reading the seventh chapter and thinking about some things.  It is easy to get to verses 10-20 and think "Well I am not like that!"  But there are some interesting and important contrasts that deserve a little attention.  The woman who is described is the woman we are not to be.  That woman does not bring glory and honor to her Creator.  However just thinking to oneself "Thank God I am not like her!" (see Luke 18:13 and following) is not enough.  If you really think about it, if we are not to be like that, how are we to be as women? 

Perhaps we are to be quiet, rather than loud.
 
We are to be attentive to the path of righteousness, rather than wayward (how much time and energy did I really give to righteousness today as compared to the television, the radio, that book I couldn't put down, that Facebook account, etc.)

We are to be attentive to our home rather than a woman whose feet do not stay at home ~ please note that the word used is "home" rather than "house".  There is a big difference between a woman who makes a home for her family and a woman who is all about her house!

We are not to be bold in evil.

We are to be loyal to our husband, whether that is a man, or whether as a single woman that is Christ.

We are not to tempt others to sin whether that is through flaunting our bodies and sexuality or whether that is standing around with other women "sharing concerns" ~ which is a pitiful euphemism for gossip.

Think this doesn't apply to you, men?  I would suggest that if you are single and looking for a wife, this needs to be on your list of attributes!  And if you are a father this is something that you might want to teach your sons to look for and your daughters to emulate.

There are many more gleanings from this chapter ~ which I why I keep going back to it every month! ~ but those are just a few of the jump-out-and-smack-me ones.


Tuesday, August 12, 2014

The View From My Kitchen Window August 11, 2014

This view is starting to change.


I am beginning to see just a hint of color


I am sure that this is partly because it has been dry.  I did not realize how dry it has been until I really looked at this


The light is starting to change too


Things like this make me thank God for my kitchen window all over again!









And thank Him that this one is leaning away from the kitchen!

Monday, August 11, 2014

Monday Morning Memories Yard Sale!

Because I write my posts in the evenings and schedule them to run later, it is late and I am tired and lazy.  Too lazy to get up and go take pictures of my "stuff" that was found on the yard sale.  I did find a lot of things that were on my list, and I will post pictures of them later.  However for the moment, I thought I would share some of the pictures along the way.

Mr. Marvelous and I had a great time over the weekend.  It was nice to have a vacation day and not be on call for work over the weekend.  We made the most of the time, even using some hotel points to spend the night along the way Friday evening.

The southern-most parts of this sale were hit Thursday evening by a some unexpected and severe storms, wreaking havoc upon those with tables full of glass tchotchkes, books and clothing (which means most of the small dealers and a number of the larger ones).  One gentleman whom we met early on had some large tree branches fall on top of his house.  He was thankful that no one was injured and that he was going to be able to repair the damage himself (he is a contractor).  He was so thankful that in the time we visited with him he could not stop praising God for His goodness and mercy!

We saw some curious sights along the way.

We followed this car for several miles in Tennessee and laughed about meeting "home-folks" in unexpected places (that 59 means that they are from the same county as us).



 We drove by here









 Which is the exact same place that this picture was made over 60 years ago!












 And where this plaque is located, which has some special significance to a few people I know!


I had hoped to take a picture of the old Jr. High building for my Aunt who went to school there, but I bet she will remember this building.



 We drove home in the rain on Saturday and saw a sign that we could not resist.  It said, "Yard Sale in Castle".  In CASTLE??!!  We drove a little way down a very muddy drive and to another sign that said:
 Beware
Call 911
Aim M-16

When we see that kind of sign, we have to explore further 
(we should have been in Second Hand Lions).

                           This is what we found.


































I appreciated the walkway, but our feet still got pretty wet and muddy.  It was not finished on the inside; I would have loved to take pictures of all the builder has done, but he discourages that.

I wrote on Friday that I was hoping to meet someone to whom I might introduce Jesus.  I did not meet that person.  However I did meet two gentlemen who were struggling in their faith and trying to work through a deeper understanding of how to apply their faith in their daily life.  We had a good conversation about  that.  I met a young lady who was desperate for prayer for her parents.  We had a good visit together as well. 

So that was our weekend.  I will post pictures of our finds later. 

What did you do this weekend?

Friday, August 08, 2014

Friday!

Mr. Marvelous and I are off and running early this morning.  He has a doctor's appointment and then we are headed north to the World's Longest Yard Sale!  I can't wait to show you pictures on Monday, but in the meantime, here is a fun Friday picture.

Someone really had this set up along the way last year.  Oh how I wish I were small enough to fit in one!




Thursday, August 07, 2014

It's That Time Again!

Yippee!!  It is August.  Do you know what that means? 

Well besides being hot and humid in Alabama.

It's time for The World's Longest Yard Sale!! 

This has become a tradition for Mr. Marvelous and I.  Every December when we sit down to go over the year and figure out what days he is going to request off for the upcoming year, we inevitably say to each other "Don't forget Yard Sale weekend in August!"

If you are unfamiliar with this event here is a link to the website explaining it.

If you have missed my previous posts about it they are here and here.  I thought I had been more consistent in writing about this but it looks like I was wrong.  Oopsie.

Mr. Marvelous has an appointment with the doctor first thing Friday morning and then we will head out and have fun.  There will be lots of pictures taken and posted.  It will be really hot.  He will have his Pepsi and I will have my Diet Mtn. Dew (I'm a real southern girl!).  We will find some wonderful bargains around Mentone and Fort Payne Alabama.  Every year we say we are going to go further than that.  This year we just might do it.  We will see quirky.  We will see bargains.  We will see over-priced.  We WILL stay within our modest budget.  We mostly just go to have fun.  We know our favorite spots on the way.  We will find ideas to try.  And on  the way home we just might find a Dairy Queen and have a dipped cone! 

It doesn't get much better than that.

The one thing I want to do this year is find someone who needs to know Jesus.  Someone to whom I may perhaps make an introduction.  Each year God puts people in my path who need prayer.  Each year I find a number of family members I did not know about.  This year I want to find someone who is ready to hear about Jesus.

I hope to have pictures on Monday but until then, here are a few from years gone by.


Apple Boxes and a copy of Dante's Divine Comedy.


My treasured rocking chair.  All wood. And comfy!

Someone actually sold me their old Lodge skillet.  People are crazy sometimes!

We LOVE our coffee pot!


This is no ordinary double-boiler; this is a SIX-CUP double-boiler!

These cake pans make the best Orange Marmalade Layer Cake!

Another crazy person actually wanted to get rid of a Calvin and Hobbes book.  Good grief!


Yes, I will be wearing my happy hat and doing the dance of joy.

No, I will not be wearing a woolen sweater.

That's all.