Cheers for a morning at home!

My hours at the garden center have been cut from 20 to 8, so now I am home three mornings a week. This morning my angel wing begonia is so beautiful that, in my very amateurish way, I took some photos of it.

The begonia bench.

Club "M" opens

News from Over the Ord

"Janie is with Jesus."

 It was sad to hear. But we are so glad that God took us "over the ord" so that this wonderful lady could become a very special part of our life!

 

 
Janie loved her garden and worked hard to keep something blooming in it all year round.   
 
She was wonderful helping me in the children's club for the four years I taught it. I think she did it before I got there and after I left.
 Faithful. That describes her.Faithful in teaching Sunday School, in helping with the children's club, in being a wonderful, caring friend and confidante to anyone who needed her. Faithful to her large family. Although she only had one daughter who died young, she was like a mother to scores of other children and adults.
She was special, and even though I am thousands of miles away from that wonderful place, she still will be missed. I will miss her letters that came regularly, lately in very shaking handwriting and written over a few days. Letters that described her garden, her travels in Scotland, her visitors, the food on her holidays, the local church "doings". Letters that always ended with, "Will we see you here this year?"
Yes, the reunion with her and so many of my "mature" Scottish friends will be sweet. Thank you, heavenly Father, for bringing those precious old saints in to my life. How rich I am because of what we shared!

Reunions. Made in heaven.

After our lightning 10-day trip to California, I thought about the wonder and joy of reunion. Why is it such wonderful thing? Why do we love stories where people who have been separated are united at the end? Why does the reunion of biblical Joseph and his brothers make us cry no matter how many times we read it? Why do we love to hear about families reunited? Recently some friends of ours told about the miraculous reunion of an adopted daughter with a brother she thought she'd never see. It brought tears to our eyes.

So our California trip ended up being something like that. And I never anticipated the joy. I have two uncles who live in San Diego. We didn't see them much growing up for that reason. But we had times with them "exceeding abundantly above all we could ask or think"! Good visiting times, good sightseeing times, good sharing times. We saw two of their sons as well. Reunions that brought joy and tears as well as "Are you really my cousin?"

Second reunion was with our good friends, the Theurers, who were in Italy with us. We had a lovely, though unusually chilly, time in their cabin at Mission Springs near Santa Cruz. Wow, the redwood trees were amazing. And we just picked up where we left off in our relationship. Very nice and comfortable to have friends like that.

San Francisco was amazing! We met up with a cousin there that I hadn't seen in living memory since he is several years older than I am. :) He was very anxious to meet up and kept after us to fit him in to our schedule. We did and are we ever glad. Hugs.Laughter. Joking. Talk about family memories. He had sharper ones about family gatherings, and I learned things. Spent an evening and a night with him and a friend. His brother came for the evening. Another reunion. I don't remember when I last saw him, either. But it was a really fun evening that went late. And we're so glad for the memories.

Finally, we visited an aunt and another cousin in the central valley. April is perfect for going there! Not too hot and everything is beautiful and green. My cousin and her husband took us to Sonora and Columbia to see that side of old California. Great weekend with them! Good food and a good visit with both my aunt and my cousin. My aunt is 84 so it was particularly sweet to spend some time with her.

God gives us glimpses, occasionally, of what our reunion with Christ will be like. If this is just a shadow, our heavenly reunion will be beyond all imagination!

P.S. Someone needs to show me how to place photos in the text. I realize now why I don't blog with photos much! Nothing matches the text, and they all jumped around when I tried to move them! You got the idea, I hope!

Spring Blooms

Ca-li-for-nia, here I come!

I'd love to post photos, but I don't have any and can't find one that will download to here. You'll just have to picture it in your head!

We have been planning to have a get-away from the 17-26th of April for awhile. Den needs to take some vacation time, and one of our cars needs to get some body work done for a couple of weeks. We did think about Florida, but lately Will has been talking a lot about getting a job in California. We've been looking at maps of the state and different cities. It gave us the California bug. That and meeting up with various and sundry cousins on Facebook that I haven't seen for decades and never met they're families.

We found AMAZING ticket prices flying in to San Diego and flying out of San Francisco. And we can drop the car off in San Francisco. Of course, that makes it about the same price as the airline tickets, but it's still good.

I've never been west. I've been as far as York, Nebraska and Rapid City, South Dakota. I think that's it. Of course, we've been all over east and to Europe, but we've never done the great West. So this will be a start. I'm really hoping that we can meet up with family and friends as well as enjoy the countryside. Beaches. San Francisco. It's going to take some planning...

Now let's see if I can get my aunt and uncle on the phone....!

Rate My Space

HGTV has a program where people can send in photos and others give ideas on what to do with that room. Well, here's a good one for ya! This is MOST of the stuff acquired by my sons in the past couple of years. That far couch we bought in Scotland when Will was born. Time to get rid of it!

I'm getting rid of the bed, the futon (in front of the upright foosball table), the couch, a chair that goes with the couch, the foosball table and a coffee table not in the photo. THEN maybe I can figure out what to do with the space.

In the meantime, I have to look at this mess. Believe me, it's pretty well organized compared to a week or so ago!