God bless foster parents…

I had a great week at school. After a long discussion about coffees and grinding beans versus already ground…I sent a baggie of New Hampshire coffee (freshly ground in the AM) home with a 2nd grade student for her mom.  The next day Izzie found me with a plate of fresh made Pumpkin Bread!  It was still warm! Her mom was a substitute at school that day and was SO thankful for the coffee that she thought I might enjoy a treat with my coffee.  John and I have definitely been enjoying it…especially John. I just realized that I am always the one baking surprises for other people.  This was the first baking surprise I have received since living in Maine where my friend Janet used to bake goodies and bless us with them. God also gave me the opportunity to pray with a friend who had tests on Friday suspecting breast cancer. I’m so glad she came to fine me and asked for prayer.

I spent Saturday cleaning, doing laundry and baking. I seem to go on streaks of having people over and baking for the church. I was responsible for refreshments at church today so made White Trash, cheese and crackers, grapes and baked oatmeal.  It was enjoyed by everyone.

I also made a HUGE crockpot of southern pulled pork yesterday, as well as slaw and a chocolate pound cake because we had company for lunch today.  Bill and Connie started coming to our church about a year ago. They have one son still at home and they are foster parents for others. For the past 4 months they have had one 3rd grade boy and I have really seen God using them to bless his life. They just got another young boy last week and he is a challenge, but I think they are up to it if they can make it through the next few transition weeks.  I am so thankful for people like them who are willing to share their homes and love with children who need love and security.  We had a great lunch and the boys had fun playing with the wii.  They used random “miis” at times and then at other times would choose the JT or Joy “mii” to play and just laugh as they made us do really strange things. One of them really enjoyed making me hit the golf ball in the water and ocean all the time.  They left about 4 PM and after cleaning up I laid down for what was supposed to be a 15 minute nap – I woke up 1-1/2 hours later…

I hope you had a great weekend and if you know foster parents – thank them and pray for them.

God’s Surprises…

You never know when God is going to show up or how. John and I are trying to figure out what God is up to in our lives. Out of the blue tonight I got a phone call from a woman I had discipled 17 years ago. I haven’t seen her in 14 years. She sounded wonderful and we caught up on our kids (she is now a Grandmother – scary) and then she got to the heart of why she had called. For the past 3 weeks God had been placing “Pastor John” on her heart. She wasn’t sure why, but every day she was being reminded to pray for him…awesome. I told her a little bit about what we were struggling with. Her response was, “I’ll keep praying and we’ll see what God is up to…” Just the fact that she called was a blessing, but her words of encouragement, that I then shared with John, were what he needed after a LONG, cold day. God is good. Now if we could just figure out what He has in mind. In HIS time, I guess.

So, I enjoyed my day at home – especially since it was below zero outside!!! Brrr – poor John – he worked in it all day. I did a little digiscrapping (never as much as I’d like) and some reading. Below is a sampling of the fruits of my labor.

Credits: Christmas Cheer Quickpage

 

Credits: Shabby Season Quickpage

 

When I saw this quickpage, I knew this photo had to go in it.

Credits: Pineapple Plantation Designs Butterfly Quickpage

Back to work tomorrow…

Superbowl Bound!!

Need I say more…

Whew!

Well, this has been a weird week. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday painting the dining room and kitchen. Well, techincally I spent Thursday too. I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough paint to finish so I stayed up until 2 AM Thursday to finish (in case I had to buy more paint after school on Thursday).  I learned a few things from my 30 hour painting experience.

• Never ever buy Kilz paint – it is awful…it may cover in one coat but it has a very sticky additive and makes touchups a nightmare.
• John is much neater at edging than I am. Some painters tape or a plastic edger would have been helpful.
• You get really messy when you are painting after midnight. Thank goodness for “Oops!” that takes latex off of wood trim.
• When painting a larger area always get a few pints of color variations and do test patches to be sure which color will look best in the large space.
• Painting always takes much longer than you think it will.

The walls look fine – it is a little darker than I had hoped. My best description would be a mocha latte with caramel (the coffee lover in me comes out…).

I had another snow day on Friday. Even though it means I will be going to school until the last week of June I really needed the day.  I slept in a little and then started cleaning and cooking since we were having friends for supper. Steve and Pam Spearing and Bryce and Barb Whiting came for a lovely meal, laughs and fun. It was great to have time with them.

I had a prayer breakfast here this morning and then drove to Salem to meet Hilary and Andrew. The brakes on her car are making weird noises, so I changed cars with her. I will get hers fixed and back to her later this week since she and Andrew are headed to his house for J-Term break on Thursday. The car sounds awful – definitely needs brakes and rotors. I was so tired driving home I almost feel asleep a few miles from the house. I walked in the door and fell asleep on the loveseat for 3 hours!!! I couldn’t believe it. Thank goodness for leftovers for supper. I have gotten some laundry done and am ready to crash again. I don’t have to do music or Sunday School at church tomorrow, so that will be nice.  I guess that will allow me to save up my energy for the Patriots big game tomorrow afternoon (LOL).  I have Monday off, but John doesn’t so the plan is to digiscrap. We’ll see if that really happens.

I hope you have had a great week.

Snow Day Plan B…

When I went to bed last night I figured I’d have a snow day today. My plan (Plan A), after I got the snow day message, was to stay in bed until I felt like getting up, have a nice breakfast, stay in my pjs all day (I never do that unless I am sick), turn on the TV, put my macbook in my lap and scrap away. A nice quiet day at home. I heard John leave for work about 5:30 AM and dozed back to sleep. At 7:30 AM he was back, the roads were getting too bad to take the propane truck north…so much for my plans.

Instead, I switched to a very productive Plan B. I fixed omeletes, grits and toast for me and John, watched a little news and then convinced John to help me prime the kitchen/dining room for painting. The paint on those walls as been a conversation starter on many occasions. John and Katie did a faux finish that had mauve, cream, blue and a touch of yellow on those walls 5 years ago. Hilary never liked it – said it was pink. Lindsey didn’t care one way or the other. Katie liked it. People coming into the house either loved it or would say that is “interesting” or something like that. It became known as the “picture wall” because it made a great background for photos. As a matter of fact, I used that wall to take photos of a friend’s son for his senior picture. For the past 6 months I’ve been ready for a change on the walls. I wanted to lighten them up. So, today we got a good start on that. I went out late this afternoon and got paint and groceries. The new color is called “Spring Fawn” and looks like coffee with extra cream. I think it will look nice – just hope it isn’t too dark. The plan after school tomorrow is to come home and start painting. Hooray!

As far as the snow goes, we got about 5 inches…

Trying to catch up…

Well, Katie is back at Eastern, so we have an empty house again. My goal is to get the digiscrapping caught up this year. Since I have the laptop now I guess there is no excuse. I haven’t done any scrapping since about October due to One Voice. I finally finished 3 pages I had started in September from when we went to Loon Mountain with Hilary and Katie. Enjoy and good night!

Oops…

We’ve had unusually warm weather the past two days (58 degrees yesterday and 49 degrees today). Much of the snow has melted into mush.  With the piles of snow diminishing I noticed two things this morning…

REWIND TO THE WEEK AFTER CHRISTMAS…We have a tin roof. The roof slopes towards the front and back of our house. Our deck is on the back of our house. Two times the week after Christmas heavy snow/ice slid off the roof onto the deck. That is not unusual. What was unusual was that both times it came down so hard that it knocked almost everything (shelves, pictures, etc.) off the back wall in the living room…

FAST FORWARD TO THIS MORNING with a clear view of the deck…The round table on the deck with the glass insert is broken…well at least the glass is. After further inspection I realized that the DECK is broken!!! I’m not sure who built the deck, it was here when we moved in. It was not made of matching wood and a center brace was never put under the width of the deck. Two years ago John did a lot of work on the deck to make a canopy for it in the summer and I spent a lot of hours staining it. Evidently the deck just couldn’t take the force/weight of the snow this year. I guess I’m not surprised since we had over three feet of snow in the month of December.  So…that’s my big OOPS…

Poor John…

John went on call Friday. He had one call Friday and one Saturday. His boss took the calls in the AM, since John was preaching, but he has taken 4 phone calls and gone out on 2 calls this afternoon.  I hope the pager is quiet once he gets back home. I pray for the day when he is working just ONE job.

Hilary headed to ENC today. She made a detour to Milford, NH to see our friends the Cedras Gang.  I do mean gang, 7 kids and 2 parents. Michael is home from Texas and just got engaged, so Hilary got to meet Allison. I guess a July wedding is being planned.

Church went well, although I am always amazed at how chaotic things get when I am getting ready to go over there. I am stressed by the time I arrive. I know it will be easier now that I’m not doing music and Sunday School.  I have at least an 8 week reprieve from Sunday School. It will be good to not feel like John and I are doing everything… God is good though and people are growing spiritually, even if we aren;t growing much in number.

I have arrived…

After discussions with the daughters and input from other family members I have decided to make the move to WordPress. I do think I like the cleaner lines of their templates and the fact that people don’t have to sign in to comment. I’ll have to spend some time figuring out how to do some of the things I used to do in Blogger, but I think it is a good move. I was able to easily import all previous posts from Blogger – so that was nice.

Today was a wonderful stay at home Saturday. As a matter of fact, when Katie left for work at 3 PM she laughed because the front door hadn’t even been unlocked yet. I got laundry done and spent some time organizing photos on the computer. We watched the movie “Amazing Grace”. It was very good. Tomorrow is my last Sunday of teaching Sunday School for a few months. I am looking forward to that. Hilary will leave sometime tomorrow to go back to ENC. We will miss her, but know that she misses her friends…and Andrew…I hope you had a good Saturday.

Long…short week

It’s amazing how a work week of two days can seem SOOOO long! I have been tired by 7 PM each night. I have no plans for the weekend, so that is nice…and we are back to two college girls here (our own). Hilary will leave Sunday afternoon to go back to ENC for J-Term.

I am learning that parenting is not easy. Not that I didn’t already know that, I mean 24 years ago when Lindsey was whisked away after she was born and we didn’t know if she was going to live or die…that has hard. There have been experiences with all the girls that have been difficult. This week I found myself struggling with letting go. Katie had to make an important decision about a relationship…it was a difficult one, but she felt the right one. I struggled to not ask too many questions; that’s not easy for me. I process things verbally…guess I need to hear it for it to make sense. Katie (as well as the rest of my family, I think) are internal processors(or is it -ers when you talk about people?). Anyway, as I lay in bed struggling with letting go and having no control over how the situation/relationship was handled, I began to think about God. I mean He knows the choices we are going to make, yet He backs off and lets us make them. I wonder if it is a struggle for Him. Does His heart ache when the hearts of His children are aching, like a parent’s heart does? I’m not sure I have all those answers, but it gave me a different perspective on God my Father… What I do know is I am glad that I have a perfect, loving Heavenly Father, who knows what the outcome of every situation I face will be and is there to guide me to it and through it.