HURRY UP!!

I am so tired of winter... Hurry up spring!!!

Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.
Michael Levine

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
----THOMAS JEFFERSON

Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.
- Bill Cosby

#3-#10 on my list:
I am thankful for my family. I have been so fortunate my entire lifetime to have such wonderful, caring people around me.
After marrying my handyman, I prayed for several years for a child. When the time was right we were blessed with our first daughter, Kristy. She was our social child who liked to be around people all of the time. She was also my caring, sensible, dependable child and has grown up to be such a wonderful mother. I'm pretty sure that her kids don't know it yet, but they are so lucky to be her children.
Our second daughter came along a couple of years later. Holly was always the quiet, very intelligent, sneaky child. She slept thru the night almost immediately. She must have been happy with herself, because she liked to spend a lot of time with just herself (still does). I think she received more dominant "social" genes from her daddy because they neither one talk much and are content in their own worlds.

We love having both of the girls around whenever they can take time out of their schedules.
I hope that they both know how very much we love them. Our lives would have been pretty empty without them.

Now on to the grandchildren. What a tremendous blessing they are to us!! First came Kate (or Katie with an "i", or Katie Beth, or whatever she calls herself tomorrow). What a firecracker she is. You just never know what she's gonna do or say! I cannot describe the joy that she has brought into our lives! Go forward a couple of years and Gabriella, the little mommy, princess, is born. The quiet, snuggle bug, sneaky one. She is so much like her Aunt Holly that it's scary! Boy do we love her snuggles!! Then came our first grandson, Nate---the first boy born to our family. What a difference in how he attacks life! Head first, all the way!! Each one is so different and so special to us. I will be happy when the snowy weather goes away so we can plan on visiting them again!!

I am thankful for our son-in-law, Justin. Kristy had such high standards for a husband that I was concerned that she would never find someone to live up to those standards. I'm so happy that she did find someone who shared her values and that she wanted to share her life with. And look at the result -- those 3 precious grandchildren!! I love that he is a "hands-on" dad and spends time with his kids.

I'm also very thankful for my parents. They raised me in a good Christian home, loved and cherished me. They provided for most of wants, and all of my needs through the years and loved me unconditionally. I miss them both but am sure that I will see them again one day in heaven.
Our Happy Family
I will continue with my 1000 things list and I may share a few as I come to them, but for now this is a good start. So many wonderful people have blessed and are blessing my life!

MORE THANKFULNESS

When I went to the dentist a few weeks ago, they told me that my blood pressure was very high. I called my doctor's office and they laughed and said they got calls all the time from people whose dentists had given them the same warning. I knew that my blood pressure had been running on the high side for a while so I decided to go on in and get it checked. Well, it was still high, so he put me on a low dosage ACE Inhibitor. While I was there he told me that I need to have some blood work done since I had never had my cholesterol checked, but I had to have been fasting for at least 6 hours. He went ahead and wrote the order and told me to come back in just for that or I could have it done when I came in for my checkup in a month. I decided that I would wait the full month since I wasn't looking forward to it. As it turned out I had a reaction to the ACE Inhibitor and had to go back just two weeks later. Since I was going in anyway, I didn't eat lunch that day so I could get the blood work done. I was also dreading being in the office because I had heard that flu cases were running rampant here. As it turned out, on Thursdays, several of the other doctors in the practice are off. So when I got there only 4 other people were in the waiting room and when I went to the lab, there was no one else waiting. It was nice to get right in and not have to sit there and dread getting it done. I got my prescription for a new blood pressure drug -- a calcium channel blocker this time. I had to wait for the other drug to get out of my system so I didn't start taking it until today. Hopefully it'll be fine.
My blood tests were to be available today, so I called to get my results. I have dodged that test for a lot of years because I just knew it would be bad. Both the doctor and myself were pleasantly surprised at the results.


CBC & Blood Sugar were both fine
Cholesterol was 158 (Normal is less than 200)
Triglycerides were 30 (Normal is less than 50)
HDL (good cholesterol) was 71 (Average 50-60 with more being better)
LDL was 81 (Normal is less than 100)

WHEW ---- what a relief. I just knew it was not going to be good. VERY thankful for these results!!
Now if can just get my blood pressure down, I'll be good to go.

THANKFULNESS

I am trying to be more thankful in my life.

I keep some verses from scripture on my desk to remind me of this.

Make Thankfulness your

Sacrifice to God

Psalm 50:14

But giving thanks is a sacrifice

That truly honors me.

Psalm 50:23

I have never been in need of anything. I have always had food, shelter, clothing, a job when I wanted it, a family who loved me. I’ve never had to deal with much sickness. What else could I want for?

I have not been thankful enough for all He has given me over the years.

I have been selfish, wanting things for myself, expecting to be given to and catered to ---just because I wanted it.

I recently came across a blog on the internet, A Holy Experience. The young lady who writes it has also written a book, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are. She encourages you to be thankful for all the little blessings in our lives and to write down and number 1000 (and more) of these small gifts from God. She reminds us that just hours before Jesus was crucified, as he ate a meal with his disciples, knowing what was about to take place, he took the bread and the wine and thanked God for them. Even in the bad times we should be thankful for the gifts. All of us were not supposed to be rich or famous. But we need to remember that we are rich, maybe not financially, but because God has so blessed us. No matter what our circumstances, God knows where we are. His hand is in everything. We should praise him and thank him in the good and the bad just as Joseph told his brothers when they came to Pharaoh for food during the famine, after they had sold him as a slave, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” Genesis 50:20-21

God help me to be thankful in everything.

MY LIST OF 1000 BEGINS:

#1 - My Handyman

THANKFUL FOR MY HANDYMAN

I kept waking up this morning and I thought it was still early because my arm was cold when it was out from under the covers. We turn the heat down at night, but then before time to get up our nice thermostat tells the furnace to come on so we can rise to a nice warm house. Well, that didn't happen today!! It was pretty chilly out from under those covers --- 60 degrees in the hall. I passed on my morning shower ---the warm water would have been fine, but then getting out while wet would not have been so nice!! Handyman came out and lit the fireplace so we weren't completely without heat and I went upstairs to the bonus room and turned on the heat pump that we have mainly for cooling the room. After breakfast in the dining room (which is close to the fireplace) handyman put on warm clothes and crawled under the house to check on the furnace.
It turned out to be the fan (again) that blows the exhaust from the furnace to the outside. We've had some trouble with this before, but handyman had cleaned and oiled it and kept it working. After he figured out the problem he went to a shop here in town to purchase one, but they didn't have the correct part. They told him where he might find it on Monday. Well, it's gonna be cold this weekend, so he went back under the house and worked on the fan some more and got it working. Ahhh-it's so nice to hear the furnace running again. But now he's looking for the replacement online. We're going to go ahead and replace the part since that's the third time he's had to help it along. I don't think we want to keep having the same problem over and over again. But, we're thankful that we had the gas logs and heat pump to keep us warm while the problem was being corrected and even more thankful to have a live-in handyman who can fix just about anything!!

GOOD DEALS

A few months back, handyman and I received a gift card from Discovercard. It was for $10.00 off any purchase at Red Lobster, as long as we charged it on our Discovercard. Not a bad deal at all since we don't carry over balances from one period to another so we never pay them any interest.
We don't normally go out to eat on Friday night because the restaurants in our town are filled to overflowing most weekend nights. But on Friday, the schools had been out due to snow and they were predicting more snow that night so we took the chance that maybe more people would stay home. It turned out to be a good time to go out. When we got to the restaurant there wasn't even a line.
I'm not a huge lover of fish, so I stick to the "fried" menu!! I ordered the popcorn shrimp with baked potato with butter and sour cream and a salad. Handyman ordered Walt's shrimp, which is the larger variety of shrimp, along with the baked potato and a salad. When they brought out the salads we noticed that they were a little skimpy compared with most salads around town, but that was okay since we didn't fill up quite so much on them. It left more room for our entrees. The shrimp was delicious! I ended up not being able to finish all of mine. There's not much you can do to ruin a baked potato so they were delicious too. And the cheddar biscuits are always superb!!

So, thank you Discovercard for giving us $10.00 towards our meal. It was great!!

CHRISTMAS AT THE CABIN

No, we didn't spend Christmas at the cabin. We didn't even do a drive-by. Fortunately one of our neighbors was there and took these fantastic pictures and emailed them to us!
If I had been there, I really would have been regretting the fact that we didn't put a fireplace in it. It would have been sooooo cozy!!

I love this picture because it really shows up where the lake is in the summer. Right now the lake is down and we only have a creek, but the snow stuck to the bare ground.

Here is another view that shows the boat. Handyman is planning on bringing it home pretty soon so he can do some work on it and have it ready to go this spring.