Thanksgiving 2016

 

We had a very enjoyable time with the boys, and Hilary, and Hilary's friend, Sami.  It was the first time I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for them in probably 5 years...or longer?  We even had a short little fire outside, since I've been bugging my family since we moved here in May.  It was cold and sprinkly so it didn't last too long...

Lots of singing coming up in the next few weeks; Sunday mornings, open mic, special praise service, Christmas service...New Year's Day service.  It's going to be cool to have Darryl sing with us for some of those things!  Yup, gotta get my voice ready!  I'm glad my lessons are going well!  I'm happy to be making noticeable progress.

SURPRISE Birthday dinner party!

Darryl, me, Gretchen, Corey, Dave, Maryedith, John and his son, Ryan, Chris 

Scott, Kyle, Hilary, DeeDee

Morgan and me

SOMEHOW my family pulled off this huge surprise!  👀  They sneakily lured me to Chili's (long story, but it wasn't the restaurant I actually wanted to go to! haha) and then all these people were sitting there with Kyle, covering their faces with menus!  It took me quite some time to realize what the heck was going on...I didn't really get it until John and Chris turned around and everyone started shouting, "Happy birthday!"   I was literally in shock!  I have never had a surprise birthday party before, so the idea of this actually happening was nowhere on my radar.  I can't believe they got this over on me because I'm usually so curious about everything.  But I guess because I didn't feel great all day (laying on couch in my jammies all day) caused me to be very lackadaisical about the whole day, and what our plans would be.

Unfortunately, I see from the pictures that not everyone got in them... sorry!!

What a super fun night, and super cool memory!!  Thanks to Darryl, Ryan, Kyle, and Hilary for makin' it happen!!  💝

Harvest dinner - fundraiser

Bonnie, Ben, me

I went solo to our church's Harvest dinner.  Once again, I ate too much.  I'm seeing a pattern here...it must be the approaching holidays... I must put an end to it.

It was really nice to hang out with the church gang, there were tons of people there.  I was one of the lucky ones because I was at the Pastor's table, so we got our food first.  haha...

Bronner's Bus Trip

The ladies at Frontline, and DeeDee and Hilary, took an all day bus trip to Bronner's Christmas Wonderland, and Birch Run Outlet Mall.  We had lunch at the Bavarian Inn in Frankenmuth.  Yep, it was quite a day; quite an experience...12 hours of bus riding and shopping and eating... I didn't buy much, but I ate too much...was super tired by the end, so much so that I "got lost" driving home from church.

This is the beautiful sunset over the parking lot before we headed back to Frontline.

African vibe

This is a picture of the scarf (I can't remember the actual name of it at the moment) that Ryan got me for my birthday.  He gave it to me early so I could wear it for singing with the praise band on the week that we did an African-inspired set.  It went really well, and the colorful outfit looked pretty cool!

This is the haircut I gave Ryan, which has nothing to do with the African service, but still, this seemed like a good place to post it.

One of Ryan's many hair styles, until the next one comes along.

John Ball Zoo birthday

We had my birthday celebration today at the John Ball Zoo with my kids.  The weather couldn't have been better!  We saw lots of cool things.  I didn't post all of my pictures, but here are quite a few.  Some of the things were closed because it's at the end of the season.  We weren't able to ride any camels or do zipline... but we can look forward to them in the future.   Thanks for coming with me, guys!!

Big turtle

Cheetah

Bongo

colorful sea urchins

Ryan and crock

flamingos

cool snake

grizzly

hungry bear

Nemo hiding

penguin

lots of penguins

rattler

red wolf

big reptile

shark

sloths and some other creature

SpongeBob's friend

tiger

weird animal

warthog

white-faced monkey

visiting mom's new house

Mom and Skooter

Scott and Flo

the new front porch

Skooter

the old wishing well

A couple of pictures from our visit with Mom (and Scott and Flo the last night we were there) last week.  What a nice, and fun, and quiet, and relaxing week we had.  We visited thrift stores, and some other stores, did some errands, got some little jobs done, had a great time talking about the world's problems, and just hanging out.  Most of the time the weather was delightful, and the nights were so quiet!

Now that we've been home for a bit, it's back to life as usual.

Tomorrow we are going to the Zoo and hopefully do some ziplining for my birthday.  Yes, I will probably be a nervous crazy wreck, but I'm gonna try.  I'm hoping it'll be better than it was on the ladies retreat.

God is so good.  I pray for wisdom and understanding about many things.  I know He is faithful.

I have a new song in the works...

Working on some other songs for the next open mic at church.

Looking forward to singing at church this Sunday as well.

We will have a new president in a few days.  I won't even get started on how I feel about that.   It sickens me how our country has fallen so far.  So many lies, so much corruption...which are the effects of living in a sin-filled world whose god is Satan.  Evil becomes "good", and LIES become "truth.  It really saddens me to see so many so blind about so many things.  So many who are willfully ignorant, being fed lies, and just gobbling them up like sweet delicacies.   Lord God, we are blind and foolish nation.  We deserve what we get.

2 Corinthians 4:4New Living Translation (NLT)

4 Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.