Picture of the Day -- 03/21/2009

LC with his head on the cat pillow!

A couple of Christmases ago, a friend gave us this little pillow which has a cat on it with the words "Never go to bed alone!"
Somehow it got down on the living room floor, and when I came out from my office, there LC was with his head on it, relaxing, which is one of his best talents!
I just had to take a picture!

(And by the way, our cats never let us go to bed alone, either. Put your legs under the blanket, and they just have to be right there sitting on top of your feet and weighting the covers down!)

Picture of the Day -- 03/18/2009

Canada geese eating up all the tender shoots of winter wheat

I took this picture from the end of our driveway, looking west across the field toward the mountains.
At certain times of the year, we do wish these big birds would go back to Canada where they belong!
Some people say that they seem to have paths in the sky and always fly in the same places, so if you happen to live under that path... well, you might always have droppings on your roof! (I'm thankful to say this has not happened to us yet!)

Visit Trent's Blog!

If you have been following my blog, you know that I have posted lots of pictures by Trent. Most of them are gorgeous mountain scenes taken while he has been hiking, and I love having new ones to use as my header. I'm always telling him, "Take something with lots of blue in it to match my Rocky Mountain Blue blog!"

Well, he has finally started his own blog about his hiking experiences with info and tips on hiking gear and all kinds of other things. He is just getting started, but I'm sure he will be posting lots of pictures there. I sure hope he will still let me use some of them, as well!

Trent's blog...
Rocky Mountain Hiker

Here he is taking one of those pictures at the top of Humboldt Peak!

(Thanks to Mike for his pictures of Trent)

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 02/20/2009

Trent, Mike, and Nathan
Ready to hike!

Barry took this picture on Mike's camera on January 17 as the three guys were leaving the parking lot and setting off to hike the first segment of the Colorado Trail. It was a 2-day hike with an overnight campout in the snow.

I'd be doing good just to get the pack on my back!
And check out the firewood strapped on the back of Mike's backpack!

PICTURE OF THE DAY -- 02/19/2009

Guess who this is!

Check this out!

Here I sit, hands poised over the keyboard -- and my mind is a blank! I can't seem to find anything to write about these days, and so I haven't been writing. Is this called writer's block? Maybe, but at least my livelihood is not depending on it. If it did, we would be starving! It is so much easier right now to stick on my headphones and type what someone else says rather than to come up with my own words.

So maybe I should do the "picture of the day" thing again for awhile until my mind comes back to me... Yes, I think that might be a really good idea.

Bruce and Carol-Ann in 1986
For today, I am sending you over to Carol-Ann's blog. If you have not been reading her "Be Mine, Valentine" series, you have been missing the Valentine's story of the year!

Click on the link below to get to her blog, and then scroll down on the page until you find "Part 1." She already has 15 installments there, and we are waiting with bated breath for the next one!

Carol-Ann's Blog

Under the covers...

Yesterday was pretty cold -- in the single digits F -- and last night the weatherman said we might get some snow. So this morning I got up with one decision to be made right away. Should Coral go to her day program or not? First I checked the outdoor thermometer... Brrrr... 4 degrees F. (minus 15 C.) I took a squint out the kitchen window and saw that quite a brisk wind was moving the evergreens. Nope. This is the whole reason why I work from home. No more sending Coral out in terrible weather. No more worrying about how to call work and say I can't come. No more stress about doing the right thing. (And, of course, wearing flannel jammies and sipping hot tea while I type!) Then it began to snow, and I could not even see the house across the field. Confirmation of my good judgment, I told myself! And Coral snoozed until late in the morning, nice and warm under the covers!

Someone else had the right idea this morning about where to stay warm...Trent took this picture and sent it to me.
He got out of bed, and when he came back, there was Tux who had made himself all cozy!

I'm still here...

I woke up early this morning and just could not get back to sleep, so I got up to take care of a few little loose ends that needed attention. Now in a few minutes I will get Coral up for the day, and then it will be time for work.

So before I jump into the day with both feet, here is a quick post to say I hope to soon be back to having time to blog again. Thanks for your comments and for missing me! I have not been able to visit your blogs much or leave comments. This past month has been really difficult for Coral which just automatically means difficult for me. Now I have this sinus/bronchial thing going on...

But I shall be back soon, I hope! In the meantime, I'm wishing for each of you peace in the New Year.

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Holy and happy and peaceful...

THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS

I question if Christmas can ever be "merry"
Except to the heart of an innocent child.
For when time has taught us the meaning of sorrow
And sobered the spirits that once were so wild,
When all the green graves that lie scattered behind us
Like milestones are marking the length of the way,
And echoes of voices that no more shall greet us
Have saddened the chimes of the bright Christmas Day,
We may not be merry, the long years forbid it,
The years that have brought us such manifold smarts,
But we may be happy, if only we carry
The Spirit of Christmas deep down in our hearts...

...Hence I shall not wish you the old "Merry Christmas,"
Since that is of shadowless childhood a part,
But one that is holy and happy and peaceful,
The Spirit of Christmas deep down in your heart.

--Annie Johnson Flint

I wish for you, my dear friends, a Christmas that is holy and happy and peaceful!

My Dad -- Part 4

My father first met my mother, Margaret, at the beginning of 1935 when he was 27 and she was 17. About a year earlier, she had accepted an invitation from her friend Iris to attend a service at the People's Church in Toronto, and she trusted Jesus as her Savior that night. A few months later, she and another friend decided to go and check out the nearby Sunday school they had heard about. They were warmly welcomed, and my mother was assigned to the teenage girls' class where Cecil Hodgson was the teacher. There were some mischief-makers in that class who loved to give the teacher a hard time, and one Sunday a girl named Florence asked him very deliberately, "Mr. Hodgson, don't you think Miss English is pretty?" (I wish I had been a little fly on the wall!)

Here she is around that time!

I remember once my father told us about his first impressions of my mother. She had been attending his Sunday school class, and one day she went to him and asked him when the church prayer meeting was held. And he said to himself, "That's the kind of question a girl should be asking!"

But lots of changes were going on. My mother began teaching a Sunday school class herself, my father was away at times in the city, and so they saw each other only infrequently at church. Then one day my mother and her friend Gladys met my father and his friend Fred on the street and stopped to chat awhile. My father invited the girls to go with him and Fred to the next meeting of the mission organization he was considering joining, and so they agreed and went in Fred's car -- the men in the front, and the girls in the back. Not really a date!

Time passed, and my father did indeed join that mission organization, planning to leave for Africa. In the book she made for her grandchildren, my mother wrote: "By this time, I knew he had an interest in me that I didn't feel I could return, and although I had thoughts of the mission field, they were at that time vague, not concrete. I was far from ready, and any thoughts I did have didn't include Grandpa!"

Here's a little story I love, because it tells so much about each of my parents! Soon after this, my father invited my mother to have supper with him at the Stoodleigh Restaurant downtown. This was a special event, because eating out was not an everyday thing then. She met him there, but after the usual greetings, he told her he was sorry but he could not take her to supper because he had nothing in his pocket! She knew she had enough money to pay for supper, but after a few quick thoughts decided it would not be the thing to do, so she did not offer. They walked round and round in the ample space in the nearby Union Station and finally went home! And it was just as she expected! Everyone wanted to know what she had for supper! But somehow, the incident made her think more highly of my father, not less. It was not until much later that she found out that he had money when he invited her, but a sudden need had come up at the Mission headquarters, and he felt the Lord wanted him to give what he had.

In her little book for the grandchildren, my mother wrote: "Later, one rainy evening, Grandpa walked home with me. We stopped by the lamppost in front of my house, and under a dripping umbrella, Grandpa asked me to marry him. And Grandma said, 'No.'"

(Oh, how I loved to hear my mother tell us these stories when we were sitting around the supper table so many years ago!)

(To be continued...)