Today's Fourteen

A while back, Rachel started posting lists of fourteen things she was thankful for at that particular moment. I want to make my own list of fourteen, so it's handy that I had fourteen young ladies staying in my home over the weekend. Fourteen beautiful souls who came to a church conference seeking the Lord, and left determined to overcome every enemy, determined to know God as richly as they can and to follow Him closely.

Soo......my fourteen for today?

1. Jubilee

2. Katie

3. Merrill 4. Lydia 5. Tabea

6. Rachel

7. Erica

8. Susie

9. Sarah 10. Hannah 11. Sarah Beth

12. Elizabeth

13. Debi 14. Audrey

I'm also thankful for two great boys who stayed at my house. Two great boys surrounded by fourteen girls; two great boys wanting to press forward in the Kingdom of God.

15. Caleb 16. Joshua

thanks giving

Lord God, I am so thankful.

(The Lord God reads my blog.)

Thankful for many hands and the resulting light work.

Thankful for a reason to mash three huge bowls full of potatoes.

For fresh.................FRESH!!................bay leaves in the turkey stuffing. (Thanks, Mom!)



Thankful for enough self-discipline to refrain from sampling every one of the eleven pies.

Little Pilgrim and his wife didn't have enough self discipline, and look what happened to their waistlines!

Thankful for the blessing of daughters who surprise me with a spotless kitchen when I've left it a pretty big mess.

Thankful for twenty-six Thanksgivings with the same man. Well, actually twenty-eight, if you count the two in Texas before we were married, where he cheerfully met and made conversation with my mother's entire family tree, and then penciled in all the generations and marriages and names of descendants on the back of a grocery sack, just to keep them all straight. Thankful for a grocery sack full of relations and for a man who thought it was fun to map them out.

And thankful that the page edges of his Bible are looking pretty worn.

Thankful to hear the power of God's word, sometimes from the pulpit;

sometimes across the table.

Thankful to worship with the same silver-haired people I've been worshipping with since our hair was dark.
Lord God, I am so thankful.

(The Lord God reads my heart.)

(The Lord God reads your heart, too.)

(He loves you so very much.)

Who Needs Caffeine?

I've been keeping a jug of water with some citrus slices in the fridge. Sometimes I set it out on the counter for a while, and then pour a glass for a little pick-me-up. Sometimes God has his own ways of making sure I'm alert.

I'm awake! I'm awake!

Surprise Again

Vic is at the lake, laying the trap.

Ruth is stepping into it.SURPRISE!

What have u done 2 my sister!?

"I need a beer."

Susie, a teetotaler, made this proclamation last night in my living room. I immediately texted her sister, back in Wisconsin. "What have u done 2 my sister!?" Debi texted back.

Taught her a new game. We like to play games. Rachel introduced us to BANG!, a Wild West card game in which, sometimes, a beer can save your life.

Susie was the sheriff, pitted against John and me, the outlaws.

The sheriff put the outlaws in jail, the sheriff had a huge arsenal of the best guns, the sheriff blasted away until the outlaws were both six feet under. Things were looking pretty good for the sheriff.

Until a sweaty renegade rode up in a cloud of dust and spoiled the sheriff's day.

If you don't mind ducking behind barrels to avoid hot lead; if you don't mind swaggering into a hypothetical saloon from time to time, try Bang! It's fun.

A bit earlier in the day, the girls played a different game.

Does Audrey have a clue?

No gatling guns or wild Indians here, just death by hanging or blow to the head with a candlestick. When the girls were little, the ultimate in game violence was rolling a Sick Princess across the lawn. Times have changed.

Surprise!

Actually, three surprises.

The first happened on Erica's birthday. Audrey and Rachel secretly rescued an adorable young guinea pig from the Humane Society. Audrey plopped the pig into a shoebox, swathed the box in wrapping paper and then poked a few discreet holes for air. You might say Erica was unsuspecting.

This photo was not staged.

Erica named her new friend Hallie. Hallie lived by herself in her cage in Erica's room until one day Erica got a second surprise:

Hallie had been with us a little over two months, the gestation period for guineas. The only clue was that she had put on a little weight, but then she was barely adolescent when Erica got her, so that really wasn't much of a hint. And we don't have a male guinea pig.

I'm not saying it was immaculate conception; just that Hallie must have been only barely pregnant when she showed up on Erica's birthday.

The third surprise is that I can remember my blogger password to make a post about it.

John's working on the planter.

Audrey's studying on a pile of seed sacks.

And the Red Sox are filling the shop with extra inning baseball.

These are the good old days.

These Are the Good Old Days

Hybrid Cat

I took this photo a while back. I like it, pretty much, except that all the iron parked under the porch railing bothers me.

It might have taken less time to actually move the iron than it did to edit it out of the photo. But would the cat keep her seat on the railing while I dug for keys and rearranged the parking lot? Maybe not. So I cleaned up the yard with Photoshop Elements instead.

Isn't that better? But then, because it's fun and because Photoshop Elements is somewhat addicting, I decided I wanted to turn my photo into a painting. So I applied the "Paint Daubs" filter. Here is the result:

Oops! That might be just a little too artsy for me. I like the background, but the cat just about got daubed away into meaningless, especially around the tail. So I had to back up a step and remove the daubs. Click click click, and I was back to the original, minus the used car lot. Don't you wish it were that easy when you drip latex on the rug?

And now the beauty of Photoshop shines. The next step is to copy just the cat and porch into a separate layer. I can keep this foreground material in its original condition, or maybe just daub it a wee bit, while using the full Paint Daub on the background layer behind it.

After I've daubed the background, I lay the unedited foreground cat and railing on top of the blurred background.

Compare the original to the final product, which is something of a painting/photograph hybrid.

Isn't Photoshop fun?

Quack Fatner

One time a friend of a friend in Denver asked the girls about growing up on a farm. "Are there nail salons out in the country?" she asked. "Does your little town have a Bath & Body Works?"

Our little town has four hundred residents, one convenience store, and no stop lights. Nope, no Bath & Body Works.

The next nearest town doesn't have a Bath & Body Works either, nor the next, nor the one after that.

But I like the small towns around me. Towns where the feed store sells

and

and

Towns where, when you drive by a snowman, you probably know who made it.

Nice work, Lydia and Laurel :)


So yeah, it's pretty hard to get by without a nail salon in the next block.

But at least, if I need some I know where to get it!