On Wallin Pond

Last Saturday was Grace's birthday, so after lunch, Andy and I headed on over to the Lindsays' to celebrate. Of course we had a wonderful time with everyone. Grace had picked the meal she wanted to have and her other Grammy and I helped contribute items for the feast. I can't believe she is 10 years old already. She has always been a dear, sweet girl, but she continues to grow sweeter as she grows older.

As it happened we also saw the Lindsay family on Sunday because Christian had a few tree estimates to make in Jersey. So the whole family came to church with us, then home for lunch, stayed all afternoon and had dinner with us, too. I also invited Dawn, Tommy & Kira over for dinner. Only Amy and her family were missing.

Naomi and Kira are buddies.
The guys being guys!Aiden likes my vibrator cushion.

And Asher - what a dear!

It was a nice day on Tuesday, chilly but sunny - a perfect day for doing yard work. So Andy and I went out to a patch that needed tending. It was one of the last places on our property that still had poison ivy and other weedy vines growing up and around the trees. My obsessive-compulsiveness has been just itching (pun intended) to get out there and tackle that mess. I was careful to warn Andy about which vines were poisonous and thankfully, he didn't break out in any rashes. However, I sure did. I am in agony because there was a patch of skin that was exposed between my gardening gloves and jacket sleeve. Fortunately, more of my skin wasn't exposed, but what did break out is worse than I've ever had, I think. (or maybe I just don't remember) I didn't have the camera with me to take a picture of what we did. I was going to go out there today when I got home from work, but it's raining, so the picture will have to wait for another blog - if I ever finish the area. I do intend to finish it, because I can't stand the idea of there being poison ivy anywhere on MY land. I hate it as much as it hates me.I'm sorry if this picture grosses you out, but at least I included the pretty flowers.

Last night we had another Ladies Night Out at the church. Our theme for this one was Reaching out to the Hungry. We asked everyone who came to bring food to stock our food pantry. As it turned out, 88 women attended and so much food was brought that three-quarters of it had to be taken to someone's home because there was no more room in the cupboards we keep at the church. Our people are so generous.

I work with such talented and creative women. Because our theme for the evening was food and hungry, we played the Price is Right game. The tables were set up and decorated as aisles in a grocery store. One of our ladies had borrowed 6 shopping carts from a local grocery store, then we used them as part of the decorations and to store all the food that people brought with them.
Our speaker was a young lady who joins other young people (in their 20's) to go to Camden once a month to feed the hungry. What a blessing to see young people with a heart for God and the poor.

It was noted that I didn't include a picture of my new stove/oven in my last blog. So I'm including it here. It looks like a stove, doesn't it?!
Andy had to cut part of the window sill away to fit the stove in because it has a back to it, where our other one didn't. This will lead into another project - replacing the windows. They needed to be replaced anyway, and the new ones have been ordered. They are a little smaller than the current ones so some cosmetic construction work will need to be done. Along with ordering new windows for us, Andy also ordered new windows for Tommy & Dawn's basement. They will be replacing 2 of their windows in their effort to fix up their basement.

It's going to be a busy weekend. But more on that later.

TTFN