MID-MAY BALANCING ACT

MID-MAY BALANCING ACT

I love the marvelous month of May!  Leaves on trees, flowers blooming, and baby geese are beautiful sights!

Our geese are growing quickly and are so much fun to watch!  Chico, one of my beautiful cats, finds it more interesting to watch me photograph the geese instead of watching the geese themselves.

This past week has been extremely busy.  And fun.  And productive.  Last Tuesday included a trip to the Indianapolis Museum of Art with some very dear friends.  I am so thankful to Traci for opening my eyes to the amazing world of art!

The gardens on the museum grounds were in full bloom!

Just beautiful!

Remodeling continued this past week on our kitchen.  Progress.  We're getting there!  Just look at how Steve the carpenter displayed his talent!  He wrapped sasafras around the base of the cabinets.  Now, this is another form of art:

Just look at the beautiful woodgrain:

While the remodeling continued, I attended the  Daughters of the American Revolution Indiana State Conference this past weekend.  Meeting new people is always such fun!

And spending time with a few of  the ladies in our local DAR chapter was wonderful, too.

Now, this brings us back to Monday and the weekly balancing act continues.  Work to do.  Life to live.  Fun to enjoy.  Priorities to set.

As I write on this Monday afternoon, cousins are on our lake fishing...

Gracie is napping...

And there is still much work to be done today and this coming week.  Laundry, fundraising for projects and preparing my garden are all going to have to wait for now.  Just as there are shadows and light in this next picture from the museum...

there is as Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, 'a time to every purpose under the heaven.'  BALANCE.

I think it's time for me to take a bike ride on my daily transcendent journey!

A Daily Transcendent Journey: Mother's Day Memories

A Daily Transcendent Journey: Mother's Day Memories: MOTHER'S DAY MEMORIES I miss my mom.  A lot.  She was my best friend. I am so thankful God chose her to be my mother!  E...

Mother's Day Memories

MOTHER'S DAY MEMORIES

I miss my mom.  A lot.  She was my best friend.

I am so thankful God chose her to be my mother!  Even though a few years have passed since she left us for Heaven, I think of her daily and remember...

Upon waking this morning, this scene greeted me.

And this one...

The mist rising off the lake was beautiful and peaceful.  As the mist disappeared, it brought to mind how much our lives are like that mist.  We are only here for a short time.  We really need to enjoy all that life has to offer!

Too often it takes a life or death experience for us to appreciate life.  I can relate.  My mom related.  After her cancer diagnosis, what things were once important no longer were.  Life is good.  The little things in life are often the best.

Speaking of little things, the geese were out and about this morning with their little ones.

They are so cute! 

And so much fun to watch!  I just wish they would 'do their business' somewhere else besides in our yard!

The mother goose and father gander are such good parents.  So protective of their little ones.  It won't be long before the babies are grown and on their own.  But, only after they've learned their life lessons.

I'm so grateful for the life lessons my mother taught me before I 'left the nest'.  And I'm even more grateful for the lessons she continues to teach me through the memories I have of how she lived her life.

As I was cleaning out a desk the other day, I came across this lovely message on a greeting card from American Greetings:

Life is a Journey

Life is a journey

of sweetness and sorrow,

Of yesterday's memories

and hopes for tomorrow,

Of pathways we choose

and detours we face

With patience and humor,

courage and grace,

Of joys that we've shared

and of people we've met

Who have touched us in ways

we will never forget.

I love and miss you Mom!  I always will!

Wishing everyone happiness and peace on this daily transcendent journey!






REMODELING AND MUSHROOMS

REMODELING AND MUSHROOMS!

We are remodeling.  It is long overdue.  I am so excited!

A portion of the half cathedral ceiling has been covered in cedar and we are now working on the kitchen.  Beadboard for the walls with a plate rail atop, wood laminate flooring to replace the carpet, fresh paint and a brand spanking new dishwasher!  All of this is good, but also time-consuming and a lot of hard work.

Along with this comes cleaning out the pantry and cabinets and doing some rearranging.  I'm always looking for ways to simplify and to make things more convenient.  Pictures of the kitchen will be included in future posts.

In the meantime, I have chaos.

My father moved out of the house a month ago that he and my mother had built and lived in for over thirty years.  After my mother passed, we went through some things, but not everything.  Consequently, when the house sold I moved several boxes of things to my house to go through.  So, on top of the disarray we already had, I added more to it. 

I keep telling myself, "Everything will get done.  Things will return to normal".  That is a new mantra of mine.

Also, in the meantime, it is mushroom season in my little corner of Indiana.  For avid mushroom hunters that means for a few weeks the rest of life is put on hold and the quest for the 'gold' is on!  I am one of those people! 

Just when I thought the season was over and it was going to not be very spectacular as far as numbers of mushrooms go, I was pleasantly surprised.  Look at the treasures I found!

I found a total of 73 mushrooms, 71 of which were very, very large.!  Only 2 were tiny.  We weighed them at just a couple ounces shy of five pounds.

Here they are, all cleaned and debugged!

I can't take all the credit, though, for finding them.  My husband called me from his optometry office to tell me he had been talking with the air conditioner repairman.  The repairman said that people were finding mushrooms right and left that day.  Gary said to me, "Get your hunting clothes on and get out there!". 

Thank God for small towns where everyone knows what everyone else is doing!  If I hadn't heard the news, I wouldn't have gone out, and I would have missed out on these!  I had already decided it hadn't been a very good year for them.  Was I ever wrong!

Cleaning out the cabinets came to a halt and my plans for writing were put on hold for the day.  That was okay.  Mushroom season lasts but a short while.  Life happens.  It's important to not allow it to pass you by!  It's important to enjoy scenes like this after a trek in the woods.

And this...

Daily attempting to lay aside the disarray and chaos and concentrating on the important things is sometimes difficult.  But, it's truly worth it.  Despite the imperfections in day to day living, I am thankful to God for this daily transcendent journey.