Getting the Motor Going

 

I am having such a hard time getting my motor started today. After so many days, weeks and months of going at full tilt, having a day where the house is quiet, well except for the sound of the washer and dryer. Then there the  men out front working to put all of our utilities underground, preparing for the wider road out front. I have a orange cone in the middle of my driveway. Does that mean I couldn't leave or no one can pull in? I wondered as I stared at it. It is a parade of hard hats and orange vests outside the fence.

When we went to Arizona, I really meant to take more pictures than I did. Finally today Kessie took pictures for me and sent me a couple. I thought I would share them with you.

This one is Sophie, five weeks.

 

Kessie said she learned to smile. Such a sweet face with lovely kissable cheeks.

 

This is her big sister. I laughed to hear, that big sister wants baby sister to come play with her. To this day, I remember the disappointment I felt when my Mom showed up with my baby brother who was too little to play with or even talk to or play all of these games I was thinking of before he came home.

 

 We have lovely rain in the forecast for the rest of the week and in to the weekend. I feel like my life is filled with so many gifts.

I hope you have a lovely week. This first week of January. I guess since it is a new year, a new month, I should mix it up and try a new schedule.

~Kim~

My friend the hummingbird, She follows me still.

"I think that is a better thing than thanksgiving: thanks-living. How is this to be done? By a general cheerfulness of manner, by an obedience to the command of Him by whose mercy we live, by a perpetual, constant delighting of ourselves in the Lord, and by a submission of our desires to His will."
---Charles Spurgeon

Turning the Pages, to 2016

Happy 2016, A new year full to the brim with new possibilities, promises, challenges. Lots of gifts to be opened and shared and new joys to be lived.

 

 Every day. From my heart springs gratitude. Thank you so much for continuing to be apart of my life as it is lived out loud from this blog. Thank you so much for your words of comfort, encouragement and love. Thank you for walking beside me when I was weary, when I was over joyed and overwhelmed. Thank you for giving of yourselves, when I know you were lonely, tired and sad. My friends and I call you my friends, you are faithful.  You have given me more than I could ever give back to you.

I wish you the best in this New Year.  Here is looking forward to a glorious future.

~Kim~

Make a wish!

 Trust God---Your times are in His hands. His timing is never late.
"Oh, satisfy us early with Your mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days!"
---Psalm 90:14

Almost January

Can you believe this year is almost over? I am still in a state of denial I think. I don't think I have had a single month in 2015 that there hasn't been some life changing moment. I was reflecting over my life and I think  2015 ended up being more of a by-the-seat-of-my-pants-year. Instead of being planner and a goal setter.
I end up being surprised that I got anything accomplished at all. I am so happy that I got so many rugs hooked. I far exceeded what I ever thought was possible for me.  I hooked 39 rugs and mats. Ron said my average was 3 1/4 a month. September was my best month with five.

Google Image

Just think what I could do if I lived where it snowed. That was hooking with the air conditioning running most of the time.
Ron has been home this week, and he always reads me great passages in whatever book he is currently reading. He read me this the other day, and I keep having him read it to me over and over. I thought I would share it with you as we stand on the brink of a new year.

"Creating a positive environment to support your success means clearing out all the clutter in your life. Not just the physical clutter that makes it hard for you to work productively and efficiently (although that's important too!) but also the psychic clutter of whatever around you isn't working, whatever's broken, whatever makes you cringe. Each and every incomplete thing in your life that exerts a draining force on you, sucking the energy of accomplishment and success out of you as surely as a vampire stealing your blood.

Every incomplete promise, commitment, and agreement saps your strength because it blocks your momentum that inhibits your ability to move forward. Incomplete tasks keep calling you back to the past to take care of them. So think about what you can complete today." ---The Compound Effect-Darren Hardy.

 

I have been thinking about the goals I had for myself that I didn't finish.  They do call me and I do feel I can't start something new until I finish the old ones. So I am giving myself a month after the party in the front yard, to get some of those things off my plate. That will be it for New Year's resolutions. Sometimes you know what kind of goal I would like to make for a New Year? Something like watching 20 movies and staying in my pajamas one day a week. Doesn't that sound like a great goal? Yeah, no matter how hard I tried for that one, I am always jumping up and running outside. Sasha doesn't like pajamas and watching T.V.

 

Just stuff I was thinking about this week. I hope you have a lovely Wednesday.

~Kim~

“I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”
― Herbert Bayard Swope

Gifts from Afar

 

We have had a few storms. Enough to make the first couple of inches soil damp. Ron is doing his after Christmas disking. Except this year he will be turning this into a parking lot again. We have engagement party here on January 16th. The weathermen say El Nino hasn't kicked in yet. In a normal rain year we get about 6 inches of rain a year. The last time we had a El Nino we had 16 something, 13 inches in January alone. So this is like really, really throwing the dice. We had a very nice Christmas. Yes, everything is put away today. Nothing remains except the tons of food. We have 22 days to pull this engagement party off.

That aside, I have this friend I met though blogging. A beautiful blog named Dog Trot Farm. 
I think that is why blogging is so addictive.  You meet the nicest people. They share your life and you share theirs. When I first found blogging and found Julie and all of the wonderful happenings on Dog Trot, I was entranced. She not only was the most incredible photographer. She hooked rugs, and she had chickens.

I read her stories and I had chickens and I thought, could I be like Julie? She really was my inspiration. Never in my wildest dreams did I think she and I would become friends, living--- me in California and she in Maine. But we are.

She sent me a box filled with love this Christmas. She sent me this snowman chair pad and I have it out on my bench, and it looks like she made it just for there.

She sent some Maine Taffy.

This lovely hen and her egg

Julie knows how I love Christmas Socks or just socks period.

So if you have never met Julie or visited with her at Dog Trot, stop in and you will be so glad you did. Thank you so much Julie.

I have told you that Makenzie is a professional photographer. For Christmas she took pictures secretly of everyone. She was even going to fly to Arizona to take Kessie's and her hubby's pictures. Things just got so crazy and Kessie had just had Sophie. But she was going to try anyway. She took Ron and my photo and I will even show you because I think it is the first photo of myself I have ever liked. Well except the previous one of me and Santa.

She even had them framed. So there we are, I hope when Kessie comes for a visit in the spring we can have some more photos done. I love how our family is ever expanding. I am so thankful for the gifts God continues to send our way.

Anyway, that is how it has been, life continues to be rewarding, busy and I really still don't know what end is up. It is all good though. I am of course, very, very thankful. God is good, all of the time.

~Kim~

There is much more snow now.

"Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress."
---Charles Dickens