Sunday Meanderings...

FOOD FOR THOUGHT - A DEVOTIONAL

Passion and Purpose

May He grant you according to your heart's desire,
and fulfill all your purpose.

~~ Psalm 20:4 ~~

We all need to discover a purpose for our lives; a purpose that excites us and causes us to live each day with passion.

Anna Quindlen had this advice: "Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived."

If you have not yet discovered a passionate pursuit that blesses you and your world, don't allow yourself to become discouraged. Instead, keep searching and keep trusting that with God's help, you can - and will - find a meaningful way to serve your neighbors, your Creator, and yourself.

A Prayer: Lord, let me find my strength in You. When I am weary, give me rest. When I feel overwhelmed, let me look to You for my priorities. Let Your passion be my passion, Lord, and let Your way be my way, today and forever. Amen.


CATCHING UP WITH THINGS IN CHELSEAVILLE

I can't begin to imagine how many times I've said, right here on this blog, that I hardly ever get sick. It's true. For years, it was rare for me to even get a cold. Along came the grandchildren and guess what? That is just no longer a valid statement. This time, Rob and I are both sick - as hard as we tried to avoid it, we caught the awful crud Avery had for the last two weeks. Dry, raspy cough, sore throat and worse of all, earache. Ugh. What it is about getting an earache that makes me feel like a four year old!

I tell you, once your grandchildren start going to preschool and daycare, they become walking germ factories.

Avery and Cameron are both finally over everything and doing great. Me and Papa? Uh, not so much. lol

Here's Cameron's little preschool graduation, two weeks ago. He's the third one from the right... the one kid in the whole photo you can't see of course. You wouldn't believe the crowd I was digging my way through, trying to get one photo. They were performing a little song, in English and then in Spanish.

He got a certificate of course, but he was far more interested in the goody bag his teachers gave him.

I know. You wish you were as accomplished a photographer as I am. :) (I am truly a terrible photographer.)

Avery wouldn't go down the slide - she was wearing shorts and the slide was a little too warm for her - so my daughter Krissy sat her in her lap. The three of them had a lot of fun on the playground equipment.

Nana stayed off the equipment and just took terrible photos of all the fun. lol

It's hard to believe how big Avery's getting, isn't it? I don't think she could possibly be cuter and I love every square inch of her sweet little self. She's maybe the best natured little kid I've ever known in my life.

She does have one little bad habit though. She's a hair twister. Once her hair got long enough to wrap around her finger, she started doing this. She sits and twists her hair around and around her finger and then she somehow manages to tie it in a knot. You can tell she's not even aware she's doing it but let me tell you, if we have to cut very many more of those knots out of her hair, she's going to be bald on that side.

She scared me half to death last week. Normally, she wakes up from her nap with a big smile on her face, in a happy mood. I went in to get her last Friday and she was sobbing. This is so completely unlike her that I was really concerned, but she'd been sick after all and I thought maybe she just didn't feel good. So I cuddled her in my lap and still she wouldn't stop sobbing. Finally, I realized her hand was stuck to the side of her head. When I looked closer, I couldn't believe it. She'd twisted her hair around her index finger so tightly that she couldn't get her finger out and the worst thing of all? The whole end of her finger was BLACK from loss of blood flow. It scared so much, I just grabbed my scissors and intended to cut the hair, but it was so tight around her finger, I couldn't get the scissors in. So I went with my gut and just broke the hair off. I'm sure it hurt her but I had to get that hair off her little black finger.

Good grief! We don't have a clue how to make her stop - it's a subconscious habit.

I'm happy to report that the pool is officially up and running for the summer here at Chelseaville.

That's the smallest kiddie pool you can buy I think. And this is its third summer with us. We planned to get a bigger one this year but guess what? A bigger one won't fit into our Explorer. LOL

It occurs to me, however, that the size doesn't bother the kids one bit. Fill that pool up with water balloons and they couldn't care less that it's a tiny little pool.

Guess who makes the water balloons? I get completely soaked in the process and you don't want to know how sore your fingertips get from tying all of those little suckers.

I need to remember to thank Krissy for buying them in the first place and then making sure Nana never runs out of them. Arrggggh!

I also intended to buy some new pool toys for them and haven't gotten around to it yet. So I used my imagination and gave them our plastic buckets (the blue one is Rob's and the pink one is mine, of course :), my houseplant watering cans and some squirt bottles and they were in water play heaven.

It's so sweet, how easy it is to entertain children this age. Something like watching the rolie polies they caught crawl around Nana's living room floor amuses them for hours.

Maybe that's because rolie polies are allowed to crawl around on the living room floor at Nana's house. They're not even allowed IN their mommy's house. lol


Cameron and Avery run poor Chelsea ragged on Fridays and this is what she looks like about five minutes after their daddy picks them up...a pathetic puddle of pooped puppy. :-) But I think it would break little Chelsea's heart if they stopped coming down here to play. She has a ball with them.

Like me, it just takes her a day or so to recover. :)

SUMMER HAS DEFINITELY ARRIVED...

...in western Colorado. After a record-breaking cold winter, we had a record-breaking high temperatures week last week. Last Tuesday it was 102 degrees here. That's hot, people! Thankfully, there's very little humidity out here so it's bearable but you can't sit on our uncovered patio for two minutes before you fly right back indoors where the a/c is working like crazy to keep up.

I love it. I can assure you, after the endless cold, gray, dreary winter we just had, I'm never going to complain about the heat. Never.

There's nothing real exciting going on around here right now. Cameron's going to be five on June 30th and his birthday party is at Banana's this year - that's a big amusement park here in Grand Junction. Mandy and Aaron will be here and he's just beyond excited. He keeps asking me how many sleeps until his birthday - "sleeps" is how he measures days. :)

And of course we're looking forward to Mandy and Aaron's visit. We haven't seen them since they lost their pregnancy and I want to hold my daughter.

They're both in a good place with it all now though. And by now I guess everyone knows that Celine Dion is finally pregnant, after struggling for something like eight years, with twins, and attributes it to acupuncture fertility treatments. Very encouraging for all of us since Mandy and Aaron are also receiving those treatments.

I'm hoping to have good news to announce again soon. :)

I hope you're all enjoying summer. To those of you who live in the gulf coast region, my heart goes out to you. You know, I grew up in Beaumont, TX, right on the gulf coast, and it's sickening to me to imagine what all the beaches I went to so many times must look like now.

If anything exciting, earth shattering or even mildly amusing happens around here any time soon, you'll be the first to know.

Boring and mundane is right up my alley right now. I'm loving it.

Talk to you again soon!