I hope this special day is a good one for you and your family. May you be surrounded with love, peace, and hope for the future.
Can you see me grinning?
I just enjoyed an ALMOST perfect beginning to my day.
Our son lives and works in Thailand. Before he left years ago, he set up a secure chat program for us to use, plus a secure video chat program. He is a really good communicator, so I can almost forget that he is across the world from us.
This morning we not only used the chat program, but switched to the video program. I got to see his wonderful face, and watched him smile and laugh. My heart simply filled. My husband came in and said “Hi.” Our son thought he looked “handsome.” :0)
We had such a good visit. The only thing that would have made it perfect was one of his hugs. As far as I am concerned, he gives the best hugs on the planet. If I don’t squeeze him hard enough, he lets me know. They make me cry they are so good, healing all the little places that could use a little love.
I hope that you are close to your kids – geographically or with good communication.
Beyond priceless.
Thanks to a friend for forwarded email with these wonderful photos.
Filed under Amazing Animals, Friendship, hope, love
Thanks to a friend’s forwarded email for these wonderful images.
Filed under Amazing Animals, hope, love
Thanks to a good friend who forwarded these wonderful photos to me.
Filed under Amazing Animals, Friendship, hope, love
Photos forwarded by friend
Filed under Amazing Animals, Friendship, hope, love
Thanks for a friend’s forwarded email.
Filed under Amazing Animals, hope, love
Merry Christmas! I hope you’re enjoying a safe and love-filled day.
My Christmas memories are filling me up and spilling out today.
Favorite childhood Christmases include the one where I received the most gorgeous, soft, pink, furry, FEMININE sweater I’ve ever had. Another was when my brother and I received 3-speed bicycles called English racers. One of the most cherished memories is the Christmas caroling that started at our house each year. We gathered neighbors at each house, singing and laughing, freezing our parts off, ending with hot chocolate and cookies at home when we were finished.
My husband’s and my first Christmas together was in 1969. Our very best Christmas present was our son, born in December of 1978. The next was December of 1980 when our daughter was born. Today we are celebrating our 51st Christmas together. It’s just the two of us this year, but we are very grateful to be together. We talked to our son in Thailand on our chat program this morning.
This has been a challenging year for us all. I hope that you are staying safe and well, surrounded by love however you can manage it.
Our son is 42 today. He lives in Thailand and there is 12 hours time difference, so I sent him birthday wishes last night before I went to bed and then chatted with him real-time this morning. (He was up late trying to finish up a computer project for a client.)
Brian is our only living child. (Our daughter, Jade, died at two months old due to SIDS.) We feel very lucky that Brian is such a good communicator. I can almost forget that he is across the world from us. He set up a secure chat program so that we can communicate on almost a daily basis. We send pictures and videos, leave messages, chat real-time, etc. We communicate more than some people do with their kids who live in the same city.
I miss two things since he lives so far away:
THING ONE – His truly amazing sense of humor. He gets into it, making me laugh, adding to it with gestures, and finally getting up, adding more and more until I’m laughing so hard my stomach hurts. I have to beg him to stop and then rest awhile. :0)
THING TWO – He gives the best hugs in the world. He doesn’t give just a one-armed hug with a quick pat. He envelopes me, hugging me really tightly – asking me to hug him tighter – and really squeezes. We create so much love it makes me cry.
Happy, happy birthday to Brian – a man who is better than his parents ever thought of being – who makes us proud of the kind, caring person he is.
We will celebrate our 52nd wedding anniversary in June. As we age, our lives become more complicated – some things much more difficult – but we both feel we will never get enough.
He wants to get a Subway roast beef sandwich for lunch. I am making spaghetti for dinner with a pineapple upside down cake – his favorite – as his birthday cake.
Our son called him from Thailand this morning – the best of surprises. I’m am doing all I can to make this a very happy day for him.
A.A. Milne
“Love is taking a few steps backward – maybe even more – to give way to the happiness of the person you love.”
Filed under Favorite Quotes, Poohisms
June 14, 1969 – 51 years ago today – my husband and I made the promise to share the rest of our lives. Both sets of parents thought we were making a mistake. We happily made the promises anyway, ‘riding off into the sunset’ together, our whole lives ahead of us.
51 years later, we are still going strong.
Marriage is one of the most important promises you will ever make. It’s the hardest job you will ever have. It’s an evolving work-in-progress that will sometimes require more than you think you have to give. Merging two lives is difficult, to say the least. You will grow and change, and hopefully continue to build a stronger and stronger bond as the years pass. It’s a union that will bring some of the very best moments you will have in your life. Bad things will happen, but you are stronger together than either of you is alone. Sometimes you will feel so close your heart spills over. Other times you want to bite each other in the leg. If you each feel that you are giving 150%, it is probably coming out pretty even. In some ways, I can’t believe it has been 51 years (‘officially’, my husband says, since we dated for 8 years before marrying.) In other ways, it seems we have ALWAYS been halves of a stronger whole.
Last year, on our 50th anniversary, my husband said we had a good start, but that he wanted another 50 years. I have told him that I will do everything in my power to give that to him. We don’t know what is in store in the future, but we will face whatever comes together.
Filed under Cause for Celebration, Family, love, marriage
Jeannett Antonie Overby via Penny Yaffe Krakow
Filed under Encouragement, Health Alert, love
My husband has lived with me for over 50 years now. He describes me as, “Mean as a snake.”
Grunge
As he has lived with me so long, he probably has a point. I hope, though, that if I AM as mean as a snake, I’m pretty like this one. :0)
AND on our last anniversary in June, he DID ask me to spend ANOTHER 50 years with him. I guess he really LIKES snakes….
Vector Stock
This is an image of how I look and feel right now – I have melted into a puddle. Here’s why –
We just got home from running errands. We opened the mail at the dining area table as we usually do. My husband opened one of the packages. He had ordered another tee shirt. Usually the tees are gun-related or cartoon characters. (He has toned down buying the political ones that might get us attacked, and also the slightly pornographic ones…. )
Anyway, I expected another gun-related tee. He turned it around –
I hugged him, then hugged him again, thanking him for the nice surprise. He said, “It’s the truth.” That got him ANOTHER hug.
I then went to start gathering trash for the week. I came back into the dining area. He had changed into the tee.
I said, “You changed your shirt.”
And he replied,
“You changed my life.”
NOW you understand why my husband is a keeper (even though he drives me NUTS at times) and why my self portrait for the day is a melted puddle.
Filed under love, quality of life
Beautiful World
Sri Lanka Frogmouth Birds – Belal Moheb
Beautiful World
Beautiful World
Birds and Blooms Unlimited
doves – source unknown
trendsandlife.com
On the way back from the grocery store this morning, I asked my husband, “Will you love me forever?”
He said, “Maybe not forever, but I’ll go for the next 1,000 years.”
I’ll take it. :0)
Filed under Attitude, Encouragement, Family
Nino Orlandi via Zelijko Divac – LinkedIn
Filed under Creativity, sculpture, When Wood Comes Alive
The Journey Home via Carol Auclair Daly
I’m feeling a bit blue right now – AND feeling guilty that I’m such a greedy lady. We took our son to the airport this morning after enjoying a JOYOUS 3 weeks together. He was here for his birthday AND Christmas AND New Year’s.
I’m blue because we have no clue how long it will be before we can see him again. This time it was over 3 years, since he lives and works in Thailand. His trip home was 28 hours all told – and that was the SHORTER way. I hate for him to have to do this, but I’m SO glad he did.
I’m feeling guilty because – truth be told – there is no ‘long enough visit,’ or enough hugs.
Our son is a champion hugger. It brings tears to my eyes when I get one from him, and he’s super generous with them. My hugs bucket is filled up at the moment after a long drought. My heart is full.
We are so proud of the man he is and his plans for the future. We are lucky that he knows how much we love him and how proud we are of him. We know WE are loved, and he enjoys being with us – a truly wonderful thing.
The Fresh Quotes
Our son went around to the driver’s side of the car at the airport this morning to hug his dad. My husband said, “If I never get to see you again, you’ll be okay.” Then our son came around the car to me, eyes red, giving me a last, hard, long hug.
It’s a beautiful thing to love so hard.
Jeff Jett – LinkedIn
Jeff Jett – LinkedIn
Cuddle Sanctuary
My biggest ‘take home’ from my trip was love demonstrated in so many forms it was overwhelming.
My SIL and I are married to guys who are brothers. We went to see Murray, the wife of our husbands’ cousin. We lost our cousin recently, and we had planned to get together for a ‘girls vacation’ – just the three of us. Happily, Murray came home from the hospital with good news. We made sure she rested with her feet up while we were there. We had told her before we came that we didn’t need to be ‘entertained.’ We just wanted to be with her.
Murray is a big part of her community, doing countless volunteer things, being on boards doing good things for the community, such as the Thibodaux Children’s Museum, and more. She is active in her church and has given so much to her town of Thibodaux. She recently was in the paper, with an article naming some of the things she has done!
What happened from the time we arrived to the time we left was the absolute definition of love and giving back. Murray’s group of close friends is larger than the number of people my husband and I have ever known in our entire lives. There were phone calls constantly, with people checking in to see that she was doing all right or just to touch base. She always made sure that each caller knew how much they meant to her.
There was a steady stream of friends, her priest, her housekeeper when it wasn’t her day to be there, her massage therapist and good friend, who also massaged the neck and back of a second visitor while she was there – after giving Murray a food massage. There were friends who had been with her in the hospital and were checking in again. There were people Murray invited because she wanted them to meet Mary Lou and me. There were neighbors. There was the ‘Queen of Pralines,’ Murray’s long-time friend who not only visited one day, but had her son, Chad, deliver a big box of pralines the next day. ( learned that you don’t say “Pray-leens.” They are pronounced, “Praw-leens.” I took two for my husband – since he LOVES anything sugary. He gobbled them up, smiled and nodded, saying, “These are truly heavenly. Don’t get me any more.” :0)
(Chad was the one who got our cousin John to the hospital recently and then picked him up there and brought him home recently, before he passed.) Each visitor brought love with him. The whole house was enveloped with it. There is no way to remember them all. There was a steady stream of caring, interesting, wonderful people, all loving Murray.
She has a wonderful way of introducing people. I’m socially challenged, in that after saying something like, “I’m happy to meet you,” I have trouble coming up with something to say next. Murray makes that go away with a story about who that person is, or asks them to tell a story, which then makes you want more information, so conversation is easy. She also tells them something about US, so the other people have something easy to say, too. What a gift Murray has!
The priest was young and wore bright blue long socks with cartoon characters on them! He was great, totally down to earth, not preachy, and showed he was a truly great addition to Thibodaux.
We went to a restaurant called, “Bubba’s II” one night. We all ordered, and then the waitress brought a soft-shelled crab to Murray, wanting her to enjoy it free of charge – just because she is Murray. That’s the kind of thing that makes me tear up. Jean (pronounced, “Zhaw” – that’s as close as I can get to it) went with us. Not only that, he secretly went up and paid for all of us. See what I mean?
We managed to do some significant stuff to help Murray go through things and clean out while we were there, but it’s great to know that Murray is so surrounded by people who truly care and want to give back the love she has given for so many years.
Now that she received great news from her doctors, she can concentrate on getting her strength back and spreading even more around!
creativeartworksblog 