Prayer Request

This is not a post I ever wanted or thought I would have to write, but here goes.

Remember this cute little grandson of mine who celebrated his 6th birthday last week?

He had been experiencing some headaches and his mom (my oldest daughter) took him to the doctor to get it checked out.   The diagnosis, which came just yesterday,  has put the whole family in shock - a brain tumor.  Surgery is scheduled later this week.

 Please remember this little guy in your prayers.

 We need prayers of healing for him and strength and comfort for his whole family.

The next few weeks could be rough.  I will be on blog break for a while so that I can do what I can to help out.

 Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.

More Friday Favorites

After being out of town for a week, and then playing "catch-up" from being out of town for a week, I am happy to finally have a few minutes to participate with my friend Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, for...

• Pictures from Mexico

I was so excited to find these recent pictures of Elder Jones in my Face Book message folder this morning.

 We don't get very many pictures of Elder Jones, so these were a real treat!

The young woman in the pictures is one that my son taught a few months ago.  Elder Jones was moved to another area, and now he is back in his first area.  The young woman also wrote a message expressing gratitude to our son for all he is doing in Mexico.  It was very touching and truly made me a proud and happy missionary mama.

• Grandkids

My favorite thing about our trip to Utah was the opportunity to spend time with four of our grandchildren. Here they are all ready to go to church on a Sunday morning.

I tried to get some pictures of me with the grandchildren using the timer on my camera. This one is my favorite.  It reminds me of all the fun we had when we were together.

Here is another timer picture.  This one is a bit more traditional, but I must say that the face my four-year-old grandson (in the yellow shirt) is pulling just warms my heart and makes me smile. He is such a character.

My older grand daughter took this picture of her little sister and me. 

While we were taking pictures, grandpa was taking a little pre-church nap.

After church, we made some Easter Crafts.  Here we are making Easter Wreaths. Grandpa is just watching. 

The four-year-old really got into the Easter Wreath project.

Happy Easter!

After making Easter Wreaths, we made lunches for the homeless shelter.  My daughter's church congregation (ward) was providing sack lunches for the homeless the following Monday, so we all got to work on making some nutritional and yummy lunches. 

We made five lunches. The kids wanted to decorate the sacks with an Easter Theme, which was fun. My daughter and son-in-law are raising these children to be good, caring compassionate people, which makes me very happy.

• Time with Hubby

While we did get to spend time with family in Utah, it was really fun to have a lot of time, including two long days of driving, with just me and this guy together.  Just the two of us together. I loved it. One day, while we were out running and taking care of some business, we stopped at one of our favorite burger places, Crown Burger, for lunch.  We both agreed that it felt kind of like we were a couple of youngsters dating again.  We still love being together, even after all these years.

• Birthdays

This little grandson turned six this past week. He lives in Maryland and we don't see him often, but you can see by the look on his fact, that he was pleased with the walkie-talkies that we sent him for his birthday. 

This cute grand daughter, who we did get to see last week turned eight yesterday and we will be going back to Utah soon for her baptism. In our church, children are not baptized as infants, but when they turn eight. We are very excited to be able to share that special day with this special girl. 

• A Long Night

Why was a long night of driving one of my favorite things this week?  Because it saved us from this protest which was blocking the highway the next day. We were delayed leaving Salt Lake City to drive to our daughter's house about an hour and half south in Mapleton. Then, because, we wanted to spend more time with our daughter and grand children, we didn't leave her home in until after noon the next day. We expected to drive to Mesquite, Nevada and stop there for the night, staying in a hotel we have stayed in many times.  It is a big hotel/casino complex and we have never had any trouble getting a room there until last week.  No vacancies. At all. In the entire town.  No worries. We will just drive another hour to Las Vegas and find a room there.  In Vegas, it was the same story. There were no vacancies anywhere we would actually want to stay.  Nothing. Nada. We were still six hours from Phoenix and it was past 7 p.m, but we decided to keep going and drive all the way home. We kept each other awake and alert and reached home about 12:30 a.m.. We were exhausted but safe and glad to be home. The next day, the protests and road blocks shown above, were taking place on the road we would have been driving home on, at the time we would have been driving home, if we had been able to find a room in Nevada. We would have been delayed for hours, so not getting a room and driving all the way home in one night was really a blessing in disguise.

• Christus Statue

I have wanted one of these Christus Statues for years, but they usually cost between $50 and $150, which is way more than I would every pay.  However, I found this one, in perfect shape, for only $5 at a thrift store in Utah.  It is the perfect addition to my living room and the perfect reminder to our family of the real meaning of Easter.

• Books

Book are always on my list of favorites for the week.  I am still plowing through this Christian Mystery/Romance.  So far, it is just OK - but I will finish it up and post a review, hopefully before March is over.

I just got this book and am kind of excited to read it.  It's a non-fiction book about two inner-city land lords and the eight families they rent to.  Since we are considering the idea of buying some rental property at some point, I am looking forward to see what I can learn from this book.

• Springtime

We continue to have lovely, warm spring-like weather here in Arizona.  We had to turn our air conditioner on a few days ago when it was 85 degrees upstairs.  We did however, enjoy the "diverse weather" in Utah where we wore coats and scraped snow off our windshield.  The yellow rocks in the picture above, are really blossom petals from the Mesquite trees in our front yard that have fallen to the ground.  They have made the air smell lovely and sweet, but they make quite a mess in the rocks and aggravate allergies something terrible.  

• Easter

As a Christian, I believe that Easter is an infinitely and important day because it is the day that Jesus Christ was risen from the dead, after atoning for our sins, and being put to death on the cross.

I would add my voice to many others that Jesus Christ is real and that He Lives!

Have a wonderful and blessed Easter!

More than Five Friday Faves

A few of the things I enjoyed and am grateful for this past week include:

• Family history and records indexing.  I enjoy family history and genealogy.  I am currently attending a class on family history and I am learning a lot about research.  

I took some time this week to indulge my interest in my own family history, as well as my interest in indexing historical records that will be available online to help others find their ancestors.

• Grading. Reading, correcting and grading research essays is not one of my favorite things, but getting all of the approximately 70 essays graded is!

It's report card week, so I have been grading lots and lots of assignments, trying to let every student have the best possible chance of getting a good grade in the class.  I am happy to say that when I left school today, all assignments were graded and report card grades were posted.

• Books.  I think this is on my favorites list every week.  This week I have one fiction and one non-fiction going.  I am planning to finish the non-fiction in the next couple of days so that I can concentrate on the fiction book.  Interesting how the titles of these two seem to contradict each other. Maybe I'm reading them out of order.  Perhaps I should "find inner peace" after "rising darkness."

 

• Springtime. This is probably the best time of the year in Arizona. The temperatures are warm, but not yet hot, there are flowers and new growth everywhere and the air smells sweet with the aroma of all kinds of blossoms.

 These trees in our backyard lost their leaves in the winter, but are now green and leafy once again.

 There is lots of new growth on Prickly Pear Cactus. 

 This cactus will soon be out in bloom, and with all of the new growth, will be a lot bigger in the fall.

 I think this is some kind of Agave plant.  You can see its tall blossom that is ten to twelve feet high.

 I love the way our front yard looks and smells at this time of year.

• Birthdays.  We have four family birthdays this month including two special grandchildren so I have been busy shopping, wrapping and mailing gifts.

I also found some fun Easter surprises for the grandchildren.  They always enjoy "surprise boxes" from grandma and grandpa.

• Temple time.  I know that the temple is another frequent favorite for me, but the more I go, the more I feel I need this peaceful worship in my life. When I was at the Mesa Temple earlier this week, the wedding party of a young bride and groom were waiting to welcome the newlyweds out of the temple and into their new married life. You can see the wedding crowd waiting at the door of the temple in this picture. My daughters were both married in this temple, so it brings back lots of happy memories.

 The flowers in the gardens at the temple were fresh, colorful and beautiful.

 There are always the prettiest gardens surrounding temples.

What a special place!  I am so glad I was able to spend some time here and also at the Gilbert Temple last week.

• Green smoothies.  I found this recipe a couple of weeks ago and decided to give it a try.  I love it and it is so healthy.

The ingredients are bananas, kale, cucumber and apple juice.  I was expecting it not to be very tasty, but is is actually quite delicious!  I'm making this again!

• Coconut oil.  There has been a lot on the internet lately about the benefits of coconut oil.  I wondered how good it would be. Then, I found out that one of my friends used it on her face as a moisturizer before applying make-up. I decided to give it a try, but honestly thought it would feel way to greasy. I was pleasantly surprised that I really like the way it makes my skin feel.  I have been told that it will "remove lines and wrinkles and make me look younger" which I seriously doubt, but it does make my skin less dry and moisturizes it before I put on sun screen. I have also been using it on my hands, which get terribly cracked and dry in the winter.  No miracle promises from me, but I plan to keep using it.

Thought for the week:

Joining with:

Susanne at Living to Tell the Story for this week's Friday Fave Five.