Thankful for Domestic Bliss

This is just a simple blog update on the happiness of our little home.  Home is where the heart is.  And home is all about being happy and content with where you exist, or coexist, if you have the gift of a family.  But, I don't want to discourage those who live alone.  God gives to each of us just the particular gift that He wants us to have for each day.  One day that gift might include singleness, one day it might include marriage.  One day it might include just a couple, and one day it might include one or more chickadees in the nest.  God may choose to bless some with a home.  There may be others who don't have that gift at the same stage in their lives.  I think that the most important thing that I've been learning in my life that is so important to be truly thankful for WHATEVER gift God has chosen to give in at that moment.  For we don't know what tomorrow might bring.  Did you know that there were ten lepers whom Jesus healed and only ONE of them came back to thank Him!  Just ONE!  How often do we forget to be thankful and just relish having the opportunity to be close to the One who created us and loves us?  I've heard that many surveys say that the one thing people want out of life is true happiness.  I believe that the key to true happiness is being content in knowing this fact:  You were made by a God who loves you!  So, no matter where you are at in life and no matter what the circumstances, you can be content! 

 And now I'll share photos of happy things that bring me joy.  I know that God could choose to remove them at any time, so I don't want to cling to things.  But, I want to say, "Thank you!" for these wonderful, simple things of life that I feel so thankful for like….

Flowers…. (most of which I was blessed with by someone passing on free clippings from their own gardens)  Thanks, friends!

A simple BBQ grill which creates happy times of enjoying good food together with family…(again, a gift from a former neighbor, who was moving on and chose to share something that had been his with us.  Thanks!)

A sturdy little brick home to shelter us in times of storms…. (which we've been especially thankful for lately with three tornado warnings near our home in the past week)

And a soft, friendly, furry friend who is so silly and entertains us every day.  Jenny is such a special little companion to Penny, especially on the two days a week when I'm at work.  So thankful for this adorable little kitty… (she had been at a shelter and we were SO happy that we found her)

I hope that you, too, can find many things to be thankful for.  Don't worry about comparing your life to others around you.  Just take a look around, and I'm sure that you'll many treasures worth saying, "Thank you!" for.  And it doesn't need to wait until Thanksgiving Day

Graduation on My Mind

Well, with all of the graduations taking place this Spring, it has set my mind in motion, thinking about Penny's graduation, which will take place in 2015.  Can you believe it?!  We just brought our girl home about 5 years ago and already she'll be graduating next year!  I'm thankful that she wants to stay at home and go to college locally.  Six years wouldn't seem long enough.  I guess that's part of the sacrifice in adopting an older child.  You get less years to spend with them.  But, it's still well worth it.  When God leads you to your family members, He picks just the right ones.  It's the same with marriage.  When it's the right one, you just KNOW!  Many people have asked if we'd adopt again.  My answer has always been, not unless I know that God is leading us to.  And so far, although I've had some interest, there still has been no strong leading for both of us.  So, we'll stay content in our present circumstances, unless the Lord leads us differently in the future.  And, it seems to me, that Penny is really enjoying soaking in all of the undivided attention of a mom and dad, whom she didn't have for about 13 years of her life.

Speaking of Penny, here is a picture of her with Mrs. Schubert.  She helped out in her Kindergarten class, along with Mrs. Duran, an ELA (English Language Acquisition) teacher  as a volunteer for this past year.  She usually spent her time at Hackberry Hill Elementary School, helping the kids with their reading.  It was a great experience, as she is thinking about becoming a teacher of English as a second language, herself, someday.

Meanwhile, I've been busy doing various crafts and prep work for the graduation, which is a whole year away.  I figure that if I start now, I'll have plenty of time.  After all, I'm a busy lady wearing many hats, on a daily basis.  Basically, I'm the teacher, the principal, the janitor, the school counselor, the kitchen staff, the bus driver, and the parent, all wrapped into one person.  Oh, did I mention, that I also work, part-time, on staff at our church?  So, one can never start too early to plan ahead. 

 So, the first thing I worked on was making a graduation pendant banner.  I still need to find lettering to add to it and then string to hang it up.  But, I have ordered the jute string, as well as some other supplies, like ribbon and other things to make decorations.  I can't wait for my box from Hobby Lobby to show up at my doorstep.  Meanwhile, here is my homemade banner, coming together.  I got the supplies from the dollar store.

Even though we are a home school, we will have our own school colors.  They come from the Regan family crest.  So, our colors will be blue, yellow and white.  So, I also spray painted some old frames white, which I will put her senior pictures in and hang up with ribbon for decorations in our dining room.

I've also been sketching out exactly what I want in various rooms in our house, in terms of things like decorations, food, seating, drinks, cake, etc.  One of the rooms that I plan to utilize, since we don't have a large home is the garage.  So, I thought I should try to clean up the garage and make it look a little nicer.  So, I began by priming one shelf and the wall, behind it, which has ugly stains.  The only problem was that I noticed that the stains are still bleeding through the primer.  So, eventually, I'm hoping that paint will cover the ugly stains.  If it does, then I'll proceed to do the rest of the wall, as well.  Here's what it looks like, so far.

On Saturday, Penny and I attended the Home School Etc. graduation ceremony, which she'll be participating in next year.  It was so special and sentimental.  There were seven graduates.  It was so neat, because there was such a variety of kids, including one who was twenty years old and adopted.  So, this small, intimate and diverse group of kids really helps Penny to feel included.  The kids all obviously love Jesus and generously share that love with the other kids.  We are so blessed to have such a group for Penny to be a part of.  We'll be having a break from meeting together every Friday in the summer time.  But, they are planning a cast party, sometime soon.  Here is a picture of the chorus group that sang at the graduation…

…and a picture of the graduates:

With the awesome speeches, from the parents, that brought tears to my eyes, I thought I had better begin early, so I've already started by writing my first rough draft of a speech to give for next year.  That way, I have a year to practice and hopefully not bawl the whole way through.  That'll be a challenge, because I can be quite an emotional mess at such sentimental occasions.  Wish me luck, next year, to somehow hold it together!

Mother's Day Weekend & Other "Stuff"

I hope that you all had a glorious Mother's Day.  I always try hard not to put any kind of great expectations or pressure upon my daughter about what she "ought" to do for me for Mother's Day.  You see, Mother's Day has sometimes felt a bit bittersweet here.  Let me explain…it's not that we don't have a great relationship.  I LOVE being Penny's mom!  And I know that she loves having me as a mom.  But, although she doesn't talk much about it, I'm sure that she is also sad, in a way, realizing that there's almost no chance she'll ever be able to reconnect with her birth mom.  I don't make a big deal out of it, but I also want to acknowledge that part of Penny.  Without her birth mom, she never would have received the gift of her life.  So, without focusing too much energy on it, so as to add to the grieving, I simply pray for her birth mom on Mother's Day.  And I think that brings Penny some peace, knowing that our Heavenly Father sees her mom, wherever she is, and loves her dearly.  This year I was blessed with a very lovely, handwritten card by my beautiful daughter.  It is so precious, that I had to take pictures of it.

Mother's Day was also bittersweet this year, because it's the first year we went to celebrate with Jay's mom and Father was absent.  Since, we haven't been to the house, ever since the funeral, it seemed especially odd to come around a corner and not see Father sitting in his chair.  

We had a good time with Mother by going out to one of her favorite restaurants, "Vern's Cafe".  It is near the foothills of the mountains outside of Ft. Collins.  Then we took a drive through the countryside over to Horsetooth Reservoir.  We saw a bald eagle fly overhead, a deer on the side of the road.  That night we heard coons chattering outside of Mother's house and on our way home, two coyotes ran across the road in front of us!  We did that on Saturday, because on Sunday we got snow!  Besides that, I came down with the illness that hit Penny first and then Jay. After going to the late service at church we just stayed home and ate tostadas and watched movies, while the snow fell.

I did manage to get some pictures of my lilacs and my irises before the snow flattened them.  I am SO excited about the irises, because I planted them last year, since a neighbor of a friend had given me some transplants.  I've heard that transplanted irises don't always bloom the first year, which was the case when I planted some in Fort Collins.  But, this year I was blessed with blooms right away.  It looks much better than the empty flower beds that adorned the side of our house, before.

Pilgrims on a Journey

How many of you have ever read Pilgrim's Progress?  I had read it as a child and I remember it being the theme of our summer bible camp one year a LONG time ago.  But, it was great to re-read it as an adult recently when Penny and I read that as part of our home school literature assignment.  We read an updated version called, The Dangerous Journey, which has some great illustrations and makes it more readable.

I had wanted to use this book even before I found out that Penny would be performing in a modern-version of a musical based on the book.  So, it worked out well that the year I planned on reading the book, her home school enrichment group director just happened to pick, Pilgrim, for the musical to perform.  And this past school year the kids in HSE ( Home School Etc.) have been working hard on things from acting, to singing, dancing, building sets, learning to run lights and sound, sewing costumes, etc., etc. to prepare for the big production.  I must say that all of their hard work really paid off.  As the director said, "You all rose to a level of excellence."  But, it wasn't just their amazing performance that really impressed me.  I was more moved by their excellent attitudes.  After HOURS of grueling rehearsals, when I'd go to pick Penny up, I couldn't believe how the kids were never complaining.  They were full of smiles, complimenting others on a job well-done and thanking Mrs. Traum for all of her hard work and patience with the kids.  And the other thing that struck me was the conviction of the kids in getting the message of the play out to the audience.  This was not just a story to entertain the crowd.  It sent out a message of redemption through the cross of Christ as pilgrims travel the journey of life on their journey to reach the Celestial City.

Having just said, "See you later!" to Father just seven weeks ago, the scenes where pilgrims passed on from this life and reached the King waiting for them in the Celestial City was very moving.

 Jay and I both cried at least three times throughout the musical.  And I watched it twice, so that meant I was moved to tears at least six times.  There were also moments of great laughter and dramatic scenes of adventure.  Penny's main role was that of dancing.  So, it was hard for me to catch photos of her moving about, since I had to keep my camera on theater mode, (due to no flash photography), which means that any small movement becomes a blur.  But, I'll still post some, as any silly mom must do, so that you get the idea of how active the wonderful dances were.

That last one was of an Irish step dance.  I was really impressed with how far the kids came with their dance moves.  Most started out as total non-dancers until they reached this ability to look like they really were Irish step dancers.

I was glad to get a few pictures of Penny smiling in the Friday night performance.

 That was before she became sick.  But, fortunately, she somehow managed to keep smiling even at the two performances on Friday, even though we had some real exciting drama at our house after the Thursday night performance.  After we got home, at almost 10 p.m. I went in the say, "Good-Night," to Penny and I thought it odd that her fan when out right after I turned it on.  She said it had been going off-and-on the night before.  Then when we sat down on her bed she suddenly said, "Mom, what's that noise?"  She pointed to the electrical outlet next to her bed and then I heard it, too.  There was a strange crackling noise.  Penny then got down on the floor and looked at it and said, "Mom, there are sparks in there!"  We couldn't get a hold of our electrician that night, so we called 9-1-1 and had the fire department come over and check it out.  They finally figured out which breaker to turn off, as they are all mis-labeled and said that we needed to keep it off until the electrician could fix it.  They could detect heat behind the wall, but not a fire, yet.  So, the next day, between performances, I had Penny take a nap in our bedroom, while the electrician fixed all of the electrical outlets in her bedroom.  She hadn't slept well that Thursday night, so she was exhausted on Friday.  The electrician showed us the outlet that was sparking and you could see how one wire was melting and the screws had turned black.  A few other outlets also had black screws from getting hot.  It was all due to old, aluminum wiring, which was not the greatest, but they used back in the late 60's to early 70's, due to a shortage of copper wiring, during the Vietnam War.  The good news was that we discovered that our basement has all copper wiring, but the bad news is that the upstairs is all that aluminum wiring and will all need to be replaced.  After all of that excitement on Friday, Penny woke up late on Saturday morning to discover that she had come down with a bad cold.  But, after loading her up on Zinc, vitamins, and medicine she headed back for her last performance of Pilgrim.  After all, that was the one that Jay and Grandma had been planning on attending, all along.  You can tell, from the group pictures that she wasn't feeling good.  She was mostly looking down and couldn't put a smile on her face.

But, once she started acting/dancing, she just managed to push through it and force a smile, even if she felt miserable.  When she called me during the intermission and at the end, I couldn't even recognize her voice, because of the cold.

Needless to say, we altered our plans after all of that unexpected excitement.  We decided to just sleep in.  I didn't realize how tired I had become.  I actually slept for 10 hours straight, being awakened by the alarm clock at 9 a.m., which is almost IMPOSSIBLE to believe for this morning person!  We went to the late service with Grandma and then out to eat at Denny's, so that Penny could get some good hot, chicken noodle soup.  And after Grandma left, I actually fell asleep AGAIN while I was reading a book in bed!  This is almost unthinkable for me, a person who prides herself on never wanting  nor needing naps and after 10 hours of sleep!  I guess all of the 4-hour rehearsals and four performances actually wore me out, too, more than I had thought.

Well, while the road is sometimes tiring with unexpected bumps and turns along the path, it's good to know that our good and kind King is with us all along the way.  And He will see us through until the end!