Excerpt: The Pursuit of God, The Human Thirst for the Divine, A.W. Tozer

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, The Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wondered so long. In Jesus' name. Amen
Excerpt: The Pursuit of God, The Human Thirst for the Divine, A.W. Tozer

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Day 145 in the Year of Our Lord 2012

I took time today to do some layouts for some of the challenges at Digitals:




 


Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Day 144 in the Year of Our Lord 2012

Two days after surgery and Tim is more sore today than yesterday.  But, he has admitted that he feels a little "draggy" today.  I told him I thot he was not resting enough.  We have been back and forth to the hospital the last 2 days (more about that later).  But he is still doing great.  We will do even better when we get the final word that the lymph nodes removed on Monday are not cancerous!  He took a couple of my pms last night and slept like a baby.  I'm going to share a couple of photos I took of his surgery at the end of this post, so just be warned now!  :D

We got a good bit of rain yesterday, which we needed badly! They are calling for more thunderstorms tonight.

Tim's mom sent me a Birds & Blooms magazine issue on hummingbirds.  I just think they are beautiful and amazing little creations!  If you remember, I hung out some nectar last year, but never saw a sign of a hummer and a windstorm eventually blew the feeder off the window I had it suctioned to.  Earlier in the spring, I hung up the feeder again.  Only this time I hung it up under the cover of the tree (on the garden hook you see in the first picture) that is out our back door.  But, I still got no hummers to come to the feeder.  May have been too early, even though it has been relatively warm all spring.  Well, one of the articles in the magazine was about the "Ten Favorite" flowering plants that hummers like.  So, I went to Walmart and Lowe's and bought a few of those plants.  I got 6 total, 3 perennials and 3 annuals.  The perennials I planted in the ground under the tree and the annuals I planted in a pot.  I would like to (eventually) have the whole area under this tree in flowers.  I love butterflies, too, so would love to have some butterfly-attracting plants.  Maybe Tim's mom will take one look at this picture and give me some tips or flower suggestions (hint, hint)!  :D


I was taking my Bible Club stuff to the church when I spied the sun's rays shining through the clouds.  I think pictures like this just show the beauty and magnificence of God's handiwork!  It looks darker near the ground than it actually was, but the light of the sun made the camera adjust automatically.  I should have changed the setting on my camera.  But, it is still a beautiful picture as the sky was what I was after mostly!

Remember the celery experiment?  Tim took it out of the pot and planted it in his garden along with a zucchini plant.  Some of the tomato plants bit the dust, so these took their places.  I can taste that zucchini bread now!  UMMMMMMMM!

WARNING..................in case you get sick at pictures of wounds and blood.............don't scroll any further!





I am about to show you pictures of the areas where Tim had the cancer surgery.  The long place on the back of his neck in the first picture is where the original nodule was removed and where they cut out the cancer.  It is much larger than I was expecting!  If you look behind his ear, you can see where they removed lymph nodes (maybe only 1 from this spot and 2 in the other spot as there was a total of 3 removed from the 2 spots).







PICTURE 1 coming up.......................................















The spot you see in the front is where they removed lymph node(s), too.  He was able to take a shower today for the first time since the surgery.   He was not allowed to let the water spray directly on any of the wounds.  But I could tell he felt better after the shower.  Some of the tape was trying to come off.  I hope it stays on at least a couple more days!

That's all for today!

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Day 130 in the Year of Our Lord 2012

Hey!  2 days straight now!  That is a record any more for me, isn't it?!  :D

Not much going on, really.  Just waiting.....waiting for Friday to come around.  However, there will probably be more waiting after that as the appointment is ONLY a consultation.....not surgery on the lymph nodes.  Wait, maybe I already told everyone that.  I don't remember!

Moving right along.....................

Today was a cloudy day again in the morning, but we finally DID get some much needed rain in the afternoon!  I think it rained even during church, too!  I moved my celery experiment from under the tree out into the rain and it was puddled, so I had to dump some of the water out!

Yesterday, I had forgotten to take a picture of the onions.  So, that is the first picture shown here.  If you've been to visit us, you know about the raised cement thing on the side of the parsonage.  I filled it with dirt last year and planted herbs in it.  The oregano came up beautifully again this year, but Tim decided he wanted to put the onions in that spot, so he dug up the little bit of rosemary and the tons of oregano and put the onions out.  I never did use much of the herbs anyway, so that was OK by me!  I mainly used the basil and made some basil pesto (which is still in the freezer and fridge, lol)  Tim was not crazy about it, so I don't use it.  Anyway, I hope these onions get bigger than they did last year!  I will chop them up and freeze them mostly.  We use onions and green peppers ALL THE TIME!!!!!



This is how the sky looked most of the morning.  It only got in the 70's today and by the time church was out, it had cooled off considerably!  But, we really needed the rain!  And we still could use some!  The grass is getting brown already!  It seems every time they call for rain, it misses us!  So, I'm really glad for the rain today!

I wanted to share my thrifty way of purchasing "pork chops."  I buy a pork loin at Aldi for $2.89/lb.  The one I bought this time was just a bit over 5 lbs. and cost $14.80, I believe.  That is normally more than I will pay for meat, but because I cut it up and make several meals out of it, it really turns out pretty cheap.  For instance, shown here are 2 small roasts on the left and on the right are 3 packs of good-sized pork chops, plus we ate a pack of chops for supper tonight.  So, that is 6 meals at $2.47/meal.  You can't buy it in the restaurant for that!  This is the ONLY way I purchase my pork now.  

Well, tomorrow is our thrifting day!  I signed up to get e-mail deals with IHOP and so I got a coupon for a free Fruity Tooty something or another pancake meal, so Tim and I are going to eat breakfast at IHOP before we go to our usual thrift stores.  With eating a big breakfast, we won't do lunch.  Then around 4 we will go to Olive Garden to eat dinner on Tim's mom (not literally on her, you understand!  :)  who sent us an anniversary gift!  Thank you, again, Jeanne!  We love you!

Until next time..........

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Day 129 in the Year of Our Lord 2012

I think I got my count right and that today is the 129th day of the year.

First, I wanted to let you know that Tim called to find out exactly what is going on this Friday (we thought he was having surgery on the lymph nodes).  This visit is a consultation ONLY with the surgeon.  Which means more waiting for the surgery, I am sure!  sigh!

It has been cloudy today and I took advantage of that and worked in the flower beds weeding, which I absolutely HATE to do!  But, I had planted some bulbs a couple weeks ago and needed to pull the grass to see if the bulbs had sprouted, LOL!   One type of bulb does not have anything sprouted yet.....I'm hoping it is too early still.  Plus I had to thin out some of the flowers that were taking over and about to run my tiger lilies down the hill, LOL!  Here's some pictures I took today of the new sprouts, the garden, and some miscellaneous stuff.

Then, I will be heading to my chair to do some reading.  I'm about 2/3 of the way through "Little Women."  I don't know why I've never read it before!  I've gotten lots of books completed that I haven't told you about.  I'll talk about that perhaps tomorrow!

These Pinks give off a wonderful perfume which greet you each time you walk out our front door!

This is a new sprout, however it has gotten very tall very quickly!

Here's another new sprout.  It is much shower than the one above.  One of these is not up (yet?).

I thought, before I saw the blooms, that this was some sweet pea that I had planted last year.  When I saw the bloom, I thought of Periwinkle, but I just looked it up on the internet and this does not look like the Periwinkle on the internet.  Does anyone know what it might be?   Love the little purple flower!

This is the flower I had to thin out.  I believe I planted these from a wildflower packet of seeds and it is the only thing that survived!  Not hard to know why!  :D  Very aggressive!  

Not many blooms left on the Sweet William.

Tim picked some green beans from one of the church members last year and I canned about 5 quarts.  Those were the BEST green beans, so he decided we would plant some green beans this year.  He has planted a few 3 times, so we should have (hopefully) green beans coming on NOT all at the same time!

These are the tomatoes and green peppers.  I meant to take pictures of the onions, but forgot.  They are in a raised bed on the other side of the house.....where my herbs were last year.  No herbs this year.

The celery experiment is still thriving!  You can see some of the stalks now!

The only thing my humming bird feeder has attracted is this ugly insect that is drowned.  He died in sugar heaven, however!  :D

Until next time.......

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Day ?? in the Year of Our Lord 2012

Sorry, peeps!  I've lost track of the day count.  I will get back on track one of these days!  I don't even remember where I left off as I forgot to look before beginning this post, LOL!

I'm thinking the last post (besides the ones I've shared from my other blog) was almost a month ago with little Miss Abigail's birthday.  After that, I had a cold for about 2 1/2 weeks and am finally getting over that except for the occasional clog-ups when I'm trying to sing at church!

That brings us to the end of April, there abouts.

April 25th - 29th we were in Revival with a local pastor, Bill James.  Our usual activities on Sunday to conclude the revival services include lunch on the church grounds then an afternoon service.  We baptized the young man I mentioned in a prior post and then gave him and his wife the right hand of fellowship into the church at the end of the afternoon service.  Then we rested the rest of the day!

April 28th - May 11th, I am the "Featured Designer" at my online shop, Digitals.  What that means is a daily free download and a special sale in my portion of the shop.  Plus advertising multiple times a day on Facebook, pinterest and twitter and a few other sites.  Not to mention trying to blog about something every day!  The trick is to put the word FREE in the title so you get picked up by the FREEBIE hunters who advertise your blog on their site.

Yesterday we finished up the Spring visitation!  We had a wonderful turnout for visitation each week so we finished early!  Good thing cuz it is already reaching 90 here!  YIKES!

Yesterday, too, was iNSD (international scrapbooking day) celebrated around the WWW with tons of sales.  I thought being the Featured Designer (FD) during this time would help draw sales to my shop.  However, I'm thinking it hurt me instead because of the other designers at the shop being more widely known than me.  Sigh!  One day would not be bad, but Digitals' owner is running everyone's sales from May 1st thru 8th!  YIKES!  Oh well!  I know ultimately the Lord is in control of those sales for me, so I am happy with the little extra I have gotten!

Originally, my FD time slot was to be May 12th - 25th.  But, the designer before me could not fulfill her spot, so the owner asked me if I could move up since I was ready.  Not thinking about the other designers' products being on sale during half of my time slot.  That will be a lesson learned for future years.....assuming there is a future year!  :D

Let's talk about the "Super Moon" event of last night.....was anyone else as disappointed as I was after all the hyped-up talk about it?  I did manage to get a few cloud-covered pictures, which I think made the scene alot more interesting than it actually turned out to be in and of itself!  I'll share my shots (a few of them) with you then I'll tell you about a situation that I'm requesting prayer about, if you don't already know about it.

I got my good camera back this past week, so I was able to zoooooooooooom in.  I used the tripod after I took several shots that I thot were probably not going to be very clear.  But, as it turns out, the ones I did by hand turned out and the ones from the tripod didn't.....except the very last one!  Go figure!

I like the effect of the cloud-cover and how the clouds captured the light from the moon.


This one was taken on the tripod through the trees, but the moon blurred.

This was the last shot I took (with the tripod) that turned out half-way decently.  I took this one without zooming in as I wanted to show the light through the clouds again and capture the electric lines, too.  I was disappointed because I thought the moon was going to show up really BIG since it was closer to the earth.  It just didn't seem to be a whole lot different than at any other time there has been a full moon!  Oh, well!  If it hadn't been for the clouds, it would've been kinda dull, except for the fact that it hangs there in space on nothing and God created it!


OK, prayer request time.

Tim had a spot on his neck/shoulder area a couple of months ago that kept getting bigger and bigger and started bothering him under his shirt, so he made an appointment with the dermatologist to have it removed.  By the time he went to have it removed it looked like a blood bubble.  She looked at it, gave it some name and cut it off stating she had seen those before and there was nothing to be alarmed about.  But, to be safe she sent it off to be biopsied.  That was on Tuesday, April 24th. 

On Thursday, while we were out thrifting, Tim got an unrecognized call on his cell phone.  He called the number back after we got back home.  It was the dermatologist and she "was sorry but had bad news" regarding the biopsy.  Turns out that Tim has Nodular Carcinoma.  She said it was aggressive and told Tim she would contact a surgeon right away.  The surgeon "happened" to have an opening that day due to a cancellation, so Tim went to see him.

The doctor (a member of the big Baptist church behind us on Peter's Creek) told Tim that this type of cancer could be on the surface (like basal cell, I guess) or medium (under the skin, I guess) or deep.  He told Tim his "looked" deep.  He told Tim that they would shoot die into the area and follow it to the lymph nodes.  They would remove the first lymph node in his neck and test it to see if it was cancerous.  If not, they would close him up, he would either go home that same day or the next morning, and they would determine the next course of action.  If they found the lymph node to be cancerous, they would remove the next one.  If it was cancerous they would remove all of the lymph nodes in his neck and he would probably be in the hospital 3-4 days.  Then things "get more complicated" and the course of action would have to be determined.

The dermatologist told Tim that after all of this is settled, they would probably do a full body scan to make sure there are no more of these growths.

We are praying there is no cancer in the lymph nodes, of course!  I'm praying for a GRADE A MIRACLE that there will be no more cancer PERIOD!  People all over the country are praying for Tim, between church people and other churches and digital friends I have made over the years.

We know that God is in control of the situation already.  I believe that is why the surgeon had a cancellation that Tim's case could fill.  I know what God brings us to, He will bring us through.  Thy will be done is our prayer.

Tim originally thought the surgery was going to be this coming Friday, May 11th.  However, he received something in the mail that tells him this appointment will only be a consultation with the surgeon who is actually going to do the surgery, which will not be the same surgeon as the Baptist doctor.  So, he is going to call to confirm that it is a consultation this Friday only.  I will update you as soon as I find out.

Thank you in advance for the prayers that I know each of you are/will send on Tim's behalf!

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Today's Scrap by Vicky Day: Day 6 FREE Daily Download and some Inspiration!

Today's Scrap by Vicky Day: Day 6 FREE Daily Download and some Inspiration!: I thought I would share some page inspiration with you from my CTMs using the FREE Daily Download kit.  Hope you are collecting all of the ...

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Today's Scrap by Vicky Day: FREE Daily Download and 30% Sale

Today's Scrap by Vicky Day: FREE Daily Download and 30% Sale: Welcome!  I hope you are having a wonderful time taking advantage of those great pre-NSD sales!  I have some NSD news below! I hope you ha...

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Today's Scrap by Vicky Day: FB Fans and FREE Daily Download!

Today's Scrap by Vicky Day: FB Fans and FREE Daily Download!: Today, besides the FREE Daily Download , I have a new Facebook Fan Exclusive gift!  This gift was created by Judith, one of my CTM's.  A bea...